Social Science Space

Having tracked and analysed the usage data of one university’s central open access fund over eight years, Stephen Pinfield finds that mandates, particularly if accompanied by funding, have played a very important role in encouraging uptake of Gold OA.

Stephen Pinfield, co-author of a new study looking at the role that a centralized ‘faculty publication fund’ could have on uptake of articles to the ‘gold’ version of open access publishing, discusses just how a central fund should be approached and how librarians and smaller institutions can play a role.

There is a divide in how academics from the humanities and social sciences view open access publishing compared to their colleagues in the science, technology and medical fields: HSS is notably more skittish about OA.

Open Access Week starts today and in honor Stephen Pinfield provides an overview of 18 propositions on open access identified through an extensive analysis of the discourse. It is clear that whilst OA has come a long way in the last five years, there is a lot to do in making open access work.

Are universities able to shoulder the costs of the open access transition, especially as the total cost of publishing is, for the moment, rising? Stephen Pinfield presents findings on the current state of institutional costs.

The landscape for open access in Britain’s social science and humanities fields is very different and very similar to the better studied STEM fields, a new report from the British Academy finds.