Open Access Policy in the UK: From Neoliberalism to the Commons Stuart Andrew Lawson Doctoral thesis submitted for completion of a PhD in English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London 2018 [August draft] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This excludes Figure 4.1, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. 1 Acknowledgements This research was supported by the Jisc Collections Studentship Award, which was awarded by Birkbeck, University of London and co-funded by the School of Arts at Birkbeck in conjunction with Jisc Collections. The text contains edited excerpts from the following prior open access publications: • Lawson, Stuart. 2015. ‘The Politics of Open Access’, PhD proposal, Birkbeck, University of London <https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1494587> • Lawson, Stuart. 2017. ‘Access, Ethics and Piracy’, Insights, 30(1): 25– 30 <https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.333> • Lawson, Stuart. Forthcoming [2019]. ‘Public Libraries and Knowledge Politics’, in Old Traditions and New Technologies: The Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Open Scholarly Communication, ed. by Martin Eve and Jonathan Gray (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) • Lawson, Stuart, Jonathan Gray, and Michele Mauri. 2016. ‘Opening the Black Box of Scholarly Communication Funding: A Public Data Infrastructure for Financial Flows in Academic Publishing’, Open Library of Humanities, 2(1) <https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.72> [full acknowledgements are still to be written, this is just to cover the formal bits] 2 Abstract This thesis makes a contribution to the knowledge of open access through a historically and theoretically informed account of contemporary open access policy in the UK (2010–15). It critiques existing policy by revealing the influence of neoliberal ideology on its creation, and proposes a commons-based approach as an alternative. The historical context in Chapters 2 and 3 shows that access to knowledge has undergone numerous changes over the centuries and the current push to increase access to research, and political controversies around this idea, are part of a long tradition. The exploration of the origins and meanings of ‘openness’ in Chapter 4 enriches the understanding of open access as a concept and makes possible a more nuanced critique of specific instantiations of open access in later chapters. The theoretical heart of the thesis is Chapter 5, in which neoliberalism is analysed with a particular focus on neoliberal conceptions of liberty and openness. The subsequent examination of neoliberal higher education in Chapter 6 is therefore informed by a thorough grounding in the ideology that underlies policymaking in the neoliberal era. This understanding then acts as invaluable context for the analysis of the UK’s open access policy in Chapter 7. By highlighting the neoliberal aspects of open access policy, the political tensions within open access advocacy are shown to have real effects on the way that open access is unfolding. Finally, Chapter 8 proposes the commons as a useful theoretical model for conceptualising a future scholarly publishing ecosystem that is free from neoliberal ideology. An argument is made that a commons-based open access policy is possible, though must be carefully constructed with close attention paid to the power relations that exist between different scholarly communities. 3 Acronyms and Abbreviations AAM – Author Accepted Manuscript AGORA – Access to Global Online Research on Agriculture AHRC – Arts and Humanities Research Council APC – Article Processing Charge BBSRC – Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council BIS – Department for Business, Innovation and Skills BSD – Berkeley Software Distribution BOAI – Budapest Open Access Initiative CC BY – Creative Commons Attribution license CERN – European Organization for Nuclear Research COAF – Charity Open Access Fund CPR – Common-Pool Resources DfE – Department for the Economy (Northern Ireland) DNS – Domain Name System DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals EPSRC – Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ESCI – Emerging Sources Citation Index ESRC – Economic and Social Research Council FLOSS – Free/Libre Open Source Software F/OSS – Free and Open Source Software FTP – File Transfer Protocol GPL – General Public License HEFCE – Higher Education Funding Council for England HEFCW – Higher Education Funding Council for Wales HINARI – Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative IAB – Internet Advisory Board IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force IMF – International Monetary Fund LEO – Longitudinal Education Outcome 4 LIS – Library and Information Studies MLA – Modern Language Association MOOC – Massively Open Online Course MRC – Medical Research Council NERC – Natural Environment Research Council NIH – National Institutes of Health (US) OA – Open Access OCSDnet – Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network OfS – Office for Students OKFN – Open Knowledge Foundation OLH – Open Library of Humanities OPEC – Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries OSI – Open Systems Interconnection PFI – Private Finance Initiative QR – Quality-Related Research RAE – Research Assessment Exercise RCUK – Research Councils UK Redalyc – Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y El Caribe, España y Portugal REF – Research Excellence Framework REG – Research Excellence Grant SciELO – Scientific Electronic Library Online SCWG – Scholarly Commons Working Group SFC – Scottish Funding Council SPARC – Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition STFC – Science and Technology Facilities Council TCP/IP – Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol UCU – University and College Union UKRI – UK Research and Innovation UK-SCL – UK Scholarly Communications Licence UUK – Universities UK WTO – World Trade Organisation 5 Contents Acknowledgements ….. 2 Abstract ….. 3 Acronyms and Abbreviations ….. 4 Chapter 1. Introduction ….. 8 Chapter 2. Access to Knowledge: Academic Publishing ….. 21 Chapter 3. Access to Knowledge: Universities and Libraries ….. 44 Chapter 4. Understanding Openness ….. 62 Chapter 5. Neoliberalism, Liberty, and Openness ….. 88 Chapter 6. Neoliberal Higher Education ….. 129 Chapter 7. Open Access Policy in the UK ….. 151 Chapter 8. The Commons as an Alternative Policy Framework ….. 181 Chapter 9. Conclusion ….. 230 References ….. 233 6 “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin 7 Chapter 1. Introduction Open access means making scholarly research freely available online for people to read with minimal restrictions on access and reuse (Eve 2014: 1; Suber 2012: 4).1 This simple definition masks a wealth of complexity. Indeed, open access is a concept that has had a notable impact on the way scholarly research is communicated and provoked a wide variety of responses from different stakeholders. In particular, the political aspects of open access, although often foregrounded in discussions regarding its intent, are under-theorized in the academic literature. This thesis is an attempt to address the political implications of open access and the implementation of open access policy. As will be made clear, open access has garnered support from both neoliberal ideologues and social justice activists (Eve 2017a: 55; Wickham and Vincent 2013: 6; see also Tkacz 2012: 399; Weller 2014: 156–59). Therefore the focus of this thesis is on exploring the extent to which open access policy has been suffused with neoliberalism – how and why the ‘neoliberalisation’ of open access can be said to have occurred, explaining why this is important, and what steps may be taken as counter measures to work towards a non-neoliberal open access policy. This chapter will introduce the topic and summarise the overall thesis. It begins with a brief overview of open access, discussing its origins and purposes. Next follows an initial discussion of the politics surrounding open access, highlighting the complexity of this area of study and demonstrating the need for detailed research. Finally, an outline of the thesis explains the structure of this text and summarises its contents. What is open access? The term open access (OA) has been used in different contexts to describe the level of access to various resources, such as access to land or telecommunications infrastructure (Davis 2009; Mair 2016; Newman 2016; UK Government [n.d.]). As stated above, in this thesis – and throughout the literature on scholarly communication – open access is used in reference to 1 The term ‘open access’ is used throughout this thesis without a hyphen, for instance, journals are referred to as ‘open access journals’ rather than ‘open-access journals’. 8 scholarly research. In general, the term is restricted to formal written scholarly texts such as academic books, journal articles, and theses. The related activities of making other educational and scholarly materials openly available may be called open education or open data. Chapter 4 will discuss the concept of openness and its various permutations at length. Before this discussion, it is important to acknowledge the long history of scholarly research being shared both among communities of scholars and with wider publics.2 This is why Chapter 2 explores the role of publishing in sharing scholarly knowledge, giving further definitions and background history of scholarly publishing. Indeed, in some ways open access can be seen as a reaction against, and positioned in opposition to, traditional academic publishing. The ‘traditional’ academic publishing practices that were in place during the print era largely revolved around the formats of printed books and journals. Since the open access policy examined later in this thesis predominantly affects journals rather than books, the background context provided in early chapters also focuses largely on journals. As will be made clear, academic journals may have retained certain continuities over the centuries but they also adapted as the working practices of scholars changed. In particular, the increased presence of for-profit corporations within the academic publishing sector in the post-war period coincided with economic and political developments within the higher education sector, not least the ‘publish or perish’ culture that is itself linked to the objectives of research funders (Fyfe et al. 2017; see also Bence and Oppenheim 2005). For some (though not all) open access advocates, the presence of private companies that generate large profits from subscription scholarly publishing is itself a central motivation for promoting open access as an alternative publishing model (for instance see Lawson 2017, Monbiot 2011, Priego and Fiormonte 2018). The tension between whether or not the profit- making issue is important is key to understanding the divergent approaches to open access policy analysed in Chapters 7 and 8. Before delving further in the politics around open access, some description of the concept will help to ground the later discussion. Open access, as a specific form of publishing and sharing scholarship, became possible with the advent of digital technologies. As such, elements of 2 When speaking of ‘public access’ to scholarship, there are many different publics for which open access could be beneficial. A non-exhaustive list of these publics includes medical charities, parliamentary researchers, small businesses, community organisations, lifelong students, citizen scientists, etc. (see ElSabry 2017). 9 what was later to become known as open access can be traced back to the earliest days of the internet, as academics used the internet to share data and communicate via digital networks (for example by email) long before the web was created. The history of the internet is inseparable from its relationship to academia; the original ARPANET, a precursor to today’s internet, was created to share information between networked computers (Kelty 2008: 139) at a time when computers were so large and expensive that researchers at established research institutions such as universities made up a significant proportion of users (see Chapter 4 for more on this history). Over time, as internet-based technologies became more widely adopted, the traditional print publishing industry began to publish in digital formats as well. This led to new industry practices such as selling online access to subscription journals in bundles known as ‘big deals’, in which an institution pays a single fee to a publisher in order to access its entire journal portfolio (Wellcome Trust 2003: 6). This is a pertinent example of how the web enables a variety of different practices, not only ones involving a greater degree of openness. The term open access was originally defined in 2002 by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which opened with the memorable phrase: ‘An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good’ (Chan et al. 2002). This statement highlights the role of technology as an enabler while simultaneously proclaiming the ethical and social nature of open access. The Budapest Declaration was followed by two further declarations – the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (Brown et al. 2003), and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003). These three declarations – referred to by Peter Suber as the ‘BBB definition’ (Suber 2012: 7) – helped to define open access as a ‘movement’3 and provide a common touchstone to conceptualise it. The BOAI was formulated at a meeting organised by the Open Society Institute, which was named by its founder, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, after the work of Karl Popper (Peters and Roberts 2011: 36). As Chapter 5 will make clear, Popper’s conception of the ‘open society’ was written as a defence of liberal democracy (Popper 2003 [1945], 2003a [1945a]). While the connection between Popper’s ideas and current open access communities is not 3 Use of the term ‘movement’ to describe the actions of ‘open’ advocates and practitioners is further discussed by Kelty (2008: 98, 113–15) who sees its birth in 1998. The term is not used much in this thesis because it implies a conceptual and political coherence that is not always present; to speak of open communities may often be more useful. 10