SLSA Response to HEFCE Consultation on Open Access in the Post-2014 Research Excellence

SLSA response to HEFCE Consultation on open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework

Question 1

Do you agree that the criteria for open access are appropriate (subject to clarification on whether accessibility should follow immediately on acceptance or on publication)?

Agree

Do you have any comments on this proposal?

We broadly agree with the proposed criteria, although we have some concerns about both the repository requirement and the issue of ‘appropriate licensing’, addressed under the relevant questions below.

Question 2

Do you agree with the role outlined for institutional repositories, subject to further work on technical feasibility?

Agree

Should the criteria require outputs to be made accessible through institutional repositories at the point of acceptance or the point of publication?

Publication

Do you have any comments on these proposals?

In relation to the role outlined for institutional repositories, this is primarily a matter for HEIs, and the capacity of all HEIs planning to submit to the post-2014 REF to establish and maintain a suitable repository. If this is not feasible for some HEIs, however, then equity would require alternative methods of deposit to be allowed. In this situation, we would be in favour of a looser requirement which places primary emphasis on institutional repositories, but allows outputs to be archived in and accessible from alternative sites such as the publisher’s website (in the case of Gold OA), discipline based databases (such as SSRN) and /or repositories shared between HEIs.

We consider that the only viable option is to require outputs to be made accessible at the point of publication. This is for several reasons. 1. Licensing and access arrangements, and the question of whether institutional funds will be made available to pay for an APC, are generally only determined after the point at which a journal article is accepted. At the point of acceptance, therefore, it will often be unknown in what form and under what terms the article will be made open access. 2.In the case of an article published as Gold OA, accessibility at the point of acceptance will require authors and repositories to process each article twice – once to deposit the accepted version, and once to deposit the publisher’s final version. 3. There is some uncertainty as to what is meant by ‘acceptance’, since changes can still be made to articles up until proof stage. There is thus a real risk that versions uploaded at the point of ‘acceptance’ would routinely (rather than exceptionally) fail to correspond precisely with the final published version. Publication occurs only once, with one final product, whereas acceptance in practice is a process, with variations often permitted to articles along the way. 4. The point of publication is an externally verifiable date whereas the point of acceptance is not. 5. When determining whether an output is eligible for REF entry, it is the date of publication, not the date of acceptance, which is the determining factor. It would therefore be consistent for HEFCE to require the output to be deposited at the point of publication rather than acceptance.

Question 3

Do you agree that the proposed embargo periods should apply by REF main panel, as outlined above?

Disagree

Do you agree with the proposed requirements for appropriate licences?

Disagree

Do you have any comments on these proposals?

We do not agree that the proposed embargo periods should apply by REF main panel. As in the case of licensing, there is further research being undertaken on appropriate embargo periods on a discipline-by-discipline basis, and the results of this research may indicate that the two-track embargo periods adopted by RCUK areinappropriate for some disciplines and need to be modified in order to maintain a sustainable publishing ecosystem. Indeed, RCUK’s policy remains contested, and it is possible that it may need to undergo refinement in the years leading up to the next REF. We would urge HEFCE to adopt an independent policy on embargo periods that is able to be responsive to forthcoming research results and that does not foreclose the possibilities for a more tailored and evidence-based approach.

While we strongly agree that HEFCE should not express either a requirement or a preference for any particular kind of licence – and applaud the independent stance it has taken in this regard – we are concerned that the criterion set out in point (c) effectively amounts to requiring the use of a CC-BY licence. If this is not intended, then it needs to be made clear that the “re-use” referred to in point (c) may be subject to the kinds of restrictions entailed in NC and ND licences, or, indeed, other kinds of restrictions on re-use in licences yet to be devised. Since this is also an area that is likely to see significant developments over the next few years, we again would urge HEFCE to adopt a policy that does not foreclose responsiveness to those developments. We would suggest, therefore, that the wording of the criterion be amended to read:

“Outputs should be presented in a form allowing the reader to search for and re-use content (including by download and for text-mining), both manually and using automated tools, provided such re-use is subject to proper attribution and may be subject to other reasonable restrictions under appropriate licensing.”

Question 4

Do you agree that the criteria for open access should apply only to journal articles and conference proceedings for the post-2014 REF?

Strongly agree

Do you have any comments on this proposal?

We agree with HEFCE that open access options for monographs and books are at too early a stage of development and therefore books, monographs and chaptersin edited collections should be exempt from open access requirements for the post-2014 REF period.

Question 5

Do you agree that a notice period of two years from the date of the policy announcement is appropriate to allow for the publication cycle of journal articles and conference proceedings?

Disagree

Do you have any comments on this proposal?

Publication timelines vary very considerably between disciplines and between journals within disciplines. A two-year average may appear reasonable, but may have unintended consequences for some HEIs and/or some UOAs when it comes to dealing with exceptions. In our responseto HEFCE’s earlier call for advice on open access, we submitted that the open access requirement should apply not to outputs published after a certain date, but to outputs submitted after a certain date. That would deal equitably with the issue of variable journal publishing timelines, and would also be consistent with the RCUK mandate, which applies to articles submitted for publication after 1 April 2013.

Question 6

Do you agree that criteria for open access should apply only to those outputs listing a UK HEI in the output’s ‘address’ field for the post-2014 REF?

Neither agree nor disagree

Do you have any comments on this proposal?

We consider this proposal to deal effectively with the situation where an author is not affiliated with a UK HEI at the time of publication (e.g. because they are based overseas, or because they are employed outside the HE sector).

Our remaining concern is for the situation of PhD students andresearchers who are not in permanent positions at UK HEIs, e.g. researchers on short term posts (not funded by RCUK), one or two year teaching fellowships or short-term junior lectureships, and staff on hourly teaching contracts. These people may all have an institutional affiliation, but may have little control over publication venues or access to institutional APC funds, and may not be publishing at the time with future REF entry in mind. We would therefore propose that the criteria for open access should apply only to those outputs listing the author (or lead author) in a permanent academic post at a UK HEI. If these authors claimed an exemption from the OA requirement on this basis, then it would be for the submitting HEI to establish that they were a student or otherwise not in permanent employment at the time the publication was submitted.

Question 7

Which approach to allowing exceptions is preferable?

Percentages

If selecting option b:

Do you agree that the percentage targets are appropriate?

Neither agree nor disagree

Do you believe the percentage target should apply consistently or vary by REF main panel?

Vary by REF main panel

Do you have any comments on these proposals?

We consider that a percentage-based approach is more feasible than a case-by-case approach. It would be too onerous both for HEIs to have to make a case for each non-complying output and for REF panels or specially-constituted panels to have to consider each case individually. A percentage target for compliance removes the need for justification and also has the virtue of allowing HEIs to know exactly where they stand rather than running the risk that some cases for exception may be rejected.

We also consider that it is necessary to have varying targets for compliance by REF main panel in order to recognise disciplinary variations. However it is possible that this approach may still be too much of a blunt instrument and take insufficient account of disciplinary variations within each main panel. We suggest two possible ways of dealing with this concern. One possibility would be to allow each sub-panel, as part of its working methods and criteria, to determine its own compliance target. The other possibility would be to have a combination of options (a) and (b), i.e. percentage-based targets for compliance, but the possibility of making a case for further exceptions where the target is not met for what the HEI would argue are unavoidable reasons.