By Anthony Cond and Jane Bunker
An abridged version of this opinion piece appears in Times Higher Ed, April 26, 2024.
In his influential Books in the Digital Age, Cambridge sociologist John B Thompson observed that ‘Academic publishing has become one of the terrains on which the logics of two different worlds—the world of publishing and the world of the academy—come together and clash, leading on occasion to tension, misunderstanding and mutual recriminations.’
He might have included an additional world: that of the policymaker.
For policy, and REF specifically, calls the tune for both scholars and publishers in a mode of national assessment in the UK that dictates, but doesn’t always reflect, academic practice. That disconnect appears most acutely in the humanities, challenged by a STEM journals orientation that repeatedly influences policy thinking around research outputs and dissemination.
Consider the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM), the post-peer review, pre-copyediting and typesetting version of a text that, under the terms proposed in the current REF consultation, must be deposited in an institutional repository after 24 months if a book is not immediately fully open access on publication. The use of the AAM is logical for STEM journals, where data rather than narrative is the primary output, and in which a few thousand words—which are relatively inexpensive to edit and typeset—form the final publication after unpaid peer review, often sitting in long-standing journal brands with established audiences.
Now consider a 100,000-word scholarly monograph, the primary research output of the humanities and, to some extent, social sciences. Scholars in history, philosophy, area studies, and the like produce original scholarship in narrative form. A book manuscript may not yet be written when its potential author approaches an acquisitions editor. In fact, the very idea for a book may have come from an editor. A good acquisitions editor not only helps shape books; she helps shape entire fields. A good editor knows who’s doing interesting work in particular subjects and ought to write a book. A good editor will help an early career researcher who has primarily written only for assessment learn how to write for an audience. Such proactive intervention may be one of the best-kept secrets in scholarly publishing. A publisher is not a service provider, not simply a means to dissemination, but a skilled professional whose talent is brought to bear with every book signed.
Whether a scholar is approached to write a book or comes to a press with an idea, first that idea must be expressed as a proposal, explaining what the book intends to accomplish, why it matters, etc. Proposals are often reviewed by multiple professionals at university presses, not just an acquisitions editor, to contribute marketing or design expertise. Again, the publisher’s labour occurs behind the scenes and is little known.
Once the proposal is accepted the author writes the manuscript, often with help and feedback from the editor even before the manuscript Is sent out for peer review. While much is made of the “gift economy,” university presses do pay these readers a modest honorarium. Readers play an essential function—their reports are a vital tool to help improve manuscripts—used thoughtfully and with care as the editor and author once again partner to craft a better draft. Lastly, the manuscript is presented at the press’s faculty editorial board meeting for final approval. These multiple layers of vetting from proposal to acceptance are resource intensive and can take a few months to several years. Presses invest significant amounts of time and smaller, still significant, amounts of money in the book manuscript that is finally put under contract, also known as the AAM.
It is clear that the cost of producing a monograph AAM, or indeed publishing a book, far outstrips the cost for a journal article. That does not, of course, stop universities paying more for an APC for a single article in a big-name science journal than they would for a research output fifteen times longer published by a university press.
The potential use of the Author Accepted Manuscript for books introduces too many unanswered questions for it to become REF policy.
The potential use of the Author Accepted Manuscript for books introduces too many unanswered questions for it to become REF policy: Do authors want an inferior version of a work that might have been years in gestation and writing to be widely available (and in any case, if you buy the compelling argument that taxpayer funded research should be free to all, isn’t it most ethical to deposit the preprint, minus all publisher labour, for something as substantial as a book)? With the longer lifespan of humanities research, and amid a sector-wide budget crisis, will librarians really continue to acquire specialist monographs on publication when the primary research might be available in less polished form just 24 months later? Given the brief window to recoup the costs involved in establishing not only an AAM but the significant costs of creating a final digital file or files, will the REF’s proposed policy disincentivise publishers signing up REF-able monographs? Will scholarly publishers instead seek authors from outside of the UK or overcommit to the ‘trade book’ option, even as the monographic foundations on which such books are built crumble?
The recently introduced UKRI open access policy addresses some of these issues by providing a funding route for gold open access, capped at £10,000 (inclusive of VAT) per book, alongside a 12-month embargo green route. Gold is perhaps the most contentious route to open access of all and the UKRI policy is no exception. Most universities recognise that UKRI’s £3.5million monograph pot is insufficient and in response, and with university eyes firmly on REF’s possible direction of travel, we have seen the beginning of institutional bifurcation.
Post-92 universities view green as the only way they can afford to comply with current and future OA policies; consequently many are pursuing it bullishly via institutional rights retention policies (IRRPs). Meanwhile, the more affluent Russell Group universities, while also implementing IRRPs, are establishing rolling OA monograph funds to top up any UKRI gold shortfall. Followed to a logical conclusion, that leaves research from the best-resourced universities (which are research intensive and potentially more likely to be in receipt of UKRI funds) openly available in final polished book form while work from less affluent institutions is initially gated access only and then eventually OA at a later date and in an unfinished state.
The risk of divergence is not limited to institutions: it may happen by subject too. Martin Eve has noted previously the risk of reaching ‘a world where all scientific work is free to read by the public, but all humanities work is prohibitively expensive’ but perhaps worse still is the scenario of a default inferior, delayed, not copyedited open access for the humanities pushing us closer to Terry Eagleton’s ‘death of universities as centres of critique.’
Responses to REF’s consultation are an opportunity to explore the potential unintended consequences of draft policy but they also bring into sharp relief current open access monograph successes and the need for greater engagement by all parties. Collective subscription pilots involving a range of university presses including those at Central European, Liverpool, Michigan and MIT, alongside more than 40 UPs collaborating with JSTOR on its ‘Path to Open’ to publish 300 OA monographs each year, require libraries to think about repurposing existing collections budgets to support a broad flipping of the default gated access model. In encouraging library agency these initiatives do not demand additional funding from an overstretched system, or encourage a two-tier division of institutions and disciplines, or risk humanities authors being short-changed, or undervalue those scholarly publishers most committed to long-form scholarship. Rather, they emphasise that while academic and publishing cultures may continue to clash in the STEM journals’ world, a collaborative approach involving all stakeholders—scholars, libraries, publishers and policymakers—is the only way to ensure a sustainable open future for the book.
Anthony Cond is Chief Executive of Liverpool University Press and President-elect of the Association of University Presses. Jane Bunker is Director of Cornell University Press and President of the Association of University Presses.