This article is based on interviews with stakeholders conducted for the PALOMERA project. Interviewees highlighted three aspects of open access scholarly book publishing within Humanities and Social Sciences. First, unclear regulations create legal and technological challenges for actors despite their commitment to open access publishing. Second, the focus of open access on English can threaten multilingualism and bibliodiversity. Third, open access books struggle with a perceived lack of prestige compared to printed formats, impacting author incentives and trust in open access systems.
In the scholarly communications landscape, the shift towards open access has been predominantly focused on journal articles rather than books. This article delves into the perspectives of various stakeholders within the European Research Area regarding open access books, aiming to uncover attitudes, challenges and potential pathways to further advance this realm.
Methodology
The study used interviews to collect insights from the PALOMERA project’s stakeholders, including researchers, librarians, publishers, research funding organisations and policymakers across different countries within the European Research Area. A total of 39 individual and three group interviews were conducted.
**Policy and regulatory landscape.**The analysis revealed a diverse policy landscape across European Research Area countries regarding open access to academic publications. While several countries like Lithuania, Poland and Switzerland have established support frameworks for open access, the policies often focus on journal publications rather than books. Many existing policies are non-binding, comprising recommendations rather than mandates, which presents a challenge to the adoption of policies for open access books.
Attitudes towards open access books: Despite the lack of explicit guidelines, stakeholders are positively inclined towards integrating open access books into institutional and national policies. Many interviewees strongly supported open access books, highlighting their importance within the scholarly community.
Research assessment. Current evaluation systems often do not assign significant value to open access books, focusing instead on journal publications for academic recognition.
Multilingualism: There is a concern that open access policies might inadvertently favour publications in English, potentially marginalising works in other languages and impacting linguistic diversity in scholarly output.
Prestige. The prestige of publications remains tied to factors such as quality control, peer review processes and publishers’ reputations. The work’s open access status does not significantly influence its perceived prestige.
Incentives and decision-making. Stakeholders pointed out that without explicit reward systems compliance with funder requirements for open access remains the primary incentive for authors to publish their work openly. Besides funder requirements, factors influencing the decision to publish open access include the format of the work, the author’s career stage and available resources.
Research assessment and prestige. Regarding the role of publishers in the perceived prestige of open access books, authors were said to often perceive international and commercial publishers as more prestigious. This perception influences authors’ decisions as to where they choose to publish their work, impacting open access adoption rates.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while there is growing support for open access books among stakeholders in the European Research Area, significant challenges remain. The absence of clarity and specificity about books in many policy documents and the influence of traditional criteria for research evaluation pose barriers to widespread adoption. Addressing these challenges requires concerted efforts from policymakers, funding agencies, publishers and researchers to develop policies that incentivise open access publication of books. Enhancing the visibility and impact of open access books while preserving linguistic diversity and academic quality is crucial for advancing open scholarly communications within HSS.
This article is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.