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title: "On dropping the REF OA mandate for books (this time)"
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image: 
    feature: oa.png
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Research England has dropped the mandate for OA books in its guidance for the next REF, saying that it will, now, apply instead by 2029.

It is hard to see, given the extensive trailing of this mandate, what will be different by 2029. We seem stuck in a doom loop whereby RE announces its policy decisions years in advance, but far from enough people systematically try to implement them until the last minute, by which time they say it was too late.

I worry that so many humanities scholars seem happy to persist with a system that excludes the general public, disabled people, and others worldwide from reading academic material, all because it seems fine from where they are sitting with library access or because career progression is their top priority. We will soon have a world where all science is free to read online, while humanities scholarship lingers in little read and extremely expensive books. This cannot but be terrible for the visibility of our disciplines.