Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES)

1. The University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES) was established in 1969 and has well over 1,000 members. UACES is a part-owner of the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS).1

2. This submission is to inform the Committee of the benefits to academia derived from income from publications. ie how “profit” is used to further stimulate academic output via academic associations.

3. In our last financial year,2 the Journal generated an income for UACES of £208,386. This was 67% of our total income.

4. The income from the journal is used to support a variety of activities including the publication of the Journal of Contemporary European Research (JCER).3 The JCER is a true open-access journal which we established in 2005, well before the current debate on open access. The JCER does not generate any income—there are no fees for authors and no subscriptions for readers. The JCER is important because it provides an opportunity for early career researchers to get their work published in a peer-reviewed Journal. We would like to develop the Journal further, by providing opportunities for younger academics to become involved in every stage of the editorial process.

5. The JCMS also allows UACES to:

Maintain an open access blog-hosting platform,4 an increasingly important tool for disseminating ideas and research-in progress.

Provide an online database of experts.5

Provide travel bursaries for post-graduate students to undertake field research.

Run a seminar series in Brussels whereby academics can present their research-in-progress to policy-makers.

Organise training seminars and a research conference for postgraduate students.

Deliver an affordable annual research conference for members at which circa 300 conference papers are delivered.

Support a variety of workshops and collaborative research networks throughout the year.

6. European Studies is an interdisciplinary subject area. Whilst this can lead to some very important collaborations, it also means that for most of our membership, UACES is their “second” association behind politics, IR, law etc. If we were to increase membership subscriptions significantly, in response to declining income from the JCMS, we would quite simply lose members. We have only been able to maintain our membership in the current economic climate by freezing membership subscriptions. In short, we are less robust than other disciplines.

7. The Journal income provides UACES with financial stability. This is critical when applying for grant funding6 for further projects, as it enables us to maintain an office with dedicated staff—it gives us demonstrable capacity for delivering the financial and administrative aspects of any project. Importantly, it also provides the association with continuity.

8. UACES is the UK member of a larger network, the European Community Studies Association (ECSA)7—there is an ECSA in every European country. In stark contrast to UACES however, these other ECSAs are largely inactive, because they do not have the financial stability which our Journal provides us with. In other words, without the JCMS, our association would not be in the position it is today and would not be able to support the range of activities for our members, some of which were mentioned above.

9. UACES supports the principle of open access; we simply ask the Committee to recognise that implementation may lead to unintended negative consequences and less opportunities for early career academics.

7 February 2013