[GOAL] Geoffrey Crossick's report for HEFCE on OA, and the missing monograph crisis

[Gary Hall]

Can I ask, what are people on GOAL making of the understanding of the 
monograph crisis conveyed in Geoffrey Crossick's report, Monographs and 
Open Access, for HECFE in the UK?
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/year/2015/monographs/

According to this report, the monograph crisis isn't so much about a 
decline in the number of monographs that are being acquired by libraries 
because said libraries can no longer afford them due to the high and 
rising costs of journal subscriptions. Nor is it about the impact this 
state of affairs has on the kind of monographs that are being published 
- more short academic/trade books, textbooks, introductions and 
reference works selected for commercial reasons; and fewer original, 
specialised research monographs chosen on the basis of their academic 
quality and value - and the consequences of all this for the academy, 
and for early career academics especially. Instead, the monograph crisis 
is said to be more about the number of monographs that are being 
published. And since the latter is apparently growing in the UK 
(although it's worth noting that the term monograph is often being used 
quite broadly here to take in edited collections, critical editions and 
other longer outputs such as scholarly exhibition catalogues), then one 
of the report's conclusions is that it's not appropriate to talk about a 
monograph crisis.

But doesn't redefining the monograph crisis like this have the effect of 
taking the focus of debate away from the policies and practices of those 
publishing companies that are responsible for the rising costs of 
journal subscriptions: i.e. precisely the state of affairs that is 
regarded by many as being one of the major causes of the monograph 
crisis, and therefore as something that needs to be taken fully into 
account if the issue is ever to be adequately addressed?  Is this the 
light in which we need to read the conclusion of the report's summary, 
which emphasizes the importance of 'working with the grain', and of 
ensuring that any future policies for open-access monographs 'sustain 
and enhance', rather than damage, how people currently produce and 
communicate research in the arts, humanities and social sciences?

-- 
Gary Hall
Research Professor of Media and Performing Arts
School of Art and Design, Coventry University
Co-Director, Open Humanities Press
http://openhumanitiespress.org/
Visiting Professor, Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University
http://www.leuphana.de/zentren/cdc/forschung-projekte/alle/hybrid-publishing-lab.html
Website http://www.garyhall.info

NEW BOOK: Open Education: A Study in Disruption
(London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2014) - co-authored by Coventry’s Open Media Group and Mute Publishing
http://www.rowmaninternational.com/books/open-education
and available open access at http://bit.ly/1tI3XEV