TY - JOUR

T1 - Against book enclosures

T2 - Moving towards more diverse, humane and accessible book publishing

AU - Batterbury, S.P.J.

AU - Pia, A.E.

AU - Wielander, G.

AU - Loubere, N.

PY - 2024/2/20

Y1 - 2024/2/20

N2 - Matthew Gandy's Commentary in Area (2023) criticised the decision of the national funder UKRI to mandate that all books resulting from the research that it funds must be published open access (OA) from 2024. This raises many issues of importance to geographers. We argue that scholars in the discipline need to fight for affordable and ethically produced OA books, not ‘legacy’ modes of publishing. In particular, books produced by scholar-led OA presses will not harm the reputation of departments or individual scholars, and they also have the potential to reduce significant financial barriers to accessing books across the globe. A more powerful critique must be to challenge the continued ‘enclosure’ of books, and the denial of OA by academic publishers and university presses.

AB - Matthew Gandy's Commentary in Area (2023) criticised the decision of the national funder UKRI to mandate that all books resulting from the research that it funds must be published open access (OA) from 2024. This raises many issues of importance to geographers. We argue that scholars in the discipline need to fight for affordable and ethically produced OA books, not ‘legacy’ modes of publishing. In particular, books produced by scholar-led OA presses will not harm the reputation of departments or individual scholars, and they also have the potential to reduce significant financial barriers to accessing books across the globe. A more powerful critique must be to challenge the continued ‘enclosure’ of books, and the denial of OA by academic publishers and university presses.

KW - geography

KW - Open Access publishing

KW - scholarly publishing

KW - social sciences and humanities

KW - UKRI

U2 - 10.1111/area.12916

DO - 10.1111/area.12916

M3 - Journal article

JO - Area

JF - Area

SN - 0004-0894

ER -