how and where can you publish your hss research?

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Open Access in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Louise Skelding

Senior Publishing Editor, SAGE


What is Open Access?

● Green;

● Delayed Open Access;

● Gold;

● Gratis or Libre?;

● Licences: CC-BY-WTF?


Open Access movement

● Rapid growth of the internet and internet access;

● Print journals are becoming obsolete;

● Internet provides new ways of communicating research (and not just through peer-reviewed publication);

● Rising cost of journals;

● Tax payers should be able to access results of government-funded research.


Moving faster toward OA

● “Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist.” (August 2011);

● Cost of Knowledge (January 2012);

● Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (June 2012);

● Announcements from RCUK, HEFCE, European Commission (July 2012).


RCUK● Accessibility to publicly-funded research;

Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.

● Rigorous quality assurance;Published research outputs must be subject to rigorous quality assurance, through effective peer review mechanisms.

● Efficient and cost-effective access mechanisms;

● Long-term preservation and accessibility of outputs.


RCUK compliance

● Gold with CC-BYOr if the publisher will not offer Gold CC-BY then they must offer:

● Green (at least post print) with a maximum embargo period of 12 months (6 for STM journals), and CC-BY-NC.


Challenges

For institutions and libraries

● Who will administer OA grants?;

● What about non-UK based journals?

For authors and journals

● A lot of research undertaken in HSS doesn’t come with funding grants;

● Will author-pays OA curtail academic freedom?;

● What about independent researchers and those from poorer institutions?


Pure Open Access journals in HSS

Directory of Open Access Journals: www.doaj.org


But beware!

“Potential, possible or probable predatory OA publishers”: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/


Hybrid Open Access

● Gold open access within a traditional subscription-based journal e.g.

SAGE Choice; Wiley OnlineOpen; Springer Open Choice; Taylor & Francis Open Select;


The future? (I)

What about current model is worth preserving?

• Revenue – few journals operate entirely on subs cash; few would exist without it;

• Publishers undertake digital preservation;

• Neutral in regards to disciplines/funding levels, funders and universities;

• Ordering through pre-publication sifting and journal branding, backed up by hosting/search infrastructure;

• Day to day work and investment in publishing technologies done by third party, not academics or university;

• No barriers to entry for authors.


The future (II)

Alternatives

• New university presses?

• Self-organisation (Open Journals Systems)

• Super-repositories (publish then sift – places burden on reader)


The future (III)

● Way forward:

• Depends on collective action; HSS needs to develop position and voice

• Greater engagement from key UK players – note STM focus of RCUK, government

• Integrate with international developments – what happens in EU, US, etc

• All parties likely to undergo change:• Societies weaned off journal revenue• Leaner publishers (service providers)• Journals will die/new OA journals will start up• Lengthy transition likely for HSS


That’s all folks!

Email any tricky questions to:

Louise Skelding

[email protected]

how and where can you publish your hss research?

Documents

pure open access journals

internet access print

stm journals

green delayed open access

dienew oa journals

nonuk based journals

gold cc

cost of journals tax