Nigel Vincent reflects on the Open Access monograph challenge
Monographs are an intrinsically important mode of academic production and must not be sacrificed on the altar of open access, argues Nigel Vincent in Debating Open Access, a new publication from the British Academy. Book chapters are also a valuable and distinctive type of output which could find their visibility, and hence their viability, enhanced by an appropriate OA policy.
There are to date no agreed OA solutions in the domain of books. In developing OA models for books it is important that the peer review process as the guarantee of excellence is not compromised. Adoption of the untrammelled CC-BY licence is not appropriate for monographs and book chapters.
Nigel Vincent is Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics at The University of Manchester, following his retirement from the Mont Follick Chair in Comparative Philology in 2011. Prior to that he was a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Pavia, the Romansk Institut in Copenhagen and an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury (NZ). His publications include The Romance Languages (with Martin Harris, 1988) and numerous articles on the modelling of linguistic change, with special reference to Latin, Italian and the dialects of Italy. From 2000 to 2005 he co-directed with Mair Parry and Robert Hastings the AHRC-funded project Sintassi degli antichi volgari d’Italia (SAVI). He chaired Main Panel M (Modern Languages and Linguistics) in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. He was elected a Fellowof the British Academy in 2006, where he is currently the Vice-President for Research & Higher Education Policy.
Read more about Debating Open Access, a collection of a series of 8 reflecting on the challenges and opportunities for humanities and social sciences open access publishing practices.
