Martin Hall and Jean-Claude Guédon ponder the future of research and the monograph in the humanities and social sciences

Professor Martin Hall

The crisis in monograph publishing in one form or other has been with us for over twenty years. Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Salford and Chair of the morning session of Open Access monographs in the humanities and social sciences conference observed that the great university presses started to lose the ability to publish monograph research in an affordable format way before digital developments accelerated. With the advent of thin clients - cheap, affordable devices - the challenge for scholarly publishing is how to manage the transition into realising possibilities of the future.

The amount of research money that goes into the humanities and social sciences is disproportionate compared to the impact and significance of these disciplines. Drawing on his own experience as an archaeologist, there are so many possibilities. Words can translated into digital, but what about the garage loads of stuff such as broken pot pieces? We also need to consider the potential for wider participation, for example, the general public going out, finding and recording archaeological material with mobile phones.

Jean-Claude Guédon from the University of Montreal followed Martin Hall as the keynote speaker at this JISC Collections conference. He urged the audience to forget about monographs and go beyond them. It is about making the conversations of the humanities as great as that of scientists; about making discussions as frictionless as possible to improve understanding. He outlined three sociologies of e-books: sociology of documents (production); society of documents (how they relate to each other); and sociology 'tout court' as knowledge of society (co-evolution of the two above so we know where we are going).

Guédon observed that 'we are in a situation where we are used to a fixed form of production'. Because of our author obsession we stick to the idea of a one-person authored product. But research is taken by all sorts of people, amended and debated to create a new argument or thesis. This is followed by the documentation of the process. In digital we translate the exact same approach and try to do the same thing in documenting the idea(s). 

It is easy to pick flaws in this linear, print or object-bound way of developing and documenting research in the humanities and social sciences. Think about the potential of communities when developing thesis. Why is it so important to have one author for a piece of work? Isn't it better to have several brains working on it to improve the quality of the work? Think of science - very few articles are written by just one person. There is nothing wrong with working together. One of the paradoxes of universities is they train people to work in a way that you will never work in the real world. It is about a flow of work or 'a stream of thinking in the river of humanity'.

If you accept that maybe more people should get involved, it helps reveal how you can approach the documentation. What form of publication works? Does the book have a place in that kind of conversation? Continuing with Hall's earlier example, archaeologists (as well as scientists) sit on treasure troves of images and artefacts. We only get one view point of this resource. This is a potentially flawed way of interpreting and developing knowledge.

There is a reward system in place that reinforces this approach, with an economy of prestige that constrains it. What kind of social entity do we have to create to make this work? Guédon believes we have to rethink the notion of the author. We have to really examine the peer review process. And we have to do this to rethink value in research.

It's not an issue of finding the right format. It is about considering how this new digital communication is going to fit into our society.

ASA 2013: Lorraine Estelle on Be Careful What You Wish For

Lorraine Estelle address the ASA conference audience

Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections gave us a clear reminder: this isn't about quality, this is about cost. We have to consider potential unintended consequences of new models so we don't end up recalling the 'golden age of the big deal.'

In the beginning, we had the 'big deal' and this is still the predominant model for journals. It is not without its critics, notably, a number of mild-mannered people are very critical of it. The big deal causes so much inflexibility in library budgets it impacts particularly on arts and humanities for collections.

The major problem with the big deal is the underlying pricing model. It was based on print concept and subscribed and non-subscribed model. When introduced, university libraries were required to to maintain payments to print journal subscriptions and pay an extra charge for e-access to gain access to all the non-subscribed titles. It is hard to believe that the base cost of subscribed journal perpetuates in many big deals today - almost 20 years later. This forced maintenance of the base cost (historic print spend) is what makes the big deal so inflexible. To compound the issue, she has yet to find a publisher that can provide the metadata that upholds the value.

What are the alternatives?

1. value based pricing: you pay for what you use
2. gold open access: you pay for what you publish (at article level)

Value based pricing is a new digital pricing model directly linked to usage. This model is supposed to enable the move away from the historic print spend. Estelle cites the American Chemical Society who have had a good go at implementing value based pricing. They show a price-per-article on their website of 26 cent compared to $3-4 from Elsevier, Wiley and other commercial publishers. But what happens on an institutional basis when implemented? The Benedictine University (Source: Inside Higher Ed 2011) reported a whopping 1,816 percent price jump for 2011 due to increased usage.

While they probably had a really good deal to begin with, this highlights the real problem of winners and losers: the more an institution reads the more it pays. In essence, the best customers are the ones that will have to pay much more.

With gold open access, it's a model where you pay for what you publish. It avoids the difficulties of top slicing (where librarians aren't involved in purchasing decisions). In June 2012, the Finch Group estimated that the additional cost per annum for the UK to move to gold open access is £38 million per year. In April 2013, RCUK is introducing block payments to pay for APCs for universities and eligible research institutions.

There is an interesting dilemma about winners and losers. UK institutions will be expected to pay for the processing charge so that papers by authors in their instituions are freely available around the world. However, those same institutions will still be required (for the time being) to pay for subscriptions to papers published by authors in the rest of the world (c. 94% of all other articles). Funds for APCs are most likely to come from existing research budgets - not library budgets that will need to be maintained at current levels.

Essentially, the more the institutions within the UK publishes, the more it pays! They are looking for recognition from UK publishers that there is a need to consider the issue at a local (UK) or instituional level. It is certainly not sustainable in the future.

The unintended consequences and part of the problem is that an increase in article downloads is associated with an increase in articles authored. This is associated with increases in PHDs granted and an increase in grants won. Value based pricing and gold open access are both models directly linked to usage. To control costs an institution may need to control use by:

• restricting the number of articles downloaded
• restricting the  number of articles published.

The argument that those research intensive universities can afford it no longer stands up to scrutiny. University capital budgets have been impacted by cuts and this impacts on what is available for research. Estelle closed with a stark statistics: the total BIS grant for 2012/2013 is £5,311 million, compared to £6,507 million for 2011.12 - an 18.4% cut.

Be careful what you wish for: the 'big deal' may be remembered as the golden age.