The Power of Publishing: A review of Open Access Publishing

Kate
Kate
Sep 3, 2018 · 10 min read
http://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display/?id=20502

So, whilst working out what to write my OKHE2 about, I thought I had hit the jackpot when the above landed on Staffnet at the University of Manchester. Excellent, I thought, I can write about this and how the University is helping to develop Open Access knowledge through open publication. Of course it is, and I’ll delve deeper into the details of the above, but first let’s look at open access publishing more generally.

A disclaimer to start with: as a non-academic, I have a vague idea about the requirements of publishing research, mostly from discussions with colleagues both in our OKHE lectures and further a field in the University. The subject interests me for a few reasons;

  • The money involved — publishing is big business (Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley give some idea about the amounts concerned). Any area with this much cash flow should be investigated to see how that profit is achieved.
  • It’s a new topic to me — I find some things outside my day-to-day job fascinating, and this is one of them!
  • The implications on the wider HE sector, and wider society — university research has huge implications for the rest of the world, whether it’s medical advances, new ways of harnessing energy, computing advances or advances in understanding of ages gone by, research makes a difference in our lives. Despite not being involved in research day-to-day, I am very aware of the impact research (and specifically REF) has on the sector.

Fortunately for me there are those who have previously written eloquently on the subject of academic publishing. In Paul Shore’s OKHE1 piece he writes about the importance of prestige in academic publishing. Many academics now refer to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) when talking about the requirements for publication of their work. Looking into this though, the REF criteria house a certain juxtaposition;

three distinct elements are assessed: the quality of outputs (e.g. publications, performances, and exhibitions), their impact beyond academia, and the environment that supports research.

The third area surrounding environment is associated with the debate but not directly in this instance so we’ll put that to one side. The outputs and impact are what intrigues me. Quality of output is assessed partly on the level of the journals that research is published in. As Paul mentions;

The stakes are high, if the numbers aren’t right then there’s no funding, these days that means no research, no promotion and no job. It’s not surprising then that publishing in prestigious journals with high impact factors is the Holy Grail for many academics and their institutions.

The REF outputs are measured on quality of research. One method of assessing this is a judgement of which journals publish better quality, peer-reviewed research. There are certain journals therefore that academics will target to ensure that their research is considered excellent or world-leading.

The REF is also designed to measure the impact beyond academia. Overall the REF results in 2014 praised the impact of research with “44% of impacts judged outstanding” which they said

Reflect[s] universities’ productive engagements with a very wide range of public, private and third sector organisations, and engagement directly with the public

This still does leave a considerable amount of information will in the hands of very few. I think I often take for granted the privileged position I am in. Working for a University I have access to a vast number of resources (whether I want them or not). I started working for the University within 6-months of graduating from it, therefore for over a third of my life I have had free access to “one of the best-resourced academic libraries in the country

With more than four million printed books and manuscripts, over 41,000 electronic journals and 500,000 electronic books, as well as several hundred databases

When in such a privileged position, it’s easy to forget sometimes that not everyone in academia, let alone those outside, have access to such a rarefied resource. Impact beyond academia for REF is judged to a large extent by Research Users. In the area I work in (healthcare science programmes) it’s clear to see how the research carried out by our students’ impacts beyond academia. Our students carry out research in NHS Trusts and these Trusts (and the wider NHS) benefit from their findings. These will include around 50 doctoral level projects a year from the 2018/19 academic year which will hopefully have a positive impact on the wider community.

More generally though, even in healthcare where there is a direct interest for many of the public, research is not easily shared with service users. Elsevier’s director of scholarly communications, William Gunn was recently reported to have had a ‘Twitter spat’ with someone arguing for easier access of the latest research for those with rare diseases.

Elsevier is a major academic publisher and controls many of the top journals especially for scientific and medical subjects. They are also at the centre of an ongoing battle in the European Union (EU) and elsewhere over open access publishing.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2018/jun/29/elsevier-are-corrupting-open-science-in-europe https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/universities-in-germany-and-sweden-lose-access-to-elsevier-journals--64522 https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sweden-cancels-elsevier-contract-open-access-dispute-spreads#survey-answer https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05191-0

The European Commission (EC) is aiming to ensure all scientific publishing is open access by 2020. Any research carried out with a Horizon 2020 grant is already required to be available by open access (as many other research bodies stipulate, e.g. Wellcome, NIHR). With the EC pushing for open access, universities within the EU are paying to ensure that certain articles submitted are available through open access (green open access model). This allows the universities to publish in high impact journals but still meet the requirements of the EC.

The difficulty many have had is that the costs of green open access through publishers such as Elsevier are astronomical. Research, peer review, open access charges and subscription charges are to a greater or lesser extent all paid for by universities. For many, this cost has proved too great and they have refused to renew Elsevier subscriptions, instead opting to fund open access through other publishers.

The EC have now launched an Open Access Monitor to better understand the progress of open access in Europe, confusingly for some, the role of the Monitor is sub-contracted to Elsevier. As this article in The Guardian shows, concerns centre around the belief that Elsevier has previously done all it can to slow down the progress of open access. The Open Access Monitor is set to run to the end of 2019 and it will be interesting to see what recommendations Elsevier has for the EC on the future of open access.

Elsevier is keen to show that they promote open access, on their website they list numerous ways that they contribute to the open dissemination of research. Investigating their open access journals purely from a statistical point of view they maybe shouldn’t get over-excited about the amount they publish openly — a search on 29th August 2018 found 369 Open Journals compared with 2,975 total Journals (an ‘open’ return of just 12.40%).

A lot of Elsevier journals also have embargo periods where even if an open access fee has been paid for an article, the publisher will withhold it for the embargo period. Elsevier clearly list their embargo periods, with 2,426 journals on the list and an average embargo period across all the journals of over 14 months (despite 489 having no embargo period) it’s clear to see why many say current open access practices do not go far enough, and are concerned about Elsevier’s involvement with the EC project.

Data obtained from https://www.elsevier.com/__data/promis_misc/external-embargo-list.pdf 2nd September 2018

Returning to the REF criteria, judgement of impact beyond academia in some areas is less obvious. There is a clear need for scientific and medical studies to be available and a lot of work has been done to ensure access is gained in these areas (e.g. funding bodies providing additional funding to ensure research is published through open access). It’s possible that this proliferation in some areas is why Manchester University Press focussed its digital repositories in Manchester Hive on Humanities and Social Sciences. That way they do not interfere with other efforts, and can still use the repository as evidence of their championing open access. As a previous Humanities and Social Sciences student I was excited to see this focus and eager to share the open website with former classmates who have moved out of academia but still hold an interest in the area.

On visiting https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/ (accessed on 17th August), I was amazed to see 2,010 articles waiting to be read with no institutional login required. I thought I would have a look at https://www.manchesterhive.com/ as well though to see what (if any) ‘privilege’ I would still get…

*Accessed 17th August 2018

Part of me was not surprised to see that the 2,010 articles make up only 12.98% (still better than Elsevier’s 12.40%) of the articles overall available on Manchester Hive, however I was still a little disappointed. I was interested as well in the subject variation and wondered whether this was down to departmental policies around the University — perhaps an area for further study.

Archaeology and Heritage texts have the third highest percentage of open articles. Talking with a Professor from King’s College London who specialises in the area, she explained that journals do not tend to jump at the opportunity of publishing translated ancient texts. Instead, for many years she has worked with her University to publish texts online under Creative Commons licenses to further the field generally through shared resources. Her texts (for example http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/ala2004/) are maintained by her Universities digital lab. Like the University of Manchester, King’s achieved a very high REF rating in 2014 (the Universities were judged to have 83% and 84% world leading or internationally excellent research respectively). King’s therefore clearly think this method of dissemination of research is suitable for a Russell Group institution.

So it seems that multiple universities are endeavouring to develop their open published resources. It might not work for all subjects, but REF are also pushing for open access resources to play a bigger role in their assessment of research. In 2017 a review was carried out to look at the successes of the latest round of REF and further developments. There was mixed responses to the proposal of “awarding additional credit to units for open access”;

- Over 60 per cent of responses to the proposal to award additional credit to units for open access disagreed with the suggestion.

- In particular, the proposal was opposed by representative bodies, subject associations and learned bodies.

- Over one-third of respondents who were opposed to the proposal stated that it would have disproportionate effects on HEIs depending on their size and resources.

- It was suggested that some publishers are disinclined to allow open access, and that additional credit could discourage international publishing.

Some comments related to the type of open access pursued, suggesting a differentiation between gold and green, with less additional credit for those using green open access. It was also suggested that universities should received credit for open access policies, rather than individual papers. This would therefore be recorded at institution level rather than subject level. Some highlighted concerns in particular subjects, for example that most Modern Foreign Languages research is published overseas which might impact the ability to utilise open access.

Regardless of the consultation responses though, the decision has been made to go ahead with the open access policy for the next REF in 2021, comparison of REF scores will inevitably show which universities and subjects are able to engage with open access.


So where does this leave both the University and myself in terms of open access? The University Library have a whole host of resources and some funding designed to widen open access which is excellent to see. I highly doubt though that they will be following the example of EU universities and end their subscription to Elsevier journals any time soon. It will be interesting to see though whether there is any change to the research output of those universities.

I tried to get through a post without mentioning it but Brexit may yet have some influence over the development of open access in the UK. The EC is pushing the sector (too hard?) to ensure open access publishing in a very short time-frame. Universities don’t often move at that pace and I would be amazed if their 2020 goals are reached. The development of UK policies (e.g. through REF) will focus open access for now, but without additional EU pressure will the UK sustain these policies?

For me, the deeper I go into the subject the more certain I am that open access publishing is the main form of open access I would like to see the HE sector adopt. To me it seems that a large amount of open access research would do more for the world than open access educational resources etc. However, it also seems that the HE sector are not the primary ‘bad guy’ in this story. The power seems to remain with the publishers, but as long as the universities continue to shower them with income (and extraordinary profits), will anything change?

Kate

Written by

Kate

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade