Copim's thoughts on the REF decision for OA books and what happens next

On 14 August 2024 it was announced by the four UK higher education funding bodies that:

Open access for longform outputs remains a key area of policy interest for the funding bodies but in response to sector concerns, and in recognition of the broad set of challenges currently facing the sector, there will be no longform open access mandate for REF 2029.  

An open access requirement for submission of longform outputs will be in place for the next assessment exercise, with implementation from 1 January 2029.  

The funding bodies will work in collaboration with UKRI and key stakeholders and across the sector to develop a policy for longform outputs for implementation in January 2029.  

The Copim Open Book Futures team is disappointed about this decision to delay introducing a mandate for open access (OA) books for another REF cycle, given the time the sector has already had to adapt to the idea of, and prepare the ground for, OA books. 

We share the point of view articulated by our colleague Prof. Martin Eve when he noted in June 2024 that "[t]he REF mandate for books has been argued and trialled over an eight-year period, starting with the 2016 ‘Consultation on the second Research Excellence Framework’, published by HEFCE. To argue that it’s been done too quickly is to ignore the fact that we have had eight years of warning and insufficient action has been taken.”

We agree that an OA mandate for books would have added a further compliance burden on scholars and HE institutions, as all mandates do, but this direction of travel was indicated several years ago. Collectively, publishers, universities, libraries, authors and other actors within scholarly communications have not done enough in the past eight years to respond. We seem to be stuck in a loop where consultation feedback indicates that the sector isn't ready for a mandate yet, but action that would make the sector ready is avoided or deferred, until the next consultation when everyone declares that a mandate is being imposed far too soon. 

We believe that a shift to OA for books is both possible and necessary, as we set out in our response to the REF consultation on this issue earlier in the year. We have argued many times that if books—the main route to share AHSS research—remain expensive, inaccessible, and therefore effectively invisible to most people, while articles—the way most STEM research is shared—are open and accessible to all, this will lead to the further withering of disciplines that are already in a fight for survival in many of our universities.

We therefore see the declared intention to develop a policy for open access books to be implemented in January 2029, not as another projection to be ignored, but as an urgent deadline.

That’s not to say we don’t have misgivings about ‘top-down mandates’—as our earlier blogpost noted—we have concerns about the wider place of the REF assessment exercise in the UK higher education system; however, we realise that there is little prospect of such exercises losing their place in the UK any time soon. So our view is that we should work with the system we’ve got and focus on the opportunities these mandates present to make academic publishing more equitable. 

We also believe that action needs to be taken now to encourage open research and publishing cultures within universities and more widely. Top-down mandates can lead to everyone becoming tangled up in debates about specific requirements, and to resentment that OA is being imposed rather than encouraged. We don’t want this tussling to distract from the energies required to make a positive case for expanding OA publishing across the sector.

We would like to see, and be part of, a push for wider, more ‘bottom-up’ actions from academics, librarians, universities and publishers to foster a much stronger culture of open research and community-governed OA publishing across UK higher education.

Without these efforts, a top-down mandate will not, in any case, be workable—we will see the pattern repeat in four years’ time as everyone declares a mandate, once again, to be impossible, too soon, and so on.

How will the sector get there by January 2029?

We don’t have a magic wand, but we can lay out some strategies below that we believe will help to support this transition. We also point out what is already happening in this area in the UK and elsewhere, but is currently receiving insufficient attention and support. And of course, we are actively engaged ourselves in building and running publishing infrastructures that are supporting increasing numbers of OA books without relying on expensive Book Processing Charges (BPCs) to fund them. 

We are eager to hear more about what other actors are doing in this area to support a transition to OA books, including publishers, universities, libraries and authors: no one group can do this by themselves. We welcome UKRI’s initiation of a series of projects to develop further tools and resources to help, and urge libraries, publishers and authors to look out for the outputs from the collaborations between SCONUL, ARMA, RLUK, OASPA, the British Academy and others noted in a recent UKRI update.

In terms of finances, currently one of the knottiest issues related to OA books, we would call attention to the existence of Diamond routes, some of which are more mature and some of which are at pilot stage, at a range of different presses (as briefly summarised in this article). What more can be done to support and develop such routes for authors? What is the role of universities here? 

There should also be a discussion about whether QR funding can support an OA mandate, while being mindful of the need not to use such funding to entrench a Book Processing Charge (BPC) model.

As laid out in our initial response, there could be a focus on open ways of working in the People, Culture and Environment section of the current REF. There urgently needs to be more awareness raised among academics of the benefits of open access publishing, including greater and more equitable access,1 but also the possibility of more innovative forms of publishing that harness digital capabilities alongside print books, or that enable interaction and engagement around books from open annotations and open peer review to processual and collaboratively authored books.2 

We also call attention to the growth in the UK of (New) University Presses and scholar/academic-led presses over the last decade and more,3 which has accelerated in the last two years with the establishment of the Open Institutional Publishers Association (OIPA) and other institutional activity.

In addition, library colleagues at UK universities including (but not limited to!) the Universities of York, Sussex, Sheffield, Salford, St Andrews, Manchester, and Lancaster University—among others—have been doing brilliant work on the hard problem of how libraries can support more equitable and open publishing, both financially and in practice. Their experiences should be heeded and shared. (Note also that several libraries in the USA and Europe are leading the way there too.)

Within Copim, we see such initiatives as an opportunity for universities and the wider community of scholars and research organisations to approach publishing as an integral aspect of the research process, not as an external task that we simply outsource to commercial publishers.

What are we doing at Copim to contribute to this work?

At Copim we are working with over 15 small to medium-sized publishers: some of them scholar-led, some university presses, some family-run and all from a mixture of disciplines. With them we are creating routes to publish OA books without relying on BPCs, that can be sustainable and that reflect the bibliodiversity that the AHSS sector needs. 

A few numbers to show Copim’s progress so far: 

• The Open Book Collective (OBC) has 12 publisher and service provider members, 79 supporting libraries, £674k+ raised to date, and will award £84k+ in small grants to mission-driven OA initiatives by 2026. 

• OA book publications from OBC presses = Yr 2020: 144; Yr 2021: 155; Yr 2022: 134; Yr 2023: 132; Yr 2024 (to date): 89

• Opening the Future has 163 memberships through 84 libraries. It has raised £152k+ for two Presses so far, and funded 70+ new OA books, with 25 already published.

• Thoth has 27 (and growing) publishers using its platform to manage & disseminate open metadata for OA books—making them easily discoverable by readers—and 30+ supporting libraries.

• Six experimental pilot projects & the Experimental Publishing Compendium bringing together tools, practices & books to promote experimental scholarship.

• A new Thoth Open Archiving Network including four repository partners and a new National Libraries Network with seven members across Europe, North America & the Middle East, to provide an open and transparent way to archive and preserve OA books in all their complexity.

Some of these numbers may look small to some observers—but bear in mind, these infrastructures have only been operational for two or three years! We have come a long way in a short time, and we have plans to grow further. However, within the grand scheme of UK academic book publishing, these numbers are not huge. The point of what we're doing isn't to say 'we can take care of all your OA book needs' but to show that OA book publishing can be done sustainably, to model approaches that others might also take, and to create community-owned infrastructures that other presses can use to help them get there. We're not saying it's simple, but we are saying it's possible.

However, these presses and their OA initiatives will only survive with support from libraries and the wider HEI sector. We’ve published a short series of blog posts outlining practical ways in which libraries can support these OA models and press initiatives: see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of ‘How can I persuade my institution to support collective funding for open access books?’

Furthermore, and as we have outlined previously, there remains a need for more technical guidance and support to increase the discoverability of OA books in an open way (e.g. the provision of open metadata for book chapters, inclusion of PIDs such as DOIs, ORCIDs, RORs, etc.), as well as transparent approaches to archiving of OA books. In that context, we want to highlight Copim’s work on Thoth, a fully open metadata management and dissemination system for OA books, and the Thoth Open Archiving Network. We are keen to offer our expertise in the ongoing process of developing UKRI’s emerging guidance on metadata and PID recommendations, which Thoth would aim to support. 

We encourage anyone interested in ensuring that the sector is not in the same position by 2029 to actively engage with initiatives like ours, and to advocate within their networks that we cannot sit back for another 4 years. We’re keen to forge new connections with people and organisations that share this goal, so please get in touch with us if you’d like to talk. We can be reached by email: info[at]copim[dot]ac[dot]uk.

You can also find out about, and support, the work of Copim’s community of libraries, publishers and open infrastructure providers at the following links:

• Open Book Collective: https://openbookcollective.org/

• Thoth Open Metadata: https://thoth.pub/

• Opening the Future: https://openingthefuture.net/ and follow on X/Twitter at x.com/opening_future (+ coming to Blue Sky soon…), and on LinkedIn

• Experimental Publishing Compendium: https://compendium.copim.ac.uk/ 

Sign up to our mailing lists, join our knowledge sharing networks here:

• The Open Access Books Network: https://oabooksnetwork.eo.page/signup 

• Copim on X/Twitter: @Copim_community

• Copim on Blue Sky: @copim.bsky.social

• Copim on Mastodon: [email protected]

• Copim by email: info[at]copim[dot]ac[dot]uk

Find more information and practical guides about how you can get involved here:

• Copim’s open documentation site: https://copim.pubpub.org/ 

• The Open Access Books Network: https://openaccessbooksnetwork.hcommons.org/ 

Photo by Lindsay Henwood on Unsplash