Open Access and History
A Presentation to the History Faculty
University of Cambridge
December 4th 2014
Richard Fisher
Managing Director, Academic Publishing, CUP
Fellow and Former Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society
Today’s Agenda
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What is Open Access?
Types of Open Access
Open Access for Journals
Open Access for Books
Open Access and Careers
Licensing and Intellectual Property
Open Access and Cambridge University
International Dynamics
Is History Different?
Questions (and perhaps some Answers…)
What is open access?
‘…digital, online, free of
charge (to readers), and free
of most copyright and
licensing restrictions’
Peter Suber (Harvard University)
What is open access? PS
• Which seems simple enough, but in fact Open Access
remains a hugely contested topic, in which a relatively
small number of scholars, librarians, publishers,
funders and others are massively, sometimes
vituperatively engaged
• Funder protocols described as ‘Open Access’ may be
closer to ‘Public Access’, and secondary licensing or reuse issues are coming to assume huge importance
• This reflects the origins and developmental emphasis
of OA in the STEM subjects, especially biomedical
sciences: 95% of OA was not designed with the needs
of e.g. historians in mind…
Types of Open Access (1)
• Gold Open Access
• In this model, the Version of Record is made
immediately available, and an Article Processing
Charge (APC) or Book equivalent is paid by the author
(with appropriate institutional or grant support) to
make this possible: the article/book is free to the
reader
• This model was effectively endorsed by The Finch
Committee, and is that of e.g. The Wellcome Trust: it
innately fits better within the funding structures of
STEM subjects, than within H&SS disciplines (where
there may be no funding available)
Types of Open Access (2)
• Green Open Access
• In this model, articles to be published in
subscription (paywall) journals are loaded on
to open institutional or publisher or
disciplinary repositories, sometimes after an
appropriate embargo period
Some issues arising (1): Funders
• Not all funder policies are the same
• HEFCE focus on the Author Accepted Manuscript
• RCUK (e.g, AHRC, ESRC) focus on the Version of
Record
• Wellcome and RCUK are content that the V of R
of an article be available on a publisher’s own
website, whilst HEFCE requires the AAM to be
available on a website not controlled by the
publisher (e.g. an institutional respository)
Some issues arising (2): Embargo
Periods
• Have been a major issue for historians and
history journals (e.g, Past and Present, EHR,
HJ, EcHR): what is being embargoed (the V of
R or the AAM?), and is an embargo period of
12, 24, 36 months desirable/acceptable?
• The current situation about what is
acceptable, and which journals are compliant,
is, to put it mildly, confused…
Open Access for Books (1)
• Books remain central to historical scholarship
• Extended research outputs can be published
along a continuum from specialised
monographs to major public-impact works of
general scholarship
• Monograph outputs have doubled in the UK
over the past decade, but the circulation of
those monographs has been in long-term
decline
Open Access for Books (2)
• Will an Open Access proposition secure the future of
(especially) specialised monographs, and enable their
more effective distribution?
• Various initiatives in train, e.g. Open Book, Knowledge
Unlatched
• These presuppose that online delivery is the primary
form of dissemination, and not print, even though the
latter remains (c80%) at present the majoritarian
author and reader preference
• This fundamental needs to change for OA monographic
models to gain increased traction, and the transition is
occurring, but slowly
Open Access and Careers
• New generations of digital-born scholars may
have different preferences, but their
publication choices remain (at present) largely
shaped by the tenure and career preference
choices of older colleagues in positions of
authority
• This tension highlights the core credentialist
function of monographic publication within
the historical discipline
Licensing and Intellectual Property
• A massive subject in itself, and for many
historians and humanists one of the biggest
problems that Open Access presents
• Creative Commons have worked within US
copyright law to generate six core licenses,
ranging from
• CC BY: the ‘attribution’ licence, and the most
liberal to
• CC BY-NC-ND (attribution but no commercial or
derivative usage)
Licensing and Intellectual Property (2)
• NB There is no global copyright law: US and
English and European traditions all have
significant differences (e.g. the difference
between ‘fair use’ and ‘fair dealing’)
• Historians have been very worried about
plagiarism and other forms of undesirable
derivation
• Fundamentally, the research output of historians
IS the core output: in much of STEM this is not
the case
Open Access and Cambridge University (1)
• OA implementation is posing a huge challenge for all Universities,
especially the research-intensive ones like Cambridge, and is posing
(in the short term, anyway) major financial questions: at one time it
was feared that the University would not be able to afford future
REF submissions
• The complex Oxbridge structure of departments and colleges has
compounded an already difficult transition, but new officers are
now in post to support scholars in making appropriate REFcompliant publication choices (itself seen by some as a constraint
upon academic freedom)
• The University has a new Head of Scholarly Communication, based
in the UL, Dr Danny Kingsley (ex-ANU)
Open Access and Cambridge University (2)
• The University’s own Open Access website
provides general advice on all of these issues,
and most importantly, guidance as to how
best to ensure the compliance of a specific
completed publication output
• https://www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk/
The Royal Historical Society and OA
• Cambridge historians may, however, find this
central University advice only partial and
limited: they should consult the RHS website
for further discipline-specific information
• http://royalhistsoc.org/information-historiansopen-access-next-ref/
International Dynamics
• Most British historical scholarship is exported, and
many British historians choose to publish in non-UK
based historical outlets, and not always in the English
language
• Some of these international vehicles are not even
available on-line, let alone in OA or REF-compliant
forms: this WILL impose a constraint upon the
publication choices of some UK-based historians
• This has been amongst the biggest concerns of
historians actively engaging with OA issues, especially
in ancient and medieval history (where the practice is
arguably most widespread)
Is History Different (1) ?
• History remains the premier discipline in part and precisely
BECAUSE it encourages the widest diversity of outputs
• Serious historical research can have a popular appeal
unmatched by any other subject, and there are more
tenured historians with literary agents than in any other
discipline (notably, of course, at Cambridge…)
• This very extended continuum of publication does not
always sit easily with some core OA tenets, and whilst both
agent supreme Andrew Wylie and HEFCE/RCUK are
interested in the widest possible distribution of historical
knowledge, they draw very different conclusions from that
imperative…
Is History Different (2) ?
• We need to maintain a plurality of outputs and
possibilities, recognising that Open Access is both
hugely liberating, in its disseminational
possibilities, but also (and this may be only a
temporary state of affairs) a constriction upon
some cherished academic freedoms of being able
to choose in what, how and with whom to
publish
• Still, as we know from Pieter Geyl, History (and
especially History and Open Access) is an
argument without end…