Double blogs: "Biting the hand that feeds – the obfuscation of publishers" and "Open Access policy, procedure & process at Cambridge"

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Dr D.A. Kingsley

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Sep 19, 2017, 11:18:20 AM9/19/17
to Dr D.A. Kingsley
<Apologies for cross posting>

Hello all,

The latest Unlocking Research blogs from the Office of Scholarly Communication take a critical look at what a recent HEFCE report has euphemistically described as a ‘complex environment’. In other words, the inability for both funders and publishers to align their policies in any way either to each other or within their own stakeholder group.

We have two sister blogs:

Biting the hand that feeds – the obfuscation of publishers - https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=1657

Let’s not pull any punches here. We are unimpressed. Late last week HEFCE published a blog: Are UK universities on track to meet open access requirements? In the blog HEFCE identified the key issues in meeting OA requirements as:

  • The complexity of the OA environment
  • Resource constraints
  • Cultural resistance to OA
  • Inadequate technical infrastructure.

Right. So the deliberate obstruction to Open Access by the academic publishing industry doesn’t factor at all?

<snip>

Open Access policy, procedure & process at Cambridge - https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=1613

 The Open Access policies developed and applied by the UK’s major research funders (HEFCE, RCUK and COAF) all aim to achieve one thing: freedom of knowledge for all. However, the specific mechanisms these funders have taken to achieve this goal varies considerably and requires careful implementation from higher education institutions (HEIs).
 
In this blog post, I’ll describe the different workflows required to meet each funder’s expectations and then look at how these policies intersect with each other to form a tangled web of policy nightmare. Some of the decisions and processes will be peculiar to the University of Cambridge, especially when it comes to decisions around funding for article processing charges (APCs), but the general approach will be true of most UK HEIs.

<snip>

Let the games begin.

Danny

Dr Danny Kingsley

Head, Office of Scholarly Communication

Cambridge University Library

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rob.johnson

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Sep 20, 2017, 5:55:22 AM9/20/17
to The Open Scholarship Initiative
Hi Danny,
As one of the authors of said HEFCE blog post, which was based on interviews with 17 UK institutions, the role played by publishers in contributing to complexity of the environment was indeed a concern to institutions (whether deliberate or not), and this is reflected in the full report and referenced in the blog post. However, the blog post findings are based on a frequency analysis of the interview transcriptions, with issues prioritised accordingly. What this showed was that our interviewees were far more exercised about the lack of alignment between UK funder policies than anything else - for reasons that your second post effectively illustrates. 

Ultimately this reflects the 'observer's paradox' - when you ask interviewees a question, they will adapt what they say according to who they believe is listening to the answer. In this case, people took the opportunity to vent their frustration about funder policies, because the study was commissioned by funders. If we undertook a publisher-commissioned study I suspect we would hear a lot more about publisher issues from the same interviewees. Yes there are ways of limiting this bias, and acknowledging the methodological limitations, but it's very hard to eliminate the observer's paradox entirely. What I would not do is change the findings we report to suit what I or others think institutions 'should' have said.

Best wishes,

Rob

Rob Johnson

Director

Research Consulting 

 

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Dr D.A. Kingsley

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Sep 20, 2017, 7:48:21 AM9/20/17
to rob.johnson, The Open Scholarship Initiative
Thanks Rob,

Of course, I would never expect you to do anything other than act in a professional manner in relation to your research. The policy mess and the embargo debacle compete for the ‘most frustrating’ aspects in my book. Hence the double blog. But I also wonder if the responses you had reflect something of Stockholm syndrome

Danny

Dr Danny Kingsley

Head, Office of Scholarly Communication

Cambridge University

p: 01223 747 437

m: 07711 500 564

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Anthony Watkinson

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Sep 20, 2017, 11:36:26 AM9/20/17
to Dr D.A. Kingsley, rob.johnson, The Open Scholarship Initiative

None of the early career researchers I have been interviewing  seem to have noticed that it was commissioned by the Publishers Research Consortium. It was mentioned in our original invite and as we have added a few questions in our second year I sometimes draw attention to the change and explain it is something our funders wanted. What is surprising is that very few of these interviewees seem to recognise the existence of publishers unless we ask directly which we do in one question. For them the editor-in-chief is the figure they relate to either when responding to reviews or refereeing themselves. The same invisibility goes for libraries and we have changed our questions about discovery to make sure they tell us where they actually find the content they are looking for

 

Anthony

 

Anthony Watkinson

Principal Consultant CIBER Research

Director Charleston Conference

Honorary Lecturer University College London

Rob Johnson

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Sep 20, 2017, 12:31:20 PM9/20/17
to Anthony Watkinson, Dr D.A. Kingsley, The Open Scholarship Initiative
I agree that's usually for case for researchers Anthony - we were speaking with librarians,  research managers and PVCs or equivalent though,  who tend to be more cognisant of these things
Rob

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Anthony Watkinson

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Sep 20, 2017, 1:34:23 PM9/20/17
to Rob Johnson, Dr D.A. Kingsley, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Sorry everyone. I am rather obsessed with researcher attitudes at the moment!

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