The document is a presentation by Gareth Johnson from Nottingham Trent University on his research into open access and cultural hegemony in UK universities. The research aims to understand why UK academics are reluctant to engage with open scholarship concepts and identify influence actors and cultural barriers. The research uses qualitative methods like interviews and case studies of UK institutions. Preliminary findings suggest academic knowledge of open access has gaps but is improving, and funder mandates have increased senior management priority on open access while practitioners experience a loss of idealism. Scholarly societies are most commonly identified as opponents of open access. The presentation calls for further exploration of influence actor relationships and differences between university types.

1. THE LONG SONG AND THE PANOPTICON:
OPEN ACCESS, UNIVERSITIES AND CULTURAL HEGEMONY
Gaz J Johnson, Nottingham Trent University
ARLG 2014, Sussex, June 2014
gareth.johnson2012@my.ntu.ac.uk
@Llordllama
orcid.org/0000‐0003‐3953‐6155
nottinghamtrent.academia.edu/GarethJohnson

2. OVERVIEW
• Explain my interest in this field
• Examine the rationale and approach to the research
• Consider the affect of a marketised tertiary education sector
• Explore preliminary results and conclusions
• Discussion, questions and comments

3. BACKGROUND
• Current UK environment has brought scholarly dissemination issues into sharp focus
• Ongoing serials price crisis
• REF 2014, Finch report, HEFCE & RCUK Policies, House of Lords Inquiry
• Emerging technological disruption to publishing industry
• Evolution of research dissemination routes
• Perceived indifferent academic cultural response to OA/OE/OD etc
• Prior research focus on quantitative metrics and technological solutions
• STEM focus of prior research almost overwhelming
• Influence & power structures of dissemination actors poorly understood
• Little work focussing on cultural barriers and behaviour

4. AIMS
• Research derives from prior practitioner experience
• If the principles of an open scholarly commons are such a self‐evident societal good…why are so
many UK academics so reluctant to engage?
• Research goals
• Better understand the levels UK academics engage with concepts of open scholarship and practice
• Develop a evidenced critical framework of their epistemologies and rationales
• Identify, document and evaluate influence actors and relative power active in this environment
• Explore impacts of communication, processes, workflows and cultural environments affecting
academics responses
• Hope research will offer practical insight for to activists' efforts to achieve cultural change
towards OA

5. RESEARCH OVERVIEW
• Why the UK?
• Government and funder policy leading the UK down a unique GOLDen path
• Fallout from Finch report, RCUK (2012) and HEFCE (2014) tectonic policy shifts
• Volume of high class research produced annual
• “The UK is a leading research nation in the world in terms of the number of articles that it publishes annually. ” D.BIS,
2011
• Unique and richly varied HE institutional cultures countrywide
• Meritocratic islands of excellence, afloat in a society of mediocrity
• Leadership in the field of OAIRs/OA tools
• SHERPA, Eprints, EDINA, JISC etc. etc.

6. • Main phases of the research
• Scoping phrase – understanding the current challenges and environments
• Actors phase – understanding the actors rationales and priorities
• Case study phase – critiquing process and examining cultures within UK institutions
• Theory building phase – developing the tools and critique for analysing and understanding my data
RESEARCH OVERVIEW

7. METHODS & METHODOLOGY
• Ethnographic and qualitative framed cultural research
• Cultural lens offers a holistic, rich and multi‐faceted account
• Qualitative semi‐structured interviews, participant observation and case study
• Philosophical underpinnings in understand motivations, behaviours and relationships
• Foucault, (neo)Marxist analysis & emerging neoliberal critique
• Critical management and organisational studies for examination of institutional culture
• Possible interest in Deleuze, Guattari and Latour on power and networks
• Importance of reflexivity
• Situating myself in the research, acknowledging standpoint
• Rationalising impossibility of true objectivity
• Allowing genuine voices of subjects to speak through in results

8. NEOLIBERAL CRITIQUE
• Neoliberalism
• Theory of political economic practice
• Advocates the liberation of individual entrepreneurial freedoms, within an institutional framework that
is characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade
• Since 1970s the state's neoliberal reforms have aimed to introduce market discipline into all fields of
economic and capital production within the UK
• UK HE today
• An increasingly marketised, commodified knowledge/learning regime
• Subsumption of HE discourse framed within the language of business and management
• Impact and cultural resistance to neo‐Taylorist managerliasm and measure
• Policy driven by productivity and efficiencies emphasises STEM over AHSS
• Not why hasn't open access made more of an impact, but how has it managed to make any
impact at all in a marketised education sector?

9. SCOPING INTERVIEWS
• Semi‐structured interviews
• Informal guided conversations with thematic areas but not rigid structures
• Interviewees allowed to answer, explain, amplify answers
• Interviewer can probe, guide, side‐track as needed in search of genuine revelation
• Most via Skype, a handful F2F
• Primary themes
• Activities: Current, historic and types
• Discourse: Current topics of debate and engagement across the HEI
• Policy: Stance and response adopted by the HEI PTB
• Drivers: Forces for practical response and actors of influence
• Difficulties: Cultural barriers and obstacles retarding the embrace of OA

10. SAMPLE RECRUITMENT
• OA practitioner representatives
• Provide broad, insightful eyewitness accounts
• Representative observers of institutional culture and practice
• 125 HEIs approached
• 81 institutions interviewed
• 27.5hrs audio, approx. 220k words transcribed(!)
• Representation
• Russell Group 88%
• 1994 Group* 91%
• Million+ 45%
• Cathedrals Group 47%
• University Alliance 63%
• Other 36%
*extant at time of work
2% 2%
95%
Research Office Research and Enterprise Library
58%
23%
23%
Granted Granted with caveats Anonymisation requested
Longest
59m 07s
Shortest
9m 23s

11. Geographic
Distribution

12. ANALYSIS AND CODING
• Interviews fully transcribed for qualitative content analysis
• Systematise and describe conceptual context of discussions
• Develop hierarchical conceptual categories (and subcategories)
• Coding methodology
• Deep readings of transcripts (time consuming)
• Manual construction of coding frame and booklet (even more time
consuming)
• Computer assisted (NVivo 10) pilot coding phase test on 15‐20% of data
• Revision and final adjustments before main phase coding on all data
• Review and conceptual consolidation
• Data visualisation tools employed to aid in comprehension

13. RESULTS NARRATIVE
1. Repository staffing and function
• Aspects that relate more to the function of the local OAIR, than they do to the academics
2. Recent OA activities
• Actions and events that have occurred within HEIs in terms of the development of their response to OA
3. Academic Discourse and responses
• The responses, discussion and debate that has been engendered and witnessed within the HEIs as it relates to OA
4. Institutional Policy & Position
• All matters relating to the HEI itself and their policy moves towards OA.
5. Drivers
• The driving forces behind the foundation and continuance of practical activities relating to OA
6. Influence Actors
• Individuals, organisations or circumstances who are believed to be having an affect on the belief, views, stance and discourse of academics
7. Barriers to OA
• Identified attitudes, aspects, concerns or policies that are seen to be blocking the uptake of open access by academics

14. • Theme: Repository Staffing and Function

15. • Theme: Discourse
“There is a
widespread view
that it, or there
seems to be, that it
is a bad thing… I'm
hearing quite a lot
of rumblings
against gold open
access, not in
favour of green.”
Rachel Henderson,
UEA
“It is does depend and vary
between department and between
faculty as well, even between
individual researchers as you
might expect. Some of them are
quite engaged...generally,
generally most people are fine
with open access as kinda an idea,
support of in that sense.” James
Bisset, Durham
“I think also a degree of concern that there
was almost a double whammy that the
institutions would still be paying for the
foreseeable future journal subscriptions and
potentially ultimately be paying article
processing charges as well. And I think a
feeling that publishers are sort of got off
quite lightly.” Nick Goodfellow, Leeds
Trinity

16. • Theme: Policy and Stance
“Well it was a policy and then it got a
little bit hidden. Now that the
publishers are changing their policies
to say if you've got a mandate, you
know the ones who are putting in
embargoes and things, that I think I'm
going to leave it hidden.” Other, Post-
1992 (1)
“There's a very real sense that...it's
a...their reaction is minimal
compliance. We'll go through the
motions, we'll do what we have to
but, we're not seeing it as a big
thing, we're not going to put those
resources behind it, we don't
believe, this policy is really
sustainable.” Ian Rowlands,
Leicester
“Our institutional position is that we
support open access, we're very positive
about green open access, we're very
positive about gold open access where
that, those are 100% gold open access
journals.” Wendy White, Southampton

17. • Theme: Barriers
“I think it [is] basically the uncertainty of whether
they're able to. There are so many different models
out there from publishers as to what they, what the
process is for making their material available.”
Cathedral Group, 2nd Wave institution (01)
“I think it's probably fair to say there has been, well
not hostility, but [a] certain amount of scepticism
about open access we've heard from certain
academics, who are very wedded to the traditional
way of publishing.” David Boyd, Bristol
“I would say another major issue, just the huge complexity
of publisher policies. And how they interact with funder
policies… And it's almost impossible because it's, you
know, it depends on which publisher, it depends who's
funding them, it depends on embargoes. And they just find
it really really complicated. As do we.” Jackie Proven, St
Andrews

18. “I think they are probably responding to their own peer
groups. They're more aligned I think to their subjects,
what their societies are saying.” Other, Red Brick (03)
“Senior University Management and Heads of Department
are listened too well. Generally if they say do something,
then the majority of the academics will comply.” Russell
Group, University of London member (01)
“The library has managed to be on a, the voice of
reason at times. Well we like to think of
ourselves as the voice of reason. And be able to
do some myth busting within certain meetings.”
Julia Robinson, Newcastle “I mean certainly not enough of them come to library things
to be really influenced by the library. Unless we, unless
there's a kinda, we've somehow influenced certain people who
influence others.” Chris Keene, Sussex
I think publishers have more influence than we might like.”
Other, Plate Glass institution (03)
• Theme: Influence Actors

19. OUTLINE (INTERESTING) CONCLUSIONS
• Academic knowledge of OA still evidences deficiencies…but caution!
• Linking of capital (funder mandates) has pushed OA priority up to senior management
• Operationalisation of OA practice counters idealism
• Creeping pragmatism and loss of idealism of OA practitioners
• Siloing of open practitioners producing a barrier to shared practice
• Technological deterministic solutions thinking pervades academia
• Scholarly Societies identified most commonly as opponents of OA

20. • Theme: Barriers: Russell Group • Theme: Barriers: Post‐1992

21. FINAL THOUGHTS
• University cultures and environments are shaping responses to open
scholarship
• Practitioner views offer insights but need contextualisation from academic
actors
• (Volunteers welcomed!)
• Influence actors are apparent but their inter‐relationships merit further
exploration
• How different are the issues at differing types of universities?

22. CONTACT & DISCUSSIONS
gareth.johnson2012@my.ntu.ac.uk
@llordllama
llordllama.wordpress.com
nottinghamtrent.academia.edu/GarethJohnson
http://lnkd.in/DNNErc
Funding acknowledgement: AHRC

23. REFERENCES
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DURHAM ITS, 2011. Introduction to NVivo: Guide 52 [online]. University of Durham Information Technology Service. Available at:
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HARVEY, D., 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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