Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Professor Abby Ghobadian, Professor Yehuda Baruch and Professor Mustafa Özbilgin
We welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Committee’s inquiry into the Governments Open Access policy. The policy has broad and significant ramifications and it is imperative that the government makes the right choices after considering diverse opinions.
The respondents have or are editing important management journals, have or are managing research in different types of institutions, have international experience, and are active in the UK and USA learned societies. Our comments are particularly relevant to the area of business and management studies, thus to Business Schools/Schools of Management. Business Schools are a success story within a strong higher education sector.
We whole heartedly agree with and endorse the principles and motivation underpinning the policy but we argue that if implemented, the policy will lead to many unintended, harmful consequences. We have strong reasons to believe that the cure is worse than the disease. We also put forward a number of suggestions which will enable BIS to create more efficient access to output of journals.
Publishing is a global business both in terms of supply and demand. Publishers are also global business. The OA proposal makes more sense if it was adopted concurrently by all the key global players, including the USA. As the situation stands there is no guarantee or a clear timetable that other leading countries and institutions will embrace OA. Current state suggests the opposite—for example, where scholars aim to publish their best work. This is one of those occasions that there is no advantage to be gained by being the first mover. In fact, the open access is likely to damage UK’s competitive resulting in smaller number of universities making the top 200 universities, fewer business schools making the FT top 100 MBAs etc. This is because it makes it would make it more difficult for the UK academics to publish in top journals due to the copyright clearance demanded by UK institutions and reluctant of say the US journals to offer the required copyright.
Under the OA, payment is not eliminated. The proposal shifts the burden of payment from reader to researcher. The cost to researcher will be much greater than the cost to readers. And the money if available still comes off the public purse. Witness allocation of £30 million by HEFCE to 30 universities and of course other universities have to find the necessary resources. So tax payer still pays but the money comes from a different purse.
Passing the burden of payment to researchers will invariably result in a selection process and a form of rationing. This will disproportionately affect women, ethnic minorities, mid-career academics which in turn will amplify inequalities.
The proposal will disadvantage universities with poorer resources and disproportionately advantage the resource rich universities.
The criteria for acceptance decision by journals should be based on the added knowledge, not on the ability to make money.
The proposal is likely to strengthen the top journals, many of which are Americans, and weaken the typically mid-tier Europeans journals. This in turn will result in closure of many journals which are more likely to publish innovative research drive out innovation in favour of orthodoxy.
The proposal as currently stands and without wide international adoption is likely to increase the profitability of top publishers. This with concomitant demise of second and third tier journals will give a few publisher greater market power.
There is no evidence that access by industry and commerce is a problem. Single articles can be purchased for as little as $30 by any interested user. Furthermore, a significant proportion of penultimate version of peer refereed journal articles are published in OA format. The lack of access is more due to know-how (how to access and find information), interest, and style of academic writing. The rigour requirement compels academic to devote considerable space to research methodology, literature review. Harvard Business Review is read by many managers but top journals such as AMJ are untouched by managers. Part of the reason is contrasting styles. So we do not believe OA will create a more effective bridge between practice and scholarship.
We believe that the bridge between scholarship and practice can be best served by encouraging publishers to publish research digest providing a short summary of how the research can be used for the benefit of practice and publish these on clearly signposted repositories with effective search tool, better and more extensive use of social media, short clips on YouTube where researchers speak briefly about the application of their research, more extensive use of white papers, etc.
We also believe by changing the rules of REF and requiring 1 submission out of four (and four outputs within 5 or 6 years is too narrow to reflect on the quality of researchers, not to speak of the irrelevance of the current REF system to represent the quality of the institutions, as most business schools opt to submit a small fraction of their staff) to address practitioner audience, greater incentive for developing industrial links, breaking barriers and mutual suspicion between academics and practitioners is a better and surer bet to ensure effective and timely flow of information.
In conclusion we do not believe OA will achieve the desired aim. We also believe it will actually harm the UK HE by making it less competitive, it will drive out innovative research, and it will increase inequality in the higher education.
Abby Ghobadian—Henley Business School
Yehuda Baruch—Rouen Business Schools
Mustafa Özbilgin—Brunel Business School
7 February 2013