Academic & Professional

Welcome to academic & professional publishing

The UK is home to a world-class academic and scholarly publishing industry and a vigorous and innovative industry devoted to enhancing learner experiences. Here we will keep you alerted to the issues that will define the marketplace of the future.

The Academic & Professional Division (APD) works for a healthy marketplace: in higher education, the professions and among scholars. We address the challenges of managing and marketing IPR in the emerging digital landscape.

We campaign for the value of textbooks and the publishers' role in effective scholarly communication. We commission and track research into the ecology and dynamics of publishing markets. We generate guidance and advice, convene fora for debate, respond to consultations, and engage in the public debates that surround the copyright industries around the balance between the legitimate interests of rightholders and societal needs for access.

Hot topics

• Open Access - the Coalition government is committed to public access to publicly-funded research results, while making it clear that the value publishing adds must not be lost.  The Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, chaired by Dame Janet Finch, which is expected to shape future policy, was issued on 19 June 2012. 

          Selected OA research, exchanges and reports:

• PA issues guidance on relation between RCUK Policy and the Finch report

• PA challenges JISC on OA technology:  this link breaks down a long-running exchange on the assumptions underlying OA (2010)

• Open Access to scholarly journals - a status report gives a brief summary of the key OA issues (2011)

• Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications (2011) models Green OA, Delayed Access, Gold OA, License Extension and Transactional scenarios (2011)  
  

• PEER final report: the PEER projet set up an observatory for large-scale, systematic deposit of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts and then commissionsed research into reader access, author visibility and journal viability.  The headline in the final report is that gold OA publication is the practical route to achieving sustainable OA (2012)

• PA-ALPSP study on the impact of a six-month embargo - this study, submitted to the Finch Secretariat, found that an across-the-board mandate might have a material effect on libraries' subscriptions; and that the impact on publishers' revenues would be considerable (2012) 

• The STM statement on sustainable open access, drawn up by the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical publsihers, which sets out publisher support for any and all sustainable models of access that ensure the integrity and permanence of the scholarly record, is gathering signatures (2012)

• Copyright - the the PA response to HM Government's consultation on copyright (March 2012) sets out the PA's issues with the Hargreaves Review on which the Consultation's propsals are based
• Docdel - Document delivery services offered to readers by libraries have often caused disputes with publishers.   The PA has endorsed the new BL International Non-Commercial Document Supply Service (INCD) for the supply of copies of articles to non-commercial end-users via not-for-profit libraries outside the UK.  Click through for more (November 2011)
• Orphan works - the licensing scheme proposed in HM Government's consultation on copyright (see above) is underwritten by legislation giving safe harbour to those empowered to run the scheme.  Requirements the PA could support include due diligence search, licences and appropriate remuneration for revenant rightsholders.  The PA supports the EU-funded ARROW project, which streamlines the process of identifying the rightsholders of a work, including whether it is orphan.  
• Legal deposit - the challenge for publishing is appropriate access rather than preservation.  Click through for a copy of the PA's response to draft regulations for e-legal deposit submitted May 2012; it indicates broad support, but highlights remaining concerns over issues including security, access and web-harvesting.