Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Royal Economic Society

The Royal Economic Society (RES) is the Learned Society that represents economists in the UK and is the oldest one of its kind in the world; its forerunner was founded in 1890 and the current society’s royal charter dates from 1902. It has approximately 3,000 paying members, of whom 60% are based overseas, and publishes two leading peer reviewed journals (the Economic Journal and the Econometrics Journal). After taking account of production costs, 54% of our annual revenues are generated by these two journals and a further 20% are generated from membership fees. These are used to further both teaching and research in economics, to run a major international conference and to support numerous funding initiatives such as PhD Research Fellowships, The Economics Network, research grants and activities taken in conjunction with Economics teachers in schools. With current funding cuts elsewhere in UK Higher Education, such activities are increasingly essential.

Introduction

Open Access (OA) publication has been developing in many disciplines in recent years. In the UK, research councils have encouraged this by requiring that the final versions of accepted papers be placed in institutional repositories for free access. Numerous journals have supported this by allowing the final copy-edited versions of their contents to be placed in these repositories or on individual websites after an embargo period.

OA has gained a new degree of prominence, however, as a result of decisions made by the Government and the research councils in 2012. These seek to encourage OA publication, at least for publicly funded research, and have raised questions about the appropriate levels of OA and delivery mechanisms for achieving these. In particular, the Finch Review argued for Green OA (funded by subscriptions) and the encouragement of Gold OA (where copy-edited output is immediately available to all-comers, free of charge—funded by an “Article Processing Charge”). BIS immediately supported this and RCUK introduced a new policy favouring Gold OA (and allowing Green OA with a 12 month embargo period for Human and Social Sciences (to be reduced to 6 months within a year). At a subsequent meeting (on February 4, 2013), ESRC and AHRC raised the embargo period for Green OA to 24 months for a “transitional” 5 year period, with lower embargoes and Gold OA as the ultimate goal.

While we support the broad goals of OA, we have concerns about the effects of current policy directions on our discipline (Economics)—in particular, on its international competitiveness—and on our Learned Society (the Royal Economic Society—the RES). We believe that these concerns apply to (and are shared by) many other disciplines; indeed, we would encourage the Select Committee to read the Academy of Social Sciences’ recent statement on OA (“Open Access: the view of the Academy of Social Sciences”, January 13, 2013) which we believe summarises the wider arguments very well. From an economic viewpoint, there are clearly some general concerns about the impact of the OA roadmap, as set up in the Finch Report, for the UK university sector at a time of funding cuts.

In what follows, we discuss several approaches to open access publication, including alternatives to the current policy direction.

Gold access

Gold access involves authors being allowed to make publicly available (free of charge) the journal version of their published work as soon as it is published. Because this undermines the traditional subscription-based means of paying for journals authors pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to the journal upon the initial submission of their papers. Although used by a number of journals across various disciplines, there is currently no requirement on authors to publish in Gold access journals. The Finch Report, however, argues in favour of a move towards Gold access and both RCUK and HEFCE are supportive of this. As a result, for the first time in the UK (or elsewhere to the best of our knowledge) there is strong public policy momentum in favour of Gold access.

We have a number of concerns about this:

1.The international dimension. Our discipline is a highly international one: the ESRC International Benchmarking Review of Economics confirmed that UK economists publish heavily in internationally excellent journals and that Economics Departments employ a high proportion of non-UK staff. As such, a policy that is not coordinated with the UK’s major international competitors in terms of where home-based academics can publish is likely to damage the international excellence of their output and hiring.

In preparing our evidence, have discussed the question of open access with the editors of some of the most prestigious journals in Economics (published by the American Economic Association, the European Economic Association the Econometrics Society). Whilst they are considering moves towards Green access (see below), they are not envisaging a move towards Gold access. As a result, the long run goal of current RCUK policy would ultimately refuse to fund work published in the most internationally outstanding Economics journals. It is hard to regard this as being consistent with maximizing the benefits from publicly funded research. In addition, our ability to recruit internationally excellent staff will be damaged if we are not in a position to encourage such people to publish in world-renowned journals: junior staff will see threats to their career progression if they wish to leave the UK at a later date; senior staff will see threats to their visibility and international reputations.

In summary, a policy with the long term objective of mandating Gold access that it not coordinated with our international competitors may damage Economics in the UK.

2.Inefficient resource allocation mechanisms within HEIs. In order to meet the APCs charged under Gold access, RCUK has made block funds available to UK HEIs. To the extent that these are insufficient, we believe there may be additional—non-financial—costs. Specifically, universities will find themselves in the unenviable position of having to decide what output deserves Gold OA funds, with implications for the potential ability of RCUK grant holders to meet the terms of their grants, and—if OA is required for REF 2020—for the ability of academic staff to perform according to expectations. If funds are scarce (which seems likely), what is published will either be influenced by non-expert administrative decisions, or by an internal peer review system that will duplicate (at cost) existing journal processes and run the risk of increasing conflict and dissatisfaction amongst the most research active staff (at the risk of encouraging “brain drain”).

3.The level of APCs. The Finch Working Party commissioned research to indicate the possible level of APCs. Our own calculations suggest that its estimates are significantly lower than would be required for our own journals to break even. We suspect that this is the result of mixing STEM and Arts/Human Sciences journals. The former typically have lower costs per paper because these are relatively short (which, in turn, may require more limited refereeing). Apart from any damage this would do to many learned society revenues, we suspect that the difference in APCs across disciplines will exacerbate universities’ resource allocation problems (described above). In particular, unless universities are aware of this discrepancy, and are able to control for it in their allocations decisions, there is a danger that STEM subjects may receive larger portions of funding than others.

4.Publishers. The Finch working party included representatives from three publishers, but the report’s recommendations are not conditional on publishers accepting appropriate regulation for Gold OA prices. The significant market power amongst international publishers of academic journals such as Elsevier, Wiley and Kluwer suggests that, as demand for Gold OA increases (and, indeed, possibly becomes more inelastic as a result of the Finch/RCUK proposals), international publishers will be well-placed to increase the prices they charge for gold OA (ie the APCs). Therefore, in the absence of any credible undertaking by publishers to limit Gold OA charges, the financial costs indicated in the Finch Report may well need to be treated as a lower bound as UK institutions would find themselves hostage to increased price demands.

It would be advisable not to implement the Finch Report recommendations, and certainly not extend them to REF 2020, until and unless there is a clearer understanding of the likely effects on prices charged by international publishers.

Green access

Green access is an alternative means of providing OA to research output. Here (as envisaged by Finch), the journal allows the author to post the copy-edited version of the paper in the public domain after a specified embargo period. This avoids the need for APCs and allocation mechanisms within universities. RCUK’s current policy originally envisaged Green and Gold OA in parallel, with the former specifying an embargo period of 6–12 months (depending on discipline). In fact, AHRC and ESRC indicated a relaxation of this by specifying a 24 month embargo period for an interim period of five years. This is a welcome development and, from our investigations, closer to that envisaged by some of the top journals in our discipline (therefore reducing our international concerns). There are several worries, however.

1.Uncertainty. The AHRC and ESRC transitional plans for Green OA create a number of uncertainties. (1) While both bodies see Gold access as their long term goal, it is unclear precisely what will happen at the end of the 5-year interim period; in particular, what will the embargo period be changed to? In our discipline, the time between submission and publication of a paper in a top journal can be four or five years so this issue may impact on authors quite soon. (2) The interaction with the REF beyond the current one is unclear. HEFCE has stated that it wishes that REF to involve open access output so it is important to know whether its definitions here will reflect the AHRC and ESRC’s.

2.Wider definitions of Green access. The above definition of Green access is relatively narrow and still requires publishers to give up their copyright once the embargo period is reached. This may be costly to them and imposes some cost on authors to ensure that publishers will indeed allow this. A wider definition that avoids these costs would simply require authors to place their own version of the final accepted paper in the public domain within a certain period (which could actually be shorter than the embargo period). We see this as a better alternative than the tighter policy that RCUK and the Finch Review both favour.

On balance, current policy (despite the welcome transition period now offered by AHRC and ESRC) will place unnecessary restrictions on where academics can publish while also injecting cost and uncertainty into the publication process, when there are reasonable alternative ways to achieve the desired open access result.

Alternatives

We believe there are alternative ways to achieve open access that are both faster and cheaper than current policy proposals. Indeed, the current popularity of such alternatives suggests that there is a large degree of open access to results (if not final versions of papers) in Economics.

1.Working papers. Economics has a strong tradition of circulating preliminary findinsg in Working papers. These place earlier versions of research findings in the public domain and stimulate debate at an early stage—well in advance of a paper’s final appearance. Working papers play such a central role in the discipline that most Economics Departments publish their own working paper series and a number if international databases have gained prominence. These include Repec, CEPR, NEBR and SSRN (Repec, for example, has 30,000 economists registered with it).

2.Open access repositories. Current RCUK policy requires the final version of papers (not necessarily the copy-edited version) to be placed in open access repositories (typically operated by universities). Such practice is consistent with that elsewhere. For example, Harvard and MIT both operate very successful open access repositories, based on self-archiving by academics along the lines of the wider definition of Green access mentioned above. Harvard’s goal (for example) is clearly consistent with that in the Finch Report and RCUK policy, and a detailed institutional policy (itself available to the public) underlies its strategy. Thus, Steven E. Hyman (Provost of Harvard) has said: “The goal of university research is the creation, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge. At Harvard, where so much of our research is of global significance, we have an essential responsibility to distribute the fruits of our scholarship as widely as possible.” We feel that open access repositories offer a fast, cheap way to achieve open access and that the UK is currently a leader in this practice, in a manner that is consistent with some of the best international practice. This position could be strengthened by, for example, establishing in the UK the first national open access repository.

Summary

We support the goal of making research widely and freely available. Our own discipline has a long tradition of do precisely this, and the UK is developing institutional repositories that are in line with the best practice elsewhere. We are concerned that any move to Gold OA would damage the international position if UK Economics, harm our ability to provide important support to our academic constituency, and increase the costs or resource allocation with universities. We welcome RCUK’s interim relaxation of its policy towards Green OA but, even here, we feel that wider definitions of this approach would be helpful, and consistent with the policy’s aims. Finally, we note that Economics already operates a number of open access initiatives which help place early research findings and ideas in the public domain at a much earlier stage than peer reviewed journals ultimately do. When coupled with the opportunity to expand OA repositories in the UK, we can see relatively low-cost ways to develop open access in the UK (and in our discipline). Against, these, we believe that there is a danger of high cost and limited marginal gain from a higher paced policy and we would encourage a period of evidence gathering to inform further steps.

14 February 2013