Publishing Industry

Lord Smith of Clifton Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Smith of Clifton]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for this timely debate. Over the years, I have had a range of experiences in the world of publishing. I was on the board of the weekly magazines New Society and, later, the New Statesman, and was also a director of Gerald Duckworth & Co book publishers. I must declare an interest in that I am currently on the editorial boards of two learned journals—Government and Opposition and Public Policy and Administration, both of which posts are unpaid. The introduction of open access, as recommended by the Finch report and aggressively promoted by the advocates of STEM subjects, raises serious concerns in academia among specialists in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Both the Royal Historical Society, of which I am a fellow, and the Political Studies Association, of which I am vice-president, have made representations to BIS and its Universities Minister, David Willetts, and to the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee.

As proposed, open access will require authors to pay fees of up to $1,000 to the publishers of learned journals to cover the costs of expert reviews as to worthiness and of editing, which will have to come from already squeezed research budgets. This will have a deleterious effect on young, aspiring academics. In the arts and social sciences, articles are usually single-authored. By contrast, STEM articles are almost always multiauthored and half the average length of those in the humanities and social sciences. Up front publishers’ fees will be cheaper and more widely spread for STEM authors. The effect of this differential costing may well influence university departmental heads to allocate publishers’ fees disproportionately to senior, already tried and tested, academic authors rather than to risk the possibility of greater rejection of younger ones.

Secondly, there is the whole question of copyright, to which other noble Lords have alluded, and ownership of intellectual property. Open access will accord free use of UK research that has been funded by the UK taxpayer to all and sundry all over the world. Thirdly, it adds to the operating profits of publishers of learned journals, who make no financial contribution to sustaining scholarship and research; they simply enjoy harvesting it.

Those who undertake research in the humanities and social sciences are not opposed to some form of open access. However, they are concerned that the proposed scheme is being adopted without full consultation, is too STEM-compliant and will enable scholarly intellectual property to be plundered. Her Majesty’s Government and, particularly, Mr David Willetts need to think again. It seems that Mr Willetts and Dame Janet Finch, a distinguished social scientist, have been too easily seduced by the blandishments of STEM interests and forgotten those of their original university training. In winding up, will the Minister say whether Her Majesty’s Government are open to further consideration?