David Price, UCL #RLUK14

Open scholarship and the

research library:

A view from UCL

Continuities & Innovation:

The changing scholarly

communications landscape

RLUK Conference, 12 November 2014

Professor David Price

UCL Vice-Provost (Research)

[email protected]

www.ucl.ac.uk/researchwww.ucl.ac.uk/research

LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY


research library:

A view from UCL

• UCL and open scholarship

• UCL challenges and initiatives

o Compliance with Gold OA

o UCL Discovery – and OA benefits

o ‘Total cost of ownership’

o UCL Press – a future solution

o OA Journals

o OA monographs

o OA textbooks

• Today’s challenge: ensuring compliance

with funders’ mandates beyond Gold OA

www.ucl.ac.uk/research


UCL and open

scholarship

Commitment to

accessibility, innovation

and relevance since

1826

Long-term and vocal

proponent of open

access

Challenges:

• scale

• complexity

• regulatory environment

• costwww.ucl.ac.uk/research


UCL challenges and initiatives

Compliance with Gold OA

UCL Discovery – and OA benefits

‘Total cost of ownership’

UCL Press: a free to author OA service

• OA journals

• OA monographs

• OA textbooks



OA – All funder compliance for Gold OA

4,087 APCs processed since April 2013

1,471 RCUK; 756 Wellcome/COAF; 1,860 UCL Gold



OA – RCUK compliance

Target, April 2014–March 2015: 815 OA papers

Current performance: 758 papers (93% of target, cf Year 1 achieved 115%)



UCL Discovery

24,991 OA outputs available through UCL Discovery (Oct 2014)



0

1

2

3

4

5

6

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014(toOct)

Millions

UCL Discovery

>5.5 million full-text downloads (to Oct 2014): www.ucl.ac.uk/discovery



http://www.ucl.ac.uk/discovery




Subscriptions rising….

Simply adding APCs to subscriptions

is unsustainable:

£0

£10,000

£20,000

£30,000

£40,000

£50,000

£60,000

£70,000

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018




Ways forward:

• vouchers to spend on APC

charges

• vouchers to spend on

subscriptions

• uncap subscription prices but

reduce cost of APCs to zero

• traditional subscription, with

annual fixed charge for APCs,

both capped for annual

increases

Or DIY … why prop up a broken

model?

UCL Press publishing model

• free service to UCL staff and

students

• OA business model

• sales via print-on-demand/enhanced

e-models

• faculty-level Editorial Boards,

including overseeing peer review

• open up publishing to new

communities: theses, student

series…

• global impact for UCL as institutional

as well as scholarly impactwww.ucl.ac.uk/research


UCL Press plans…

Developing on three fronts

Journal publishing platform:

• Open Journal Systems overlaying

UCL Discovery as storage layer

• peer-reviewed journals run by

faculty Editorial Boards

Research Monograph list to launch in

2014-15

• 10 titles in Year 1

• using Open Monograph Press

Textbook infrastructure

• being constructed with JISC project

monies www.ucl.ac.uk/research


Already hosting journals, e.g….

• Slovo, an interdisciplinary journal of Russian, East-Central and Eurasian

affairs

• Tropos, the journal of comparative cultural inquiry

• Journal of Bentham Studies



OA monographs

Is OA a solution to a broken business model?

University press takes on role as monograph

publisher

UK’s National Monograph Strategy sees a role

for OA monographs

Clarity required on what the future of the

scholarly monograph is in a digital world



OA monographs

Shared European infrastructure for

monographs… via LERU?

• 19 European partners, led by

UCL

• European universities can

become publishers themselves

• Shared publishing infrastructure

with Open Access business

models

• Research monographs in the

Arts, Humanities and Social

Sciences

• OAPEN to provide much of the

technical infrastructure

• Initiated in UCL in 2014www.ucl.ac.uk/research


OA textbooks

Students want 24–7 remote access to core

texts

In the US, just five textbook publishers control

more than 80% of the $8.8 billion textbook

market

E-book publishers seem nervous about making

course texts available as e-books (free at the

point of use) as they do not want to cannibalize

their print sales to students and lose revenue



OA textbooks

JISC Call: Institution as e-textbook

publisher

£75,000 awarded to UCL

To create an OA E-Textbook publishing

platform

Two textbooks being delivered as proof of

concept



But we are not there yet…

Still stuck with publishers for a few years

yet!

Gold OA is bleeding us dry:

• cost to the HE sector of implementing

the OA policy for a post-2014 REF is

estimated at £15m pa over the next

two or three yearsCounting the Cost of Open Access, Research

Consulting, Nov 2014

Comparable investment:

RCUK (Apr 2014–Mar 2015) £1,352k

COAF (Oct 2014–Sep 2015) £718k

UCL (Aug 2014–Jul 2015) £2,179k





HEFCE drives Green….

But there is an administrative load to ensure compliance

We welcome HEFCE requirement on deposit for REF2020… a strong driver

We have shown that when given a driver and ability to monitor compliance

via the RCUK model, we can deliver

HEFCE model puts onus on the author to

ensure compliance;

This responsibility may be too great!

OA on acceptance:

No institutional ability

to oversee/ensure

compliance

Versus OA on publication:

Institution can take

responsibility for

compliance



Conclusions

OA is good for research, for

researchers and for HEIs

Ensuring compliance is challenging:

most effective when funders require it

but enable HEIs to manage it

Current APC/Gold OA models are

unsustainable

HEIs have a chance to regain their role

as university presses: journals,

monographs and textbooks

Time for a new model!


UK research library

Continuities & Innovation:

The changing scholarly

communications landscape

RLUK Conference, 12 November 2014

Professor David Price

UCL Vice-Provost (Research)

[email protected]




David Price, UCL #RLUK14

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