The Finch Report and its Recommendations Michael Jubb Research Information Network British Academy Humanities and Social Sciences Learned Societies and Subject Associations Network 22 October 2012

The Question and the Process How to expand access, in a sustainable way, to peer-reviewed research publications Group of 13 representatives of universities, libraries, funders, learned societies, publishers The exam question was not and is not a simple one (if it were, the Group would not need to have undertaken the work that it did) Note that the qn excludes data (Royal Society report) Fair also to say that the Group devoted the vast majority of its attention to journal articles and conf proceedings (the dominant mode of publication across all subject areas except the creative arts) Recognise of course that monographs remain of crucial importance in HSS; and that they are in trouble. Will say a little about that in a moment Process involved some pretty robust discussion, because the interests and perspectives of the different stakeholders are not entirely congruent the answers are not straightforward Analysis based in the main on earlier research, but some financial modelling was commissioned especially for the study

The Political Context innovation transparency returns on investment a key principle ‘the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain’ These issues are not going to go away

The Global Picture 2m. research publications a year increasing at c.4% a year 25k scholarly journals most subscription-based 8k open access (?) growth of hybrid journals commercial publishers and learned societies

Scholarly Communications and the Success of the UK Research Community 120k publications in 2010 2.8k humanities 8.9k social science 4.3k business strong competitive position more articles and more citations per researcher and per £ spent more usage per article published citation impact and share of highly-cited papers second only to US factors underpinning this success One of the factors is the heavy engagement of UK researchers in all aspects of the business of publishing, and the strong role of learned societies in the publishing business

Monographs library expenditure on monographs declining in real terms, while expenditure on serials is increasing rising prices and declining print runs no clear open access business model as yet, but some experiments OAPEN-UK project (http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/) No doubt that monographs are in crisis, and that the growth in the numbers of articles published each year is part of the reason for that

Mechanisms and Success Criteria more UK articles available globally more global articles available in the UK sustain high-quality research sustain high-quality services to authors and readers financial health of publishing and learned societies costs to HE and funders open access journals repositories licence extensions 3 groups of criteria Access for more people, globally as well as in the UK, to more publications Sustain both high-quality research and the publishing services that underpin it Costs and revenues 3 mechanisms (we cd think on no others)

Conclusions no single mechanism meets all the success criteria a mixed economy transition to OA should be accelerated in an ordered way tensions between interests of key stakeholders, and risks to all of them costs global environment promote innovation and sustain what is valuable

Recommendations clear policy direction towards Gold open access better funding arrangements, focusing responsibilities in universities, not funders minimise restrictions on use and re-use expand and rationalise licensing HE and NHS SMEs, public libraries deal with subscriptions and APCs in a single negotiation experiment with OA monographs develop repository infrastructure deal carefully with embargo periods (especial risks in HSS)

Michael Jubb www.researchinfonet.org Thank you Questions? Michael Jubb www.researchinfonet.org