Arguments for and against Open Access tend to focus on the needs of individual academics. Samuel Moore argues instead that advocates should spend more time emphasising how Open Access might benefit discipline-specific aims to encourage ownership of the movement from the ground up. Focusing on the specific needs of disciplines will help academic communities assess which of their publishing practices are beneficial and which merely persist out of tradition.
The debate on Open Access often centres on how the publishing industry has lost sight of the wants and needs of academics. Traditional publishers are accused of taking increasingly large amounts of money out of research budgets, via library subscriptions, and barring those that cannot afford access, thereby limiting the visibility and impact of academic research. Advocates argue that with Open Access, not only can anyone read and reuse scholarly material, there is also the potential to free up billions of pounds for the global research budget. This argument has been successful, and rightly so, and publishers are now being forced to consider (or, more cynically, at least appear to consider) the needs of academics in their business models – either in the subscription/APC fees they charge or in the value they add.
However, now that the OA movement has acquired real momentum, I believe it is time to look in detail at some of the nuances: to focus not on the needs of academics, but more on the disciplines they represent. This may at first appear redundant or unnecessary, but there are real reasons why the needs of academics and the needs of disciplines can conflict. Take, for example, the current practice of not sharing the raw data behind one’s research findings. There are numerous explanations for this, but ultimately it is because a culture of competition has evolved in academia that dis-incentivises sharing. In this instance, the desire to maintain ownership of raw data and maintain a competitive edge on one’s colleagues conflicts with the potential benefits that reuse and replication affords. However, recent efforts to catalyse support for open data have emphasised the potential disciplinary benefits, rather than those for academics as individuals. This strategy should be successful because it reminds academics not to lose sight of the disciplines they represent, but it also encourages academics to continually reassess their disciplinary practices as a community.
Naturally, there are instances where practices evolve that benefit both the discipline and the academic. An excellent example of this is the arXiv e-print database: a platform for self-archiving that has ensured that the vast majority of physics research is published quickly and in an openly accessible fashion. This initiative arose out of a pre-existing, pre-internet culture in high-energy physics of sharing preprints via post to an ‘A-list’ of researchers, and the arXiv democratised this process by using the Web to distribute preprints to all who wanted access. The point here is that the arXiv was the right thing for high-energy physics at the time; it evolved from the community in order to benefit physics as a whole. It thus struck the ideal balance between community and individual needs – benefitting authors and readers by offering wide dissemination and rapid publication times, whilst democratising and speeding up the progress of physics itself.
Contrastingly, many humanities researchers have reacted angrily to RCUK’s approach of mandating Open Access, partly (or perhaps largely) because it originated externally to their disciplines, i.e., from university administrators. Such top-down approaches to change tend to be met with opposition because academics understandably feel protective of their disciplines and resistant to external influence. The problem is that it is easier to mobilise opposition to a perceived bad idea than it is to catalyse support for an equally good one. As Open Access advocates we therefore need to be using this time to stimulate discussion among the detractors and non-engagers by emphasising the benefits of open approaches to their discipline-specific aims. For example, long before mandates became central to the discussion, history as a discipline has been involved in reconstructing the notion of peer review to improve critical discourse (see Writing History in the Digital Age) and economics has relied on the quickness of working papers in light of publishing delays (see 2010 NBER paper on long journal revision processes).
Focusing on the specific needs of disciplines will encourage academic communities to assess which of their publishing practices are beneficial and which merely persist out of tradition. It will allow us to challenge the dogmatic and much abused assertion that ‘one size does not fit all’, often used as a justification for refusing to engage with anything new. This will allow for a more reasoned approach to disciplinary differences, giving academic communities a sense of ownership of their future and encouraging other more disengaged users to join the discussion. We should therefore not assess a new practice according to whether there is an appetite for it among researchers and instead try to engage communities in judging whether the practice itself contributes to the broader advancement of knowledge.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of the London School of Economics.
Samuel Moore is a PhD student at King’s College London researching the impact and trajectory of Open Access in the humanities. He is also a managing editor for the researcher-led publisher Ubiquity Press. He can be found on Twitter @samoore_
There seem to be problematic assumptions in Samuel Moore’s article, as suggested by the rhetorical construction of this article. Consider the premise:
so apparently a thing called ‘Open Access’ has arrived, via the UK government’s mandate, and some of the thereby angered humanities scholars are now “detractors and non-engagers.”
But “Open Access” isn’t something that came down from heaven, like the speed of light or scripture. It’s an at-least 20-year old body of arguments and practices, without a single or settled definition or consensus, which humanists have helped to shape, and debated, all along. RCUK interpreted this to create a particular policy, and did so in a way which observably reflects primary influences of positions from the natural and biomedical sciences, and the incumbent publishing industry.
To present those who raise objections as “detractors and non-engagers”, or as others often do, “anti-OA,” implies that those raising objections are not Open Access advocates, and their views are merely resistant or uninformed; not that they could be articulating or pointing to legitimate, alternate approaches. While you talk about “engaging” academics on this issue, actually you frame the discussion in a way that tends to marginalize and invalidate their differing views, thus disengaging.
Lastly, you say this approach will “allow us to challenge the dogmatic…assertion that ‘one size does not fit all.’” I’m not sure why a discussion of Open Access needs to or could take on the (impossible) task of generally disproving a common saying, any saying; but in any case, wouldn’t the result be to assert “one size does fit all”? Wouldn’t that be exactly the sort of maxim that would incline people to dogmatism, and failing to consider alternate views?
If I have to pick between one size fitting all, and one size not fitting all, I’m going to pick the latter; as should, I’d suggest, anyone who thinks our understanding is provisional and evolving — all scientists and scholars, for example.
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Tim McCormick
@tmccormick tjm.org Palo Alto, CA, USA
Thanks for the comments, Tim. However, I’m not particularly convinced that they pertain to my post above. A quick response:
I think I was quite careful to not warrant any ‘single or settled’ definition of Open Access in my piece. In fact, none of the three projects I mention (the arXiv, Writing History in the Digital Age and economics working papers) would meet the BOAI definition of OA – they simply illustrate how communities have embraced open approaches to their betterment. Naturally projects will evolve and may eventually be formalised into BOAI-compliant versions of OA. And whilst I support that, I’m certainly not demanding it in my article.
If one takes anything at all from my post it is indeed that one size may not fit all disciplines, but that should be the start not the end of discussion. In my experience, too often ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ is used as the latter, and so I’d like to encourage communities to go one step further and find the paths to openness that are right for them.
It is unarguable that there are detractors and non-engagers, many of whom first heard about OA through the RCUK mandate, and this article is a proposed strategy to engage them.
> I’m not particularly convinced that [the comment] pertains to my post
really, doesn’t pertain, which means not related? I think the comment engages a bit more than that, surely; and to say a comment — incidentally, the only one submitted by anybody — doesn’t pertain seems a bit, well, non-engaging. I’m at least pertaining more than the non-engaging everyone else who didn’t comment, so let’s count our blessings.
It could be said that my comment points in generally the same direction as your argument, which is “a more reasoned approach to disciplinary differences.” However, I can’t say I quite follow the argument of engaging disciplines rather than scholars:
because as a practical matter, who speaks for a discipline, and when is there a clear consensus on what what a disciplinary community is or who belongs to it? In any case, why are the interests of disciplines necessarily related to the advancement of knowledge, or other Open Access aims such creating access for all publics? For example, taking your own area of “digital humanities,” what makes up this discipline, since academics who identify usually work in other disciplines/departments such as English or History? If you consider it as a discipline, arguably its rise is partly at the expense of existing disciplines such as English or Media Studies, e.g. by shifting funding and faculty and authority away from those fields.
That aside, my main point in commenting was not so much to address your argument as your framing, and what I’d say it implicitly communicates, which isn’t necessarily the argument you believe yourself to have made. Or as I said in my 1st sentence, “assumptions..suggested by the rhetorical construction of this article.”
Now, one might think all this is hairsplitting or slightly paranoiac reading-between-the-lines, but for the benefit of any valiant readers who haven’t already decided that and moved on (thank you, the page script has registered your engagement level, a representative will be contacting you shortly!), let me suggest why this matters.
I’ve been following open access discussions for years, and as with a political analyst reading news coverage, after a while you start to you notice certain patterns and recurring terms, ways that dichotomies and assumptions are implicitly built and reinforced. As Goffman’s model of “frame analysis” suggests, implicit framing may often be as or more significant a communication than the explicit message or argument.
Applying that to the present topic, in the last two years of working on open access advocacy particularly for the humanities, I observe significant contest between multiple traditions, understandings, and advocacy orientations. In particular, there is a current closely associated with STEM fields, which emphasizes adherence to the Budapest Open Access Initiative declaration (BOAI), and advocates for use of CC-BY licensing of scholarly content and unrestricted reuse rights. Typically, this current, which I’ll call #OAlibre after Peter Suber’s terminology, asserts that only BOAI-compliant, CC-BY-based publishing can be called Open Access, as opposed to the view of Suber, Wikipedia etc which also admits a category of “gratis open access.”
In the UK context especially, disagreement with this #OAlibre advocacy has often come from outside core STEM areas, such as the humanities or, in Stevan Harnad’s case, psychology/cognitive science. #OAlibre advocates frequently represent (I would say, try to marginalize) these opposing views as resistant, misinformed, or too late to the debate, rather than valid alternate views.
When you refer to Open Access capitalized, it implies something with a clear definition, i.e. referenced by a proper noun.
When you state that
> “with Open Access…anyone [can] read and reuse scholarly material.”
with ‘reuse’ you are, intentionally or not, aligning with the #OAlibre wing.
when you say
you reinforce the common #OAlibre framing of humanities scholars as latecoming and reactionary regarding this topic, rather than equal conversants.
observations such as
and
construct a “we” that has the correct understanding, and others (apparently mostly humanities researchers and publishers) who are ‘detractors’ and ‘non-engagers.’ I’d ask, who’s issuing these membership cards in the in and out groups?
In my view, it’s necessary and helpful to pay attention to these framing implications, for your own project of “try[ing] to engage communities,” because often the framing is what conveys engagement and consultatitive engagement, rather than deprecation or speaking for others.
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Tim McCormick
@tmccormick tjm.org Palo Alto, California