The Brexit Debate

Audrey McCulloch introduces the panel

One of the key topics of conversation this year has, inevitably, been Brexit. Since the results of the UK Referendum on membership of the EU were announced in June, speculation, knee jerk reaction, panic, and uncertainty have been rife. What does it really mean for scholarly communications? Are the worse-case scenarios likely to pass? What are the worse case scenarios and what are the opportunities?

ALPSP, the Publishers Association and The London Book Fair arranged a debate with leading industry figures to find out more. The conversation will continue at the Research & Scholarly Publishing Forum at LBF17 in March.

The debate, introduced by ALPSP CEO Audrey McCulloch and chaired by RELX Group's Richard Mollet featured academic consultant Richard Fisher and Andy Robinson, SVP and Managing Director for Society Services at Wiley.

Currency, taxation and the economy

On a positive note, there are short term currency gains. There is an outside possibility of eliminating VAT on ebooks and digital products and potential to get government departments to support emerging markets and UK research to boost technology market, for example by rebuilding trials sector. However, there is also a risk of the UK becoming a regulatory island. In the short term, the audience were advised to keep an eye on any bump in book sales to check there weren't any inventory blips on a regional basis while the currency is in flux.

Research and development

Scientists for EU has collected examples of academics who refused positions in the UK. There are over 40 examples of researchers being taken off grant applications or made a contributor instead. In institutions, there are 31,000 researchers based in the UK who come from the EU. There is a long term question about how that will impact on the quality and impact of EU research. UK research is a strong contributor to the economy and if damaged could have a long term impact on other sectors. And the European Medicines Agency moving from the UK will have a converse impact on the pharma sector's appetite to launch drugs in the UK. Currently 2% of the world's clinical trials happen in the UK. There is an opportunity to rebuild that, which in turn will bring in pharma investments (GSK has invested £250m in UK since Brexit).

People, influence and perception

There are a number of implications for the publishing industry and related sectors in relation to people. Ten per cent of the UK publishing workforce comes from the EU (compared to 6% in the wider population) and companies will have to consider how to manage that impact.

It was noted that the current Prime Minister, Theresa May, was previously Home Secretary. During her tenure in that role she was very strict on the number of overseas students. It is unlikely this line will change and institutions are watching with concern. The knock on financial effect could be significant with 25,000 students studying in the UK - and 46% of postgraduates coming from the EU - generating income for institutions and local businesses.

Richard Mollet, Richard Fisher, Andy Robinson

How does industry make the case to government without looking like they are moaning about the result? There was a strong reaction post-Brexit from researchers and publishers. We need to respond to the challenges robustly, but on new terms, by putting forward a strong economic case for investment. With three government departments across Education, Culture Media and Sport and Business that influence the world of publishers and researchers it might be tricky to navigate.

There is no doubt that the UK now sits outside debates in EU, for example with open access and open science. Where Britain leads, the world does not necessarily follow so the possibility of isolation is very real. Wiley and ALPSP ran a short poll of their society publishers. in it, 80% of respondents saw the loss of influence in these policy debates, particularly around open science. 

Copyright and data protection

In the long term there is possibility of a move to the older world of a US copyright regime, UK regime and EU regime, leading to potential fragmentation. Google will no doubt be watching with interest, particularly around Fair Use issues. The UK is unique in having access to millions of patient records, and if data protection issues can be navigated carefully, there is real research potential in monitoring patient outcome. We have the potential to become world leaders in fields such as stem cell research.

The future?

What will we be talking about at Frankfurt 2021 in five years? Will it still be a big issue or just one of the things we’re dealing with? It is hard to predict. On the one hand, the British political situation is in such flux it is impossible to predict. We should have a much clearer path in 2021. On the other, it will be one of a number of issues that the industry will face.

The industry should reflect on why they don’t employ, publish for or sell to the 52% of voters. June 23 is without doubt one of the most important post-war dates in British history. While there is a worrying flux at government level that will play out over the next two to three years, politicians need to wake up to the importance of research. The industry needs to encourage the UK government to take research seriously and place it at the heart of the negotiation. A national research strategy should be brought together as quickly as possible to ring fence funding up to 2025.

The Brexit debate at the Frankfurt Book Fair was organised by the Publishers Association and ALPSP with the support of the London Book Fair. The discussions will continue at the Research & Scholarly Publishing Forum to be held at LBF in March 2016.

Elsevier has launched a Brexit resource centre to provide benchmark objective data, useful links and other resources.
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The Academic Book of the Future?

Much discussion of scholarly communication is dominated by scientific and (especially) serials concerns. This session aimed to redress the balance. Richard Fisher chaired a distinguished panel of academics to discuss the recent trends and data on monographs and the current AHRC project on the Academic Book of the Future. These are natural starting points for an extended discussion of what still remains the major currency of both communication and esteem in many academic subjects in the humanities and social sciences.

Fab charts by @SimonTanner showing books made up 1/4 of submissions in REF14 for humanities #alpsp15 #AcBookFuture

— Kiren Shoman (@KirenShoman) September 10, 2015

Simon Tanner from King’s College London and the AHRC Academic Book of the Future project provided an overview of the work completed to date and some highlights from the research data. The first stage of the research project has focused on finding out what the roles and purposes of academic books to serve scholarship and wider learning for all groups involved in this area and then to sense check that back to those groups.

The REF2014 submissions provided a rich data set as a means of learning more about the academic books created and deemed worthy of submission in the last REF cycle (2009-2014). They focused on the Main Panel D for Arts and Humanities. Within this Panel the data can be investigated by Unit of Assessment Subject Area and by Research Output Type. They hope to look at various areas including author gender, book format or length, books per submitting institutions and open access books. Tanner shared some initial analysis that threw up surprising findings including how chapters still feature in REF submissions and how few publishers submit more than 10 titles.

Michael Jubb has been working with the Academic Book of the Future and initial findings from the research suggest books remain a critical part of the scholarly infrastructure in analogue form, but we haven't yet articulated how to present the broad range of scholarly resources in the humanities in an effective and user-friendly way. More will be discussed during Academic Book Week in the UK 9-16 November 2015.

There seem to be powerful incentives to write and to publish books, even as volumes of sales of individual titles fall. Are we publishing too many books?

Mandler: Ave score for monograph in REF much higher than ave scores for journal articles, but means far fewer lines on CV. #alpsp15

— Martyn Lawrence (@MartynLawrence) September 10, 2015

Professor Peter Mandler from the University of Cambridge and President of the Royal Historical Society observed that technology is making more of an impact on publishing and it's right to reflect on effects on monograph publishing for good or evil. The high cost is a barrier, but it's not practical to totally remove price as a good deal of work goes into it - including remunerated peer review. However, he believes that the sooner we can reduce cost through use of ebooks, the better. New initiatives including 30-60,000 length monographs are to be welcomed.

It's interesting to note the funders don't discuss that the average score for a monograph was much higher than for chapter or article. There are implications for the future of the academic book driven by changes to productivity in output, measurement and metrics around research, and generational changes (younger generation often prefer chapters or articles than long form research).

Professor John Holmwood, University of Nottingham and Past President of the British Sociological Association noted there are some social sciences that hardly submit any books. He reflected on a decline in cultural scholarlship in some social science disciplines. He believes the move across to a linear, cumulative form of journal output perhaps lacks the reflection and transformative impact. The commercialisation of higher education and the development of publishing business models suggests a link in government actions. On the one hand there is a radical ambition to create a democractic open online library, but how does that fit with the commercialisation (and underlying privatisation) of universities?

Holmwood: social sciences don't necessarily do long narratives and extended arguments, so use books diff. from humanities #alpsp15

— Aileen Fyfe (@AileenFyfe) September 10, 2015

Holmwood observed there is disruption of the curriculum and the book as a result. Publishers are disrupting both as well with innovation with education delivery and digital provision of learning materials. He feels monographs and journals are moving at different speeds and this is now becoming a problem. Article based disciplines have citation patterns that show a short life of an article compared to disciplines that tend towards long form research which can be cited for decades.

There is no doubt the debate will continue. Follow #AcBookWeek and @AcBookFuture for more details.

Books and scholarly communities: retrospect and prospect

Richard Fisher, formerly CUP

Academic books are a rather more complex and variegated subset of scholarly communication than is often articulated. Publishing has often remained fragmented and sometimes defiantly artisanal in approach, particularly in the arts and social sciences. Have book publishers drawn the right inferences from the digital transition, and have they forgotten some of the most important early impacts of that transition which nonetheless retain significance today?

Richard Fisher, formerly Managing Director of the CUP's Academic Division considered these issues while looking ahead, to the myriad of disciplinary, institutional, financial and access issues with which academic book publishing is confronted.

He noted that we have a curiously unchanged publisher landscape. There hasn't been a PLOS or BioMed Central in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Why is this? High entry costs relative to publishing opportunities. Long term gestation, scholarly conservatism and the complex interaction of career tenure and the continued rise of American University Presses might be other factors.

Is there a crisis in scholarly book publishing? Monograph outputs have doubled in the past decade. It is impossible to read all of them. So what is the crisis if there is still plenty to publish and read? So far, e-publishing has not yet disturbed the continuum of publishing formats in these disciplines. What has happened to the course-book used for graduate and undergraduate teaching. Small scale adoption is possible with short print runs. The retail presence is chipped away by Amazon. Is this type of research book facing extinction or will it carry on? (He suspects that latter). What caused the shift of focus even more onto the backlist? How much emphasis is placed on the backlist with marketing and sales efforts?

Are these factors indicative of a blip or part of a more fundamental shift and evolution of the research book market? Why do we discuss non-institutional customers so little? The majority of sales come from institutions, and yet we don't engage with the readers/users of monographs.

Is there a transatlantic divide in open access? The role of UK governmental agencies in OA and other initiatives within EU/ESF, HEFCE and RCUK/Wellcome research funding is counter to the international structure of publishers. Academic book publication in the UK is fundamentally an export activity, and potentially only viable in that context. It is often undercapitalised and under digitised. International markets and translations are also at risk with the uptake of Creative Commons.

Fisher cites how emphatically scholarly books can be cross-over trade books. Serious historical research, for example, can have a popular appeal unmatched by any other subject. If you look at the conclusions of the agent Andrew Wylie and HEFCE/RCUK (who both want the widest possible dissemination) they draw vastly different conclusions.

Much of the most powerful and polemical OA advocacy come from those outside the formal academy, or the marginalised within: for those inside, different motivations need to apply. Fisher believes there still needs to be a step change in consumption of and enthusiasm for long form e-outputs among humanities and social sciences scholars. Yet the rate of transition is very slow.

Intellectual Property is a growing arena of contest. It is a huge issue for humanists and social scientists. Arguments are fierce around licensing (including Creative Commons). It's sets authority against collaborative working. You also need to bear in mind that law does not necessarily mean US or California law. US and UK law are very different. This needs to be taken account of.

Fisher is a great advocate for campus calling and going to see people in the institution. We need to look afresh at what we do and ensure that we ask the right questions. In a world of scarcity (above all of time) we must ask ourselves, is it any good?