LIBER 2015 Plenary: Dr Martin Paul Eve
Channel: UCLLibraryServices
Date: 2015-07-13

Open Access in the Humanities Disciplines: Why is it so Hard and How Can We Fix it?

Dr Martin Paul Eve, Senior Lecturer, Literature, Technology and
Publishing, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

It is widely acknowledged that open access has met with a series of resistances in the humanities, both cultural and economic, that have not appeared in STEM subjects. From arguments against the entire principle, through to the economic challenges of research monographs, open access for the humanities, in both its gold and green forms, seems a far more distant prospect than might now be presumed in many scientific fields.

In this talk, Dr Martin Paul Eve will outline the specific challenges for the humanities disciplines and the range of potential solutions that are emerging. Spanning the political imperatives, the economic realities and the internal cultures of the academic humanities, this talk will argue that disciplinespecific rhetorics and particular economic strategies, such as consortial cost-pooling, are more likely to advance the cause of open access in these disciplines than a straightforward assumption that they must replicate the sciences.

Drawing on a range of case studies and the speaker’s own experience of launching the Open Library of Humanities, this talk will give participants an overview of where open access stands in the humanities today, worldwide, while also giving a sense of how much distance there remains to travel.

Dr Martin Paul Eve is a Senior Lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London. In addition to his work on contemporary fiction, he is the author of Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and a founder and co-director of the Open Library of Humanities. He is also a member of the Jisc Scholarly Communications Advisory Board, the OAPEN-UK Steering Committee and sat on the HEFCE Open Access Monographs Expert Reference Group.