Open Access at a mission-led university press

In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles speaks with Julia Mortimer, Journals Director and Head of Open Access at Bristol University Press.

They discuss recent developments in Open Access, including funder mandates, community-led models and the direction Bristol University Press are heading in.  In addition, they offer advice for authors, and potential authors, for navigating this fast-moving publishing landscape.

Find out more about Open Access on the Bristol University Press website.

Bristol University Press/Policy Press newsletter subscribers receive a 25% discount – sign up here.

Transcript

00:00:06 Jess Miles 

Hi, my name is Jess Miles and welcome to the Transforming Society podcast. Most of our listeners will be familiar with the term Open Access, which means making published academic research freely available so anyone can benefit from reading and using it. It's the biggest change to academic publishing to happen in decades. Open Access supports and encourages the free exchange of knowledge. 

00:00:28 Jess Miles 

And resources to widen access, increased diversity and encourage innovation and new ideas. 

00:00:35 Jess Miles 

Today we are speaking to Julia Mortimer, who is journals director and head of Open Access at Bristol University Press, as a mission LED not-for-profit publisher the Bristol University Press strategy, which Julia has been developing, is to move as much of our research based publishing to Open Access as possible. This means it can be put to use in making a difference in supporting. 

00:00:56 Jess Miles 

Social change and social justice, especially around the global social challenges our Open Access program is part of our commitment to achieve this. 

00:01:04 Jess Miles 

As an emerging movement and one in which university presses in particular have a lot to offer, there are many aspects of Open Access to negotiate and questions around equity and accessibility. Luckily for us, Julia is here to guide us through. 

00:01:19 Jess Miles 

Welcome, Julia. 

00:01:20 Julia Mortimer 

Hi Jess, thanks for inviting me 

00:01:22 Jess Miles 

Let's start with a bit of background and context. Why are we seeing this shift to an Open Access model of publishing now? 

00:01:29 Julia Mortimer 

OK, so uh, it's not necessarily new. There's been a desire for Open Access publishing since the the time when publishing moved from print to digital, essentially. 

00:01:40 Julia Mortimer 

But there has been a real push from it more latterly from funders, and I'm sure you've heard me talking about it just but, you know, Coalition Ness and Planless was very fundamental in in driving and speeding up this transition because it's, you know, it's actually saying from the Thunder. 

00:01:59 Julia Mortimer 

Point of view that there are mandates to people that receive the funding they they're paying for that funding that they shouldn't then be behind pay walls. It should be freely open for everybody. And so they're they're put. They've been pushing that behind the. 

00:02:16 Julia Mortimer 

Means I think what also is is new more recently is that there's a real focus on equity and inclusion and the Open Access publishing and can play a big part certainly in the read you know the read side you know the benefits are obvious but I think we're going to. 

00:02:33 Julia Mortimer 

Talk a. 

00:02:33 Julia Mortimer 

Bit later about how we achieve that. 

00:02:36 Julia Mortimer 

On the published side too. 

00:02:37 Jess Miles 

And how is it that university presses in particular are well placed to support this transition to Open Access? 

00:02:46 Julia Mortimer 

Well, University Press is, you know, they they're actually based within the research institutions and they're very close to the academics who produce the research. And, you know, given the the, the, the, all of us, in fact, I'm sure all of us in the University Press publishing world, our mission led and not-for-profit. 

00:03:07 Julia Mortimer 

It puts us in a very different position to commercial publishers in that we don't have shareholders to generate revenue for. Essentially, we're trying to generate money to publish and we're trying to publish to make a difference. So in achieving that aim to make a difference in society that's going to be greatly assisted by. 

00:03:27 Julia Mortimer 

Publishing being freely available to read and to be used, so I think. 

00:03:32 Julia Mortimer 

We're we're sort. 

00:03:33 Julia Mortimer 

Of on a par. 

00:03:34 Julia Mortimer 

With the the essential mission of Open Access, it's it's how we achieve it, which is the crucial question. 

00:03:40 Jess Miles 

Yeah, they seem to link together really well. 

00:03:43 Jess Miles 

Ohh you mentioned just now briefly something called Plan S and that's part of this. I don't quite know how to describe it, but there's slightly more formal structure around Open Access that's bringing all the university presses and everyone else together. What? And there's also the UK RI policy that's coming in January 2024. 

00:04:03 Jess Miles 

As well. So what are the external policy drivers of Open Access and how are they affecting change? 

00:04:10 Julia Mortimer 

Yes, well, planner planners is a is a the plan that has been. 

00:04:16 Julia Mortimer 

Put together by the organisation, called Coalition S, and that Coalition S is actually made-up of a group of research funders from from across the world. Primarily, you know, starting in northern Europe, essentially a new care. I played a key part in that establishing of coalition. 

00:04:24 

The. 

00:04:37 Julia Mortimer 

Sam Thomas. 

00:04:39 Julia Mortimer 

So different funders within the coalition have different mandates, policies about how they want the research that they fund to be disseminated and made Open Access. So the journals policy and in terms of Uri, the journals policy came into place in April. 

00:05:00 Julia Mortimer 

2022 and it states that journal articles as outputs of Uri funding have to be immediately Open Access either via a gold route whereby the authors institution pays. 

00:05:14 Julia Mortimer 

Usually with funded money that's been given to them in the past through block grants and article article processing charges for the version of records. So that's what you know, that's the gold routes to be freely available and. 

00:05:29 Jess Miles 

And just clarify on the different routes to Open Access. So there are people listening who don't know so much about Open Access. There's different levels, aren't there. So there's like green, gold and diamond. And I think gold is the one where. 

00:05:32 Julia Mortimer 

Sure. 

00:05:40 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:05:47 Jess Miles 

For the publishing service producing the work. 

00:05:49 Julia Mortimer 

Exactly. So that's what the article processing charge in journals is, or a book processing charge for books, and that is essentially paying for the publishing service of of getting that article or that book available and doing the work that's needed to get it up to standard. 

00:06:08 Julia Mortimer 

All the production values and work that goes into it that goes into that final version of record. 

00:06:16 Julia Mortimer 

And then green is is an alternative, which is the. Basically the authors accepted manuscript. So once the publisher is enabled or facilitated, the peer review process, the. 

00:06:32 Julia Mortimer 

The UK wide policy states that the researchers should put. 

00:06:36 

Yes. 

00:06:36 Julia Mortimer 

That article at that stage the author accepted manuscript into a repository and which exists within their institution. So Bristol University has its own repository, for example, because essentially you know the researcher has done that work whilst they've been working at the University of Bristol and it's been funded by. 

00:06:57 Julia Mortimer 

Taxpayers money through UK ice. 

00:06:59 Julia Mortimer 

So you know it's it can sit there and and that's much more popular. It has to be said to date with arts, humanities and social science publishers being able to get the funding generated enough for article processing charges in a lot of cases. But that's what has happened with the the route. 

00:07:08 Julia Mortimer 

You haven't. 

00:07:19 Julia Mortimer 

The journals. 

00:07:20 Julia Mortimer 

And for books, the monograph strategy comes into place in 2024, January 2024. So very close. There are a lot of the strategy we've been working on as we've been getting ready for that and ensuring that we can help our authors comply with that policy. And that differs in that the green route. 

00:07:26 Jess Miles 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:07:40 Julia Mortimer 

Has a 12 month embargo. 

00:07:42 Julia Mortimer 

So because there's an acknowledgement from funders that put that publishers do need to to sell some copies of their books before those are freely available article, but you know, Open Access funding can also generate a lot of print sales for a book as well right now, where we are in right now, we don't know what will happen in the future. 

00:08:04 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah. So other publishers around the world and funders around the world all have their own policies as well. Yeah. And which are similar to this UK? 

00:08:12 Jess Miles 

No one. Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you. There's all these little bits that go on and yeah, it's somehow some. Yeah. It's sometimes hard to get your head around how it all works together and what impact it will have on researchers and publishers. 

00:08:18 Julia Mortimer 

It's complicating it. 

00:08:29 Jess Miles 

Absolutely. Yeah. So I would say this, but I think it's fair to say that Bristol University Press is doing some exciting things as a not-for-profit press. We've got our global social challenges journal and we're doing more read and publish agreements. So can you tell us a little bit about what direction we're going in as a press? 

00:08:50 Jess Miles 

Someone. 

00:08:52 Julia Mortimer 

Yes, of course I can. So as I just sort of touched upon, social sciences are not as well funded as science, technology and medicine. And so we're looking at the variety of routes to meet our OA goals. Some of our publications undoubtedly will be made Open Access through the routes that I just described. 

00:09:12 Julia Mortimer 

Because they they would. They come out of UK, right? 

00:09:16 Julia Mortimer 

Funding. But we publish authors from all over the world, so that's not going to apply to everything. And and I'm very excited about global social challenges journal. So yes, we all are at the press, aren't we? 

00:09:25 Jess Miles 

I'm very excited about that. The social challenges and it's a fully it's a fully a fully Open Access journal. 

00:09:33 Julia Mortimer 

It's our first fully Open Access journal and it was an an initiative set up by the press to be a vehicle to publish interdisciplinary works that's aimed at. 

00:09:44 Julia Mortimer 

Tackling the Sustainable development goals and especially the social challenges and that we face globally. So it's really important for us that that work is available, Open Access. You know it would be counterintuitive to to publish it and then have it behind a paywall. 

00:10:02 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah. So the challenge then was, well, how do we fund it? You know, we have we are self financing as the press you know we don't have the deep pockets of some of the American University presses unfortunately. 

00:10:16 Julia Mortimer 

So we have to make generate our own revenue, but the university recognised that some initiative like this would need some start up support. So we've had that from the university and and we waived all article processing charges in the first year. But we realized you know. 

00:10:35 Julia Mortimer 

It's it's been a bit of an experiment in a lot of ways and we realized that even doing that was, you know, potentially still exclusive for some people, you know have we've got waivers and discounts in place. 

00:10:48 Julia Mortimer 

This, but you know the very process of having to apply for a waiver and you know, being differentiated in that way you know is is can be seen as exclusive really. 

00:10:55 Jess Miles 

Yeah. 

00:11:00 Julia Mortimer 

So we what we'd really like to do, we're so now we've got to pay what you can model rather than sort of separating out pay. Some people pay, some people don't pay what you can. So that means that if you are funded, you know in in by a wealthy institution in the global north. 

00:11:12 Jess Miles 

OK. 

00:11:20 Julia Mortimer 

And you might well want to get that funding and then that will help support the journal and in turn, you know, we can publish researchers globally. 

00:11:31 Julia Mortimer 

But the other thing that we're doing is looking at working with Open Access community frameworks and initiatives that a lot of the library consortia we're looking at looking into, which is what's now commonly termed diamond Open Access. 

00:11:46 Julia Mortimer 

This has been called platinum in the past, but. 

00:11:49 Julia Mortimer 

I think we're. 

00:11:50 Julia Mortimer 

Settling on Diamond now. So that's essentially where libraries all put together donations to help fund a journal and to cover its full costs. And so it's a, if you look at it that way, it's like a flipping of. 

00:12:06 Julia Mortimer 

Term libraries paying subscription fees and instead of paying subscription fees, they're paying a fee to support the Open Access publishing. 

00:12:15 Julia Mortimer 

Of that journal. 

00:12:16 Julia Mortimer 

And that's sort of mutually beneficial because the libraries want to support Open Access. The publishers need funding in order to publish the work. So it's, you know, it's seen as a as a much more useful and symbiotic model really. And it's something that we we experimented with on our in our books list as well. 

00:12:37 Julia Mortimer 

And we've been involved in the disc open up proposal that we put out to libraries through the GIST consortia. That's with other UK university presses and that's resulted in a a few of our monographs will be able to be published Open Access as a result of that. 

00:12:56 Julia Mortimer 

And then when we've been involved with knowledge on latch for a long time, which is essentially a sort of library crowdfunding model too, and we're going to be participating in J stores pass to open next year, which again, so those are the sorts of library diamond funding models. But we you know, we'd also. 

00:13:08 Jess Miles 

Right. 

00:13:17 Julia Mortimer 

Welcome other sources of funding. 

00:13:19 Julia Mortimer 

Which is something we're going to be investigating more in the future. 

00:13:22 Jess Miles 

Yeah, it's also up in the air at the moment, isn't there? And there's all these pockets of potential money and activity, but there's going to need to be more coming through, isn't there to make it. 

00:13:33 Jess Miles 

Enable. 

00:13:34 Julia Mortimer 

Exactly it's it's relatively small scale at the moment and it's it's gonna take some time before social science publishers can move. 

00:13:39 Jess Miles 

Yeah. 

00:13:44 Jess Miles 

Fully. So. It's brilliant that we're so involved, though in all the bits that we are at this relatively early stage, I think so can you tell us a little bit about read and publish? 

00:13:56 Jess Miles 

That's well. 

00:13:57 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah, so reading publishes of what we're trying to do on the journals front, and that's with our other journals, which you know, we've got a list of 20 journals now. 

00:14:08 Julia Mortimer 

Which have operated under what's called a hybrid model. You know they've been subscription, but they've also accepted gold Open Access articles. 

00:14:17 Julia Mortimer 

And in order to speed up that transition so that those journals can publish more, read and publish means that the institutions subscribe to our collection of journals and then their researchers in those institutions can publish in our journals, you know, they've they've. 

00:14:37 Julia Mortimer 

Put in a a submission, they get accepted. 

00:14:39 Julia Mortimer 

They can publish gold without any separate PC funding, so takes any pressure off the author having to worry about that. And also it's really easy for the library to manage because and one of the ways that I think as a a University Press and not-for-profit, that we're trying to really make it as simple as possible. 

00:15:00 Julia Mortimer 

As it's uncapped, you know libraries don't have to worry about the number of articles and. 

00:15:04 Jess Miles 

Yes, lots of people do, cap, don't they? 

00:15:07 Julia Mortimer 

Some of the models in have been based on, you know, previous levels of publishing and then some match that and then they charge extra on top of that. But we're saying, well, you're giving us the amount of money, you know, which is pretty fixed fee. You know, we we want to tier it to make it more affordable for some institutions. 

00:15:27 Julia Mortimer 

But it's a simple fixed fee for a lot. 

00:15:30 Julia Mortimer 

Of them. And then, you know, it enables that shift. So there's more area publishing and less behind the paywall. 

00:15:37 Jess Miles 

And without the cap, it means that within institutions, they're not having to make choices about who gets to publish Open Access. And then that's improving equity as well, isn't it? I'm going to ask you about that. 

00:15:48 Julia Mortimer 

Absolutely. 

00:15:49 Jess Miles 

In the next question. 

00:15:50 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah. No, that's a really good point, actually. Just. Yeah, that you know, an early career research has got just as the same chances of publishing Open Access as somebody who's, you know, might count more towards the raffle. Yeah. 

00:16:05 Jess Miles 

Exactly. Yeah. It's really it's a really important difference, I think. 

00:16:10 Jess Miles 

So let's talk a little bit about equality. Open Access is clearly about equality in the sense that it makes research accessible, but I think there is a risk that these emerging OA models might favour wealthier research. Intensive institutions might favour global N over. 

00:16:29 Jess Miles 

Global S I'm not sure, and I know at Bristol University Press achieving equitable Open Access is a real priority for us. 

00:16:38 Jess Miles 

So can you? 

00:16:39 Jess Miles 

Tell us a little bit about the issues around this in more detail. 

00:16:45 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah, sure. I mean, I, you know, everybody's aware that there are traditional inequities in access to research, you know, in the past that, you know, if you're in Africa, you might not be able to get access to read something that's in nature or or in other journals. And, you know, there's a worry that this could be perpetuated. 

00:17:07 Julia Mortimer 

Through new read and published deals in relation to access to publishing. So you know if you're in a a very wealthy research institution in the global north. 

00:17:18 Julia Mortimer 

You no problem, but otherwise you know you've got to. We talked about the problems of maybe having to apply for a waiver or only getting a discount, still not going being able to afford the rest of. 

00:17:28 Julia Mortimer 

The. 

00:17:28 Julia Mortimer 

Fees. But I do think there's increasingly a desire for institutions in the global N to help tip that balance back towards. 

00:17:38 Julia Mortimer 

Helping Global scholars global sales scholars to be able to pay costs as. 

00:17:42 Julia Mortimer 

Well. 

00:17:43 Julia Mortimer 

So I think that sort of operates in a way through the diamond model as well, where libraries are aware that. 

00:17:50 Julia Mortimer 

They're trying to fund it for everybody because they they do have more resource, so it's a sort of, you know, making the resource more widely beneficial than just benefiting themselves, I guess. And it's really important to us that our model uses waivers and discounts as little as possible. 

00:17:56 Jess Miles 

Right. 

00:18:11 Julia Mortimer 

In the future. 

00:18:14 Julia Mortimer 

So Diamond the diamond model is a lot more appealing because it keeps journal costs away from the author completely. They don't have to get involved. Yeah, that's the idea. 

00:18:24 Julia Mortimer 

And and we, you know, I always think we were talking the other day about. 

00:18:29 Julia Mortimer 

The fact that. 

00:18:29 Julia Mortimer 

We've been the first publisher to sign up to the Africa Charter for transformative research collaborations. 

00:18:36 Jess Miles 

Yes, this is a big deal, yeah. 

00:18:38 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah, this. 

00:18:39 Julia Mortimer 

Is a major initiative within higher education. Essentially, you know, to really look at at what's equitable right from the beginning of research collaborations? 

00:18:51 Julia Mortimer 

And it's the starting point for change and we want to support its principles in whatever way we can through our publishing. 

00:18:58 Jess Miles 

Yeah, definitely. 

00:19:00 Julia Mortimer 

And we're the foot. Yes, I think I might mention, but we've we've the very first publisher to have signed up. So we're delighted about that. 

00:19:06 Jess Miles 

Yeah, it's. Yeah. It's really important stuff. 

00:19:10 Jess Miles 

OK, so for any authors listening out there thinking about publishing Open Access, what options does Bristol University Press currently offer for both books and journals? 

00:19:24 Julia Mortimer 

OK. So yeah, at the moment we. 

00:19:27 Julia Mortimer 

Offer both the. 

00:19:28 Julia Mortimer 

Gold and green options that that I've been talking about, we're completely compliant with funder mandates. So if if you are publishing your research and your funders, even if it differs from UK right policy, you can still come to us and say I need to be able to do that. 

00:19:45 Julia Mortimer 

This, and you know within within every we will try and meet that requirement in whatever way we can, but essentially at the moment it's repository for green and article processing charge for the goal. 

00:19:46 Jess Miles 

OK. 

00:20:01 Julia Mortimer 

And then on the books front, you know, we are involved in a number of book projects and proposals whereby we can publish, we start to be able to put books into programs and and publish them away from the outset. 

00:20:17 Jess Miles 

Is that like knowledge unlatched and the other one you mentioned earlier? 

00:20:21 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah, the open up initiative, which is about UK University Press. 

00:20:23 Jess Miles 

It's not, yes. 

00:20:27 Julia Mortimer 

And you know, because of the generous donations from librarians, that means that we're able to say, OK, well, this this book coming up, that's really important to be Open Access. It's about a key global social challenge. So we're gonna, we're gonna put that one forward for the for that pot of money. So, you know. 

00:20:46 Julia Mortimer 

Create. We're doing that increasingly. So I think you know also we have a good chance of. 

00:20:51 Julia Mortimer 

Being able to be considered for that, even if they don't have the funding. 

00:20:55 Jess Miles 

Yes, great to know. There are these other options beyond the APC's, yeah. 

00:20:59 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah. And we do, you know, we obviously have to charge fees for the version of record being available because you know, we've got no other source of of keeping us going and wondering what we. 

00:21:13 Julia Mortimer 

But we try to. 

00:21:13 Jess Miles 

Do a lot. 

00:21:14 Jess Miles 

Of work on it as well. We it's yeah. 

00:21:17 Julia Mortimer 

We really do well, exactly the kind. 

00:21:18 Jess Miles 

Yeah. 

00:21:19 Julia Mortimer 

Of thing that. 

00:21:20 Julia Mortimer 

That we're talking about now, you know, for transforming society, you know, wonderful blog and and podcasts and videos that that we do to help researchers, you know, get their work more widely known. And that's partly what it's going to say when if you're considering a publisher. 

00:21:37 Julia Mortimer 

There are a lot of new institutionally based open. 

00:21:41 Julia Mortimer 

Access presses. Who? 

00:21:43 Julia Mortimer 

Can you know? They do a good job. They can put your work out. 

00:21:46 Julia Mortimer 

But you know, if you think about the context in which that work is seen within the publisher, we've got such a wide spread of coverage now across the social sciences, and your work gets marketed and, you know, discovered much more widely. And as a result. 

00:22:07 Jess Miles 

Absolutely. 

00:22:09 Julia Mortimer 

And that's why we have to, you know, that's where we have to charge it a bit more because we we do all of those added value things for every single, you know, book and journal articles that we publish. 

00:22:19 Jess Miles 

Yeah. So this is my final question, a final point. It's just always quite like it with these transforming society podcasts to leave people with something called to go away with. So what general advice and guidance would you give to authors and potential authors navigating this new publishing landscape? What are the? 

00:22:40 Jess Miles 

Key things they should be thinking of. 

00:22:42 Julia Mortimer 

That well, I think you know from, from listening to people speaking when I've met a lot of academics out at conferences, there's a wide range of variation in the amount of knowledge that's shared, you know, in individual institutions. And also, you know what, what you just personally might know. 

00:23:02 Julia Mortimer 

About open. 

00:23:03 Julia Mortimer 

1st so I think I would recommend if you are based in an institution, to find out who your OA team are there and talk to them because they're best place to advise you about you know what you need to do in relation to fundament dates and so on in that institution, usually based in the library. 

00:23:20 Jess Miles 

Alright, yeah. 

00:23:24 Julia Mortimer 

And you know, we obviously work closely with those librarians, too. Check your friend of policies. Make sure you know what you're supposed to do with your article or book in relation to a think about your Creative Commons licenses as well. You know, O work is all published. 

00:23:44 Julia Mortimer 

On on under these Creative Commons licenses and they do vary. I mean CBY is the gold standard that publishers like to. Sorry. Funders. 

00:23:56 Julia Mortimer 

To you to publish under, but it does mean that there can be less protection from risks sometimes, so we do for the books. In the past we've recommended non commercial for the use of the work and and you know. 

00:24:13 Julia Mortimer 

Making sure there's. 

00:24:14 Julia Mortimer 

Full attribution for your workers, and also that's one of the key things. 

00:24:19 Julia Mortimer 

And they had talked to us, talked to Bristol University press, if you're interested in publishing us with us, we're incredibly flexible. There's one thing I would say and, you know, we do have our fees and we, we have our information about what to do on our website, but we're always happy to sort of try and find different ways of making things work out for you. So. 

00:24:40 Julia Mortimer 

Do you talk to us about their solutions and what you're aiming to do? Yeah, we do all sorts of other things, like the executive summaries that we put out and and blog posts, which can really help. 

00:24:50 Julia Mortimer 

Get the message out. If the OA isn't possible at this point in time, for example. 

00:24:54 Jess Miles 

Yeah, that's a very good point. Thank you, Julia. This is such a learning curve for me, but I think it's such a fascinating area and I hope one but offers some real opportunities. It's quite exciting. 

00:25:07 Jess Miles 

But yeah, thank you for speaking to me today. 

00:25:11 Julia Mortimer 

Ohh, you're very welcome. It's it's Open Access week coming up. 

00:25:15 Julia Mortimer 

Seems so you know that's that's that's going to be triggering a lot, a lot of more exciting discussions about going forward. 

00:25:23 Julia Mortimer 

There's been so much rapid change in the past couple of years, it's it's all going to keep changing. 

00:25:28 Julia Mortimer 

I think I'm really excited about where where we're going with it now. 

00:25:32 Jess Miles 

Yeah. Interestingly, the theme of Open Access Week is communities over commercialisation or something. So I feel like as a not-for-profit University Press, we're going to slot in really, really well and hopefully offer something great for people. 

00:25:48 Julia Mortimer 

Yeah, absolutely. There's there's a lot of parity there with what we're, we're aiming for. So, thank you Jess 

00:25:55 Jess Miles 

No pleasure. Thank you. As Julia mentioned, you can find out more about Open Access at Bristol University Press on our website or get in touch with us. But as a start, the website address is bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/open-access. Thank you. Thanks.