Dear Members,

Last week we were asked whether we would be willing to sign a letter to be published in the Observer newspaper today, alongside other learned societies. You can find the letter below. As you will see, it protests against the new regime of academic publishing proposed in the Finch report and now translated into a policy on open access. The LAGB committee would normally have consulted the membership, but in the case at hand time was very limited and the policy in question is potentially very damaging to linguistics in the UK. We therefore hope that you agree that the need for quick action in this case trumped the desirability of consultation.

Kind regards,

Ad Neeleman

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“Sir,

Largely unnoticed by politicians and public alike, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has rushed through a policy on the publication of publicly-funded research that poses a real threat to the international standing of British universities and research.

David Willetts, the Minister of State for Universities and Science, who has spearheaded this policy on Open Access, has been able to push it through with negligible political resistance because no legislation is necessary.

As the leaders of a diverse group of learned societies, charitable organisations that exist to promote our respective academic disciplines, we support the idea of more open access to academic research.  There are, however a number of problems with the rushed policy.

Firstly, lack of consultation has meant the policy has been shaped largely by considerations specific to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) community, which has been at the forefront of the open access movement. The needs and concerns of the social sciences and arts and humanities (HSS) are in many ways  quite different to STEM and  require far fuller scrutiny and consideration by the Government than has been the case to date.

Secondly , the new model of having authors pay to publish their article may well increase the total outlay on publications by British universities, since they will need to continue to subscribe to international journals but now also pay fees to publish in UK journals.

Thirdly , the policy will create a system of gatekeepers at the university level which will control access to the pot which allows authors to publish. No longer will publishing be governed solely by peer review, but instead by a university committee, likely to be of non-experts and governed by institutional considerations rather than academic quality . Finally the insistence that all articles published under the ‘author pays’ model must allow unlimited commercial and non-commercial use of the article will mean authors effectively lose control over their work, without the patent protection that many STEM researchers enjoy.

We are glad that both the BIS Select Committee in the Commons and the Science and Technology Committee in the Lords are now holding inquiries into the Government’s open access policy.  However, with no requirement for legislation, the Department is not bound in any way to take note of the reports of either inquiry. Hence we write to alert readers to this situation.   We urge the government to rethink and to work with us to develop a policy that will open access without sacrificing academic freedom or academic quality.