Reflecting on publishing and research culture – with our Publisher, Dr Emma Gallon

Open research and research culture in the humanities: ‘community over commercialisation’

The Royal Society’s definition of research culture as encompassing the ‘behaviours, values, expectations, attitudes and norms of our research communities’ has now become quite a familiar one. As something that directly influences and is influenced by the way research is disseminated, publishers have a central role to play in research culture, and we therefore have an ongoing responsibility to examine the integrity of our publishing practices in this light. It’s an area we’ve spent some time considering at the University of London Press, both in line with our mission to support national humanities advocacy role of our home institution, the School of Advanced Study, as a supportive and collaborative publishing partner for humanities researchers and disciplines, and as a non-profit, predominantly open access publisher committed to furthering community-led and responsible models of enabling open access book publishing.

This Open Access Week 2024, we have a launched a new blog series on this topic – ‘Reflecting on publishing and research culture’. It features conversations with a number of our recent authors, covering the importance of positive research cultures in the humanities, the roles that book publishing and open access play, and their words of advice for newer authors looking to publish their first book (as well as for publishers!). We’d like to thank these authors very much for contributing such a rich and candid set of reflections on these themes.

It feels timely to be thinking about the topic of research culture and open research at this moment for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this year’s Open Access Week theme, ‘Community over commercialisation‘, explicitly invites us to consider the values behind the models and platforms in adopting ‘approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and academic community’. Secondly, the recent decision to remove the open access requirement for long-form outputs for the UK’s next Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2029 opens up questions (given the driver of research behaviours, expectations and norms that the REF can be) around how and if momentum towards a culture of open research in the humanities can be enabled and sustained.

What does open research in the humanities look like?

Open research (or open scholarship) involves a set of practices that make all stages of the research lifecycle more open and transparent. Open access to published outputs is an important element of this, but sharing research methods and (FAIR) research data, open peer review and public engagement initiatives, for example, can also all be valuable ways to open up research processes and findings for use and reuse by others. The Working Group on Open Research in the Humanities at the University of Cambridge has usefully identified the particular open research practices and considerations that characterise the arts and humanities as distinct from the sciences.  

But more than just a set of research practices and processes, open research also refers to the values and principles behind the conduct and communication of research. At this year’s Open and Engaged 2024 conference hosted by the British Library, Professor Jane Winters argued that ‘open research is responsible research’. The first blog posts in our new series also clearly emphasise this idea – a selection of the themes that have come up in the posts so far include transparency, collegiality and ethics, inclusivity, public engagement, visibility and recognition, global accessibility and supportive professional relationships, and equity and collaboration. In other words, those integral elements that make up a positive and healthy research culture.

Towards an open research culture in the humanities

When it comes to open access, the question that is often asked is – how can we increase open access publishing? And this of course is an important question but, as the concerns in the OA Week 2024 description reflect, it has also created a space for corporate monopolies, extreme levels of profit and changes in the control of knowledge production to fill. A slightly reframed version of the question could be – how can we improve research and publishing culture with open research as a central part? The outcome would hopefully be the same – greater openness of research – but the change in emphasis in how we get there could see beneficial shifts in focus from commercialisation to community, from policy compliance to culture, and improved cross-sector collaboration. A huge amount of excellent work on research culture is being carried out by UK research institutions, funders and related organisations. On the OA publishing side, a growing number of community-led initiatives are seeking to improve the support and governance, funding and infrastructure for open access ethically and sustainably, including the university presses and publishing services that make up the Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA), the Open Book Collective and other Copim/Open Book Futures projects, amongst others. At this pivotal moment for open research in the humanities following the REF decision around long-form outputs and given the centrality of the book to our disciplines, this could be the right time to connect more explicitly these areas of work on research culture and open research together.

We will be sharing new posts in our ‘Reflection on publishing and research culture’ series regularly so do check our news page and social media for updates.

Dr Emma Gallon is responsible for the commissioning and development of the Press’s books programme, across all subject areas in the humanities. With a background in research, academic publishing and open access, Emma held roles at Ashgate Publishing, Routledge, the University of Roehampton and Epigeum/Oxford University Press before joining UoL Press in 2021.