---
title: "Some personal notes on the REF OA mandate for books"
layout: post
image: 
    feature: OA.png
---
A few personal notes on the clamour around OA for books (written from the perspective of [an author of 10 books](https://eve.gd/books/) that are all openly accessible):

1. The REF mandate for books has been argued and trialed over an eight-year period, starting with the 2016 ‘Consultation on the second Research Excellence Framework’, published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. 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. At the rate we're going, [I will be dead](/2024/06/14/how-long-have-i-got-doc/) before we make books OA.
 
2. We costed the mandate here in 2017: https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.392. The eventual cost comes to just 1.2% of QR. When awarding billions of pounds of funding, is it not reasonable to suggest that approximately 1% of it be spent on enhancing the dissemination and allowing members of the public to read the fruits of their funding? Cries from the British Academy et al. read like: please give us money and then leave us alone. Of course, the problem for REF is that most researchers [don't see any appreciable outcomes from QR](https://eve.gd/2024/03/19/the-problem-for-ref-2029/).
 
3. Those in the humanities constantly bemoan the lack of funding for their fields. Yet, it seems, they also do little to promote (indeed, they often try to hinder) the open digital dissemination of their work. We now have a world where the value of most science is clear to see online (let alone in its applied variations of modern medicine and technologies), while most humanities work lingers invisible in expensive books. How can we expect the public to see the value of our disciplines in this environment? It also means that bad work is free to read online, while the highest quality work sits far from where most people first go when seeking knowledge: the internet.

4. The current situation is deeply ableist. As a disabled person who is too unwell to access a research library, the only way that I can do research is through the digital availability of works. We have the ability to fix this, but many academics are more concerned by their own career prospects and ensuring they can publish with their chosen publisher than fixing access issues. It's as though the _point_ of publishing were to cement academic careers, rather than disseminate information.

5. Most responses that assume book processing charges are deeply unimaginative in their thinking. Instead, there have been multiple examples of new experimental models (Opening the Future, membership schemes (punctum, Open Book Publishers etc.), green OA) that would fund OA _without_ the inequalities that many assume will be introduced. It is deeply dispiriting to see everyone clamour for book processing charges as supposedly the only way to proceed.

6. There are already many exemptions built into the mandate/policy thinking. Lots of people seem to think the sky is falling, though, and that trade books will become impossible, as will any creative writing etc. This simply doesn't tally with the reality of the mandate.

7. I understand the views of those advocates who feel that mandates aren't the right path because they foster a culture of compliance rather than a culture of open thought and practice. (I'm [looking at you, Sam](https://www.samuelmoore.org/2024/06/17/should-open-access-be-removed-from-ref-requirements/).) I just don't agree. We've spent twenty years arguing for the benefits of open digital dissemination and there is still massive resistance. I just think that the open mindset that we hoped to instill is harder to come by than we liked and most people are still very much in the proprietary mindset. I struggle with this -- I find there is nothing more satisfying than when I can release my writing into the world and know that there is an open copy available to anybody, regardless of their ability to pay or their bodily capacity. It's the same with my software work; it's great, at Crossref, to be able to release everything I do openly, for everyone. Many people, though, have never experienced this joy of open. And without their experience showing them how good it can feel, I don't have faith in everybody suddenly switching to an open mindset.