Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the British Association for American Studies

I am writing as Chair of the British Association for American Studies to strongly endorse submissions to the Select Committee made by the Council for College and University English/English Association and the Royal Historical Society on behalf of the English and History subject communities respectively. The issues they raise about research publications in the fields of English and History are pertinent to the American Studies community in the UK, which spans a broad range of subjects in the arts, humanities and social sciences: principally, US history, American literature, US politics and international relations, and American visual culture (including film studies and history of art).

We are particularly concerned that the gold model of open access privileges the STEM subjects over research and publishing patterns within the arts, humanities and social sciences, and that the details of the green model have not been fully explored. On this subject, speakers at the Westminster Forum on Open Access (5 February 2013) acknowledged that the Finch Report kept open the possibility of developing the green model, but this was not born out explicitly in the conclusions of the report. Nor did the Finch Report explicitly address the fact that arts and humanities subjects only publish around 30% of the research outputs in scholarly journals, in contrast to 40% of work published as monographs (data taken from RAE2008 for both English and History outputs). Given this, we would not want to see open access being used as a criterion for determining the eligibility of outputs in future REF exercises. And, in the immediate term, we would like to see a thorough reassessment of the green model: for example, we suggest that HEFCE or JISC conduct a scoping exercise with a view to establishing a consistent platform that all UK HEIs are required to adopt to ensure that open access repositories are easily searchable.

The American Studies community shares the concern of the historians, in particular, that current debates do not fully acknowledge that some area studies subjects—such as American Studies—frequently publish in journals and via academic presses outside the UK. We have not seen any evidence that the proposed gold open access model will be adopted—or, indeed, is seen as desirable—by publishers in North America. Added to this, our discussions with major academic publishers in the UK indicate that they envisage the green model will be retained for humanities and social science journals in the future, or a hybrid of green and gold.

Finally, we share the concern that the gold open access model raises equal opportunities issues for postgraduates and early career researchers and for retired academics, many of whom continue to publish high-quality articles and books beyond their salaried career span. Neither group of researchers is likely to have access to institutional or research council funds to pay for article processing charges. We would ask that the consultation attends closely to both ends of the career cycle, with a view to promoting a fair and equitable model that is sensitive to particular subject areas, rather than just adopting a single model that meets the priorities of STEM subjects.

Professor Martin Halliwell
Chair
British Association for American Studies

7 February 2013