Geoffrey Crossick is Director of the AHRC's Cultural Value Project and Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. Geoffrey's presentation will focus on the project that he led for HEFCE (and supported by AHRC and ESRC) on the implications of open access for monographs and other long-form research publications.

1. Monographs & Open Access
RLUK Conference
14 November 2014
Professor Geoffrey Crossick
Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
School of Advanced Study, University of London

2. Why was the project set up?
• Not for REF 2020
• Longer-term perspective for online monographs
• Identify & clarify issues, move forward thinking
• AHRC & ESRC support, British Academy involved
• What do we mean by ‘monograph’?
includes collections of essays, scholarly editions of texts,
research-based exhibition catalogues etc
HEFCE Monographs & Open Access
Project

3. • My response when approached to lead project
• Must start with what monograph is and what is happening to it
• Three core dimensions of work
• what is culture of the monograph within humanities & social
sciences?
• is there a crisis of the monograph?
• how will innovation in publishing & access models affect the
monograph?
Why the ampersand?

4. • Expert Reference Group to discuss and advise
• International experts
• Collecting data and advice, incl. on libraries and publishing
• OAPEN-UK survey of academic opinion and practice
• Disciplinary discussions and academic focus groups
• Commissioned research
• My report to HEFCE December, launch January (?)
How have we set about the project’s
work?

5. • Executive summary
• Introduction, scope and methodology
• The current status and position of the monograph
• Open-access monographs: opportunities and challenges
• Policy implications
Structure of the Report

6. Key issues addressed:
• The importance of writing monographs
• The place of the monograph in individual careers
• Trends in monograph supply and readership
• Assuring and demonstrating quality
• The print monograph: where text does not reign alone
yet real limitations as well
Current status & position of the
monograph

7. Key issues addressed:
• Opportunities of open access
• Technical and process challenges
• Open licensing
• Third-party rights
• Other stakeholders – universities, libraries, publishers
• International dimension
• Economic and business models
Open-access monographs:
opportunities and challenges

8. • London Economics tested distinct models against key criteria
• Models
Traditional publisher; new university press OA; freemium OA;
mission-oriented OA; aggregator/distributor; author-payment
• Individual criteria
• Quality; sustainability; dissemination
• System criteria
• Diversity; innovation; integrity
• Theoretical analysis across models and criteria
Economic analysis of business
models for open-access monographs

9. • Is open access the disruptive force in a stable system of research
and of scholarly communication?
And two concluding points of
context

10. • Is open access the disruptive force in a stable system of research
and of scholarly communication?
• Remember the objectives of this project
to move forward understanding and debate
to inform funding councils on issues and challenges
not to produce recommendations for implementation
but rather implications for policy of analysis in report
in that sense the necessary successor to Finch Report
but not its equivalent
And two concluding points of
context

11. Monographs & Open Access
RLUK Conference
14 November 2014
Professor Geoffrey Crossick
Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
School of Advanced Study, University of London