Naomi Segal
UCML Vice-Chair Research
report for Plenary, 5 July 2013
Since my last report, to the Plenary on 18 January 2013, I have attended several meetings on behalf
of UCML, and carried out various other activities, mainly to do with Open Access issues. This report
includes brief notes on each of these, plus a few other points in relation to MFL research (on REF, the
BA, the AHRC etc).
OPEN ACCESS
I
submission to BIS Inquiry on OA
5 February 2013
I submitted a 2-page reply to the BIS Inquiry, on behalf of UCML; it can be found on the website at:
http://www.ucml.ac.uk/news/164.
II
AHUG
4 March 2013
The Arts & Humanities User Group [AHUG] is an informal grouping of representatives of various AHSS
organisations, including UCML and various other modern languages subject associations. It is run by
Prof Peter Mandler of Cambridge University and Prof Robin Osborne of UCL, both historians, and it is
administered from within the Royal Historical Society, at UCL. The discussion was both informed and
lively, and Peter Mandler has drafted a number of responses on the OA debate, of which the most
recent is http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/OAInformationSheetRHSversion20June2013final.pdf
(information on copyright issues) and http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/RHSPresidentOA%20EletterJune2013.pdf (letter to members dated June 2013). A Joint Statement on OA arguments, to
which UCML is signatory, can be found on the UCML website. AHUG is under development, and will
probably change its name and profile somewhat; UCML will continue to be involved.
III
response to HEFCE OA ‘call for advice’
25 March 2013
On 25 March I submitted a 4-page response on behalf of UCML to HEFCE’s seeking of ‘advice’ from a
range of organisations on OA; see http://www.ucml.ac.uk/languages-research . HEFCE is continuing to
consult, as announced on their website: ‘The outcomes of the first step of this consultation will be
used to help develop full proposals for the implementation of our open-access policy, incorporating the
advice we receive. We will issue a formal consultation on the developed proposals later in 2013’.
IV
AUPHF OA discussion
17 May 2013
As a member of AUPHF, I attended their Annual Event in Cambridge in May. This included a useful
debate on OA, with presentations by Peter Morgan of Cambridge University Library, Nigel Vincent of
the British Academy and Gaynor Redvers-Mutton, Business Development Manager, Maney Publishing.
V
OAPEN-UK on OA for monographs
1 July 2013
This two-day event has been run at the British Library by JISC Collections and OAPEN-UK, with
sponsorship from the AHRC, ESRC, the FWF (AT) and NWO (NL). It focused on a so-far neglected area
of the OA debate: open access publication of monographs. The first day began with a challenging
advocacy of OA by Prof Jean-Claude Guédon of the University of Montreal and ended with a
presentation of an exploratory project on open peer review by Kathleen Fitzpatrick of the MLA; see
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02691728.2010.498929#.UdLVQn9wb90.
Fitzpatrick’s
book Planned Obsolescence (which was peer reviewed both in the traditional and this new way in
2009) appeared in 2011. Other discussions included a panel on HSS after Finch, at which Subject
Associations were represented by Sally Hardy and representatives of HEFCE and the EC also spoke;
one on Promising Business Models, which featured innovative ideas for creating affordable and
sustainable publication for HSS monographs, of which the most striking are the Open Library of
Humanities
(https://www.openlibhums.org/)
and
Knowledge
Unlatched
(http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/ ), both of which involve collaboration between academics,
libraries and publishers; and an amazingly cogent introduction to the Creative Commons by a librarian
UCML Plenary 5 June 2013
Vice-Chair Research report
2
and a lawyer. (A very useful introduction to Creative Commons, which can be downloaded at
http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/ccguide/, was written by the OAPEN-UK team.)
A recent publication by the British Academy, coedited by Nigel Vincent & Chris Wickham and
titled Debating Open Access, gives a lively and timely introduction to all the issues. UCML
members may be particularly interested in the chapter by Chris Wickham, ‘Open access in the
UK and the international environment’ (pp. 42-53); the whole book can be found – on open
access, of course – at http://www.britac.ac.uk/openaccess/debatingopenaccess.cfm.
UCML representative of East Asian languages Gerda Wielander, currently in Hobart,
Australia, attended a discussion on Open Access at the 8 th International Convention of Asian
Scholars on 26 June at Macau. The focus was particularly on the ‘view from Asia’ and the effects
on libraries and publishers; concern was expressed about rising costs and about the lack of
communication between libraries and repositories. Hong Kong University Press has been
experimenting with OA publication.
OTHER
V
British Academy
22 April 2013
The annual discussion held this April at the British Academy for Subject Associations in the Arts &
Humanities focused in particular on what Subject Associations wanted the BA to do for them. The
presentations (by Vivien Hurley, Marl Llewellyn and Phil Sooben, followed by break-outs and lively
discussion) can be found online at: http://www.britac.ac.uk/policy/HSSLSSA-Strategy-FundingApril2013.cfm .
On 27 June, the BA also published a guide on the value of language learning, titled Talk the Talk; see
http://www.britac.ac.uk/news/news.cfm/newsid/948.
VI
Academy of Social Sciences
11 & 17 June 2013
The Academy of Social Sciences has an ongoing campaign to make social sciences more visible, and
they run large events with big-name speakers ; I attended two events in this half-year. On 11 June
they launched Making the Case for the social sciences 8, on longitudinal studies
(http://www.acss.org.uk/docs/Making%20the%20Case/ACSS_Longitudinal_studies_FINAL.pdf).
Among the speakers were Polly Toynbee and David Willetts. On 17 June I attended a talk at the British
Library on social media, in their series ‘Myths & Realities’.
VII
REF
update
On Thursday 20 June 2013, updated panel membership lists was published on the REF website
(http://www.ref.ac.uk/panels/panelmembership/): see Panel D, sub-panel 28. The lists now includes,
in addition to all panel members, the additional assessors who have formally agreed to join the panels
(following approval from each funding body’s chief executives).
VIII
AHRC/HERA
30, 31 May & 1 June
I attended (and addressed) the HERA [Humanities in the European Research Area] Final Conference
celebrating the double Joint Research Programmes of 2009, one of whose panels I chaired. The new
JRP awards on European Cultural Encounters can be seen on the AHRC website at
(http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News-and-Events/News/Pages/Cultural-Encounters---successful-Europeanbids-announced-.aspx) and the HERA website at http://www.heranet.info/news/hera-fund-150humanities-research-centres-across-europe-its-second-international-joint-research. From now on HERA
will be administered by AHRC.