Open Access - what, monographs too?

Concluding our series of Open Access Week posts, Kate Petherbridge muses on the increasing importance of open access monographs and some of the different publishing models emerging... 

We are used to the idea that many funders and universities want academics to publish articles Open Access (OA). However, dismay met the push to make monographs available OA as well. In 2016, HEFCE (as it then was) flagged the expected expansion of OA requirements to monographs in the third Research Excellence Framework (REF). When this was discussed during the University Press Redux in February 2018 there was great debate about whether this is realistic - or even desirable. So what are the concerns and are they valid? What would be the benefits of OA monographs?

What is Open Access?

The International Open Access Week website describes OA as “the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need”. In order to achieve the second aspect, content needs to be licenced to enable reuse. Commonly, this means that content is published under Creative Commons Licences, which allow authors to retain the rights to their work and to set the conditions around which others can copy, distribute, and reuse that work.

Why is it important? 

OA is important for a number of reasons. The obvious ones include meeting REF requirements and funding conditions. OA content tends to be viewed more than content that needs to be paid for, and this often results in higher citation rates. The increased visibility helps build your academic reputation. OA brings research to new audiences, inside and outside academia, and this is likely to increase public engagement. Increasing the public’s perception of the relevance of HE is important in the current climate, and demonstrating this has been difficult when the research done is closed and inaccessibly to so many. It also brings the maximum value from research by allowing it to be reused as a building block in ongoing conversations and research.

When is Open Access not really Open Access? 

To start with, let's look at OA models for article publishing. These are now widely accepted (though it’s worth remembering the concerns when this discussed began). The Green OA model seems most common. Academics deposit a pre-publication version of their accepted article manuscript in either an institutional or subject repository. They then publish their article, often in a traditional journal. After an embargo period, set by the publisher but (hopefully!) in line with the funder’s criteria, the repository version can be accessed for free. So while the published article may still sit within a subscription journal, a free version is available to everyone once the embargo period ends.

All good, right? Well, yes and no. The repository version is not the same as the published article (usually considered the “version of record”). Academics can find this frustrating.  The arguably more accessible repository version (embargo period aside) sometimes lacks key formatting, may not look as professional, and will lack citation-relevant structure (page numbers etc.). Having multiple versions can also mean it’s harder to measure impact and combine metrics etc. Repository versions can also fall under publisher copyright, preventing them being shared and reused freely. This doesn’t really embrace the full spirit of OA (even if it does tick all the boxes from a funder perspective).

Hybrid journals publish some articles free-to-access while others remain behind subscription paywalls. Again, while this offers free access to the OA articles, the copyright remains with the publisher so limiting sharing and reuse. Many funders are now considering if hybrid journals really do meet their OA criteria.

Gold OA, where an article is published in a full OA journal, with no issues around different versions, paywalls or embargo periods, and where the content is published under a licence that allows sharing and reuse, delivers both the free access and reuse aspects of OA.

Image Open books by Latemplanza available under
CC-BY-SA 4.0 at Wikimedia Commons

So... back to monographs

That was relevant. Really! Having a clear understanding of how OA monographs models could work in practice will save time if we hope to include monographs in the third REF.

A Green OA monograph model sees the book sold for a period before becoming free to access online. While being sold it would presumably be “rights reserved” but could flip to a more liberal licence once it becomes OA. This is almost equivalent to the article embargo period. Some publishers already use this model, or something very similar. It doesn’t replicate the version/formatting issues we see with Green OA article publishing, but does create other questions.

Is it fair to the book’s audience that one day they have to pay for something that becomes free the next? Publishers would need to declare the “becomes free” date to prevent backlash. This could change customer behaviour, with readers waiting till the book was free to access it. In the current context of ever-increasing pressure on library budgets, it’s hard to justify buying access to research that will become free for everyone after 12 months. This could then delay the impact of the research by a year, which would frustrate authors and funders keen to see research embraced by the academic community.

There is also question of sustainability. Green OA for articles doesn’t require funding of publishing charges. The publisher covers the costs out of profit made from journal subscriptions, as normal, while the author simply deposits e.g. a PDF of the pre-published manuscript in a repository. For monographs publication costs will apply. These are unlikely to be covered by e.g. a single year of sales. If OA publishing becomes widespread, how will publishers fund these monographs unless passing costs on to funders/institutions? If that happened, wouldn’t this be the Gold model with a delay?

Gold OA monographs

Gold OA for monographs would see instant free access to the full published version with maximum potential impact through widest possible dissemination from initial release. A recent White Rose University Press (WRUP) publication, Star Carr, reached nearly 1000 downloads in its first week of release and has now reached well over 4000 downloads after 6 months. Published under liberal licences, so the author retains ownership of their work and to enable sharing and reuse, this would seem to be the obvious solution. So what is the problem? 

Who pays?

It’s a thorny issue. Gold OA is often called “author pays”- though in reality funding should come from funding bodies, institutions, societies rather from the author themselves. It might be more accurate to call it a “funding required” model. This is likely to be true of any sustainable OA monograph model if we are honest so it’s probably best to explore how to handle it. In Plan S, Science Europe’s cOAlition S addresses fees and funding (who should pay, potential capping). Institutions need to consider the reason for the research they support. Surely, releasing the knowledge gained can only help in engaging with the public, with outreach, with student recruitment etc. as we showcase what we do in HE and why this is so important. Shouldn’t that be part of a business model and so worth investment?

How can we ensure quality?

There is a suspicion, hopefully dwindling, that OA content is of a lesser quality. This may come from misunderstanding “author pays”- they pay and OA publishers will publish anything. This is not the case, and it should be noted that “vanity publishing” is neither new nor linked exclusively to OA. As with any publisher, academics should consider the publisher’s quality control process. How are works commissioned? Is there rigorous Peer Review? What will the quality of the published output be? Publishers, OA or not, should be able to answer such questions. WRUP, for example, details its Editorial Board, commissioning and peer review process on it’s website, and authors can explore for themselves (freely!) the quality of the digital publications.

What about third party content?

It’s assumed to be difficult to use third party content in OA publishing. (Which is ironic, as if everyone published content OA, there would be no barriers). This doesn’t have to be a problem. Most right holders don’t have policies in place for use of their content in OA publications, though a growing number do, and WRUP has found that most are very reasonable when the OA model is explained. Third party content can be licenced separately from the main volume e.g. in an image caption- very much as you might see in a traditional publication. Often the issue for a rights holder can be around the free to access digital version of their content. This is little different in terms of risk to putting the image on their website, if the same rights statement is applied. Working through this can put the rights holder’s concerns to rest. Authors can also search content licenced for reuse (a growing amount is), especially where something is illustrative only rather than a specific image being required.
 

Isn’t OA complicated? Who can help?

Like anything new, OA can seem complicated. There are lots of people around that can help. Most institutions have the equivalent of York’s Research Support Team: email them at lib-research-support@york.ac.uk. Open Access is just one of the many areas they can advise on. York, Leeds and Sheffield Universities also support a “friendly” OA University Press in WRUP (email universitypress@whiterose.ac.uk) to offer help and answer any general questions about OA publishing, or to discuss potential proposals for journals or monographs.

Support is out there and the appetite for OA is growing, as is the pool of scholarly OA content. Engaging with the drive to include monographs in this would seem the next logical step.


As White Rose Libraries Executive Manager, Kate Petherbridge works across the university libraries of Leeds, Sheffield and York, leading and facilitating their areas of collaboration. These are varied, and include shared repository services, shared collection management work and, most recently, White Rose University Press.

Writing in the library

This is a guest post from Dave Beer, Reader in Sociology, reblogged from his own Medium page with permission. All the images are by Dave too.

I’m working on a book at the moment. It’s largely drafted and I’m trying to work it into shape. I always find it a bit of a slog when I’m having to read my own words back, again and again. I keep the writing and editing stages very seperate, which means that I’m often working with an extremely rough draft that need lots of work over several months. It’s a slow process. This is when I tend to turn to the library. When it comes to the trickier bits of writing and editing — whether it’s books, chapters or articles I’m working on — I’ve found that relocating to the library can help a little. The slog is the same, but being surrounded by books seems to give the work a little bit of an encouraging nudge.

The library is a bit of a bubble. I use it more in the gaps between terms. In the ebb and flow of the academic year — described beautifully in Les Back’s book Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters — the library space is most welcoming at the time when my own diary is at it’s thinnest. I’m in the library now, writing this short piece as a way of getting warmed up for a few hours of editing. The library space just seems to invite thinking and writing. Wifi connects me into the usual networks, but the space seems somehow to provide a refuge from the distractions and endless flows of information that call for our attention. It frowns on anything too fivilous; Twitter mentions and the like. The attention economy still calls to us through our devices, but somehow the quiet contemplation of the library space suggsts to us that we should be ignoring it and directing our attention elswhere.

In terms of our connectivity, the spaces of the library are no different to anywhere else. They just feel different. Part of the this is the kind of affective properties that are designed into the spaces — they are put together to make you feel a certain way. But the bigger presence is that of the books. Even if we are not taking them off the shelves, the books set the tone for the space. Their physical presence, looming down from the shelves, reminds you of the history of knowledge. This is partly liberating because, as when looking at pictures of outer space, I’m reminded of the meagreness of what I am contributing. The enormity of knowledge is there on display in the library. This frees me up becuase of the perspective it gives to the writing.

I think though the tone of the library is also a product of how evocative the books are. A little while ago I wrote a short piece about the properties of old books. That short piece used both Sherry Turkle’s notion of ‘evocative objects’ and Walte Benjamin’s account of the importance of the materiality of books to reflect on why working with old books is so interesting. Their yellowed pages suggest something of their past and istantly evoke a history of use — a material biography. When we sit amonst them rows of them we are placed within a mass of those historcial traces. The presence of shelves full of old books has a collective effect. The impact of evocative objects is multiplied when they are displayed in concert. The library space is where these evocative obejcts intersect and their dusty dogeared and sun-lightened spines tell stories of accumulating knowledge. The aura of these obejcts is powerful in itself — we need not always be working from these books to feel a sense of the weight of knowledge and the history of thinking that they evoke.

Writing spaces matter. The environment we write in inevitably shapes the work (as an example, I previously I wrote this short piece on the book I wrote whilst sitting in a fold up chair and leaning on a towel box). The liberating enormity and evocative presence of the library’s books make it a place to think and work that, I think, adds some energy and a bit of fizz to what I’m doing. It’s a space I tend to turn to when I need a bit of a push to keep writing or to keep editing. Sometimes I fetch those books come down from the shelves to inform what I’m doing, but often they sit there suggesting to me to think more, to be a bit freer and to get on with it.

Creating the Story

In the second of his two blog posts regarding the IPUP internship, Alex Jubb tells us more about Clement Attlee's Indian Books.

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There is certainly an air of mystery surrounding Clement Attlee's relationship with the University of York. The presence of books donated by Attlee reflects two major questions; why did he have these books in the first place? And secondly, how have they ended up in the University's collection? The internship, brought about by the seventieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, has contributed to bringing both Attlee's involvement in the early history of the University to the surface, in addition to the wider knowledge of the accessions book; a source rarely known about outside of the Rare Books Department within the University.

Attlee's interest in Indian and Pakistani affairs was recognised by a great number of Indian authors. He had been a member of a number of influential commissions, including the Indian Statutory Commission between 1928 and 1934, and later became the expert on India within the Labour Party. During the Second World War Attlee was placed in charge of Indian Affairs, setting up the Cripps Mission in 1942 in an attempt to bring all the various factions within India together. As a result of this wealth of experience, Attlee played a crucial role in ultimately bringing about the independence of both states. It soon became obvious through many of the inscriptions in works personally donated by Attlee to the University that the ex-Prime Minister was a greatly admired, clearly knowledgeable individual who was seen as a man who could provide patronage to works on the subject of India and Pakistan. Authors such as Bhagavan Das,  MM Aslan Khan, and S Rawachaudra Rau, in addition to organisations such as the Anglo-Indian Association based in London, made hand-written notes to Attlee himself within many of the works. Das, in his 1934 work Ancient versus Modern “Scientific Socialism”, wrote to Attlee to ask for a review of the aforementioned work. This can be seen in the image below;

The inscription in Ancient Versus Modern "Scientific Socialism'"by Bhagavan Das.

In Rawachaudra Rau's case he forwarded on to Attlee his late father's 1912 work, K Srinivasu-Rau's The Crisis in India, stating that; 'For favour of noble acceptance by Major C. R. Attlee MP this work is presented in fulsome loyalty and devotion' (see the image below). This could be evidence for the respect for Attlee from authors of Indian affairs. Moreover, whilst the Anglo-Indian Association donated a work to Attlee from their offices in London, Attlee received many works from the Indian sub-continent itself. For example, Aslan Khan's analytical work 'Safeguards in the New Indian Bill' arrived on Attlee's desk all the way from Lahore.

The inscription in The Crisis in India by K Srinivasa Rau

The second question is clearly; how have these works ended up in the University's collections? The University had sent out a call to institutions and individuals across the country and as a result there were a series of generous donations of books between 1961 and 1963. During these years, the University had been announced but was not officially open until 1963. The founding of the University of York and other universities of the same period,  was a definite factor in receiving these donations. Socialist and Labour politicians such as Attlee appreciated and valued new universities as they provided education for a greatly increased number of potential students; 'education for all' being a key feature in the vocabulary of the majority of left-leaning politicians.

However, it is unclear what were the other driving forces behind the donation of these works. John Bew, the author of the most recent biography of Attlee, assumes that one possibility is that Violet Attlee, Clement’s wife, donated these books as the family was moving to a smaller home with less space for a vast library. The dates in which these works were logged in the accessions book all fell in August of 1962; Violet Attlee passed away in 1964, and Clement Attlee died in 1967. He was increasingly frail as the 1960s wore on, but in 1962 he did give two speeches in the House of Lords; he was very much still capable of enacting his political beliefs both in and out of Westminster, but was certainly in less good health than he had ever previously been. The latest possible date for these documents to have been donated would clearly be in 1962 with the logged date evidenced in the accessions book. The Attlee of the early 1960s would possibly have still been capable of donating these works, as well as also deciding which works to donate and which ones to keep within his collection. Documents that would support this theory have yet to be uncovered, and it is the accessions book that is the main piece of evidence for Attlee's contributions.

After correspondence with the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Attlee's biographers, the mystery has only grown exponentially. In the correspondence with the Bodleian, the Superintendent for the Library’s Special Collections stated that; 'in keeping, perhaps, with his [Attlee's] seemingly quiet and methodical nature, he did not routinely keep personal correspondence … the collection we [the Bodleian] have is very much a collection of governmental and official documents'. The Bodleian holds the mainstay of manuscripts relating to Attlee, so the mystery would continue.

Clement Attlee's bookplate, found in
many of the works.

What is also interesting is that the collection of mid-twentieth century Indian works have been greatly
supplemented by major gifts from the Riddy family in 2008. Felicity Riddy was an academic at the University of York between 1988 and 2007, becoming the Vice-Chancellor in 2000. She is a specialist in late-medieval English and Scottish Literature, whereas her husband John had 'made his mark as a book collector, and built up a much-admired private library on the history of British India… once the largest of its kind in private hands'. He was known to give lectures and wrote articles illuminating various aspects of Indian history. The Riddys can also be found in the very same accessions book within the Borthwick Library, having gifted even more works than Attlee did himself. This project highlighting twentieth century Indian works within the University has accompanied the continued employment and recruitment of specialists in all departments within the University; specialists in fields such as Indian and Pakistani affairs, global and transnational history, in addition to scholars of worldwide independence movements following examples of de-colonisation in the twentieth century.

There is undoubtedly a great amount of scope for more research to be done in the particular field. The accessions book holds many hidden secrets; Attlee personally donated hundreds of works, to the University of York and this placement has only served to highlight those works relating to the independence movements of both India and Pakistan. A full programme of research into the accessions book will certainly be useful to create a greater level of understanding of the history of the Morrell Library.

There are plenty of sources still to find, and plenty of manuscripts still to uncover within the University’s archives to unearth the mysteries that have arisen as a result of this internship.

The information gathered during this internship will be used to enhance catalogue records making it easier for researchers to identify Attlee donations. For more information please contact the Rare Books Librarian sarah.griffin@york.ac.uk.

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All photos by Alex Jubb.