A Sustainable Scholar-led Model for Open Access Without Publication Fees
Creators: name: Vega, Paula Clemente
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: Open Access
Humanities Open Access
Scholar-led Open Access

description: The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is a charitable organisation dedicated to publishing<br> open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). The OLH<br> publishing platform supports academic journals from across the humanities disciplines, as<br> well as hosting its own multidisciplinary journal. Launched by Martin Eve and Caroline<br> Edwards in 2015, the OLH has received two substantial grants from the Andrew W. Mellon<br> Foundation to date, and has built a sustainable business model with its partner libraries. The<br> platform publishes 28 journals in various disciplines and languages from classics, modern<br> languages and cultures, philosophy, theology and history, to political theory, sociology,<br> anthropology, film and new media studies, and digital humanities. We are part of a growing<br> global community of not-for profit publishers that explore different business models and<br> innovative approaches to open publishing that adapt to the needs, in this case, of humanities<br> scholars, so poorly funded by comparison to other scientific disciplines. The OLH has been internationally recognised as an important development in open access for<br> the humanities and for its innovative business model. The current level of Article Processing<br> Charges makes gold OA publishing unaffordable for the majority of unfunded humanities<br> scholars. The OLH aims instead to implement a collaborative, or collective, funding model<br> for gold open access in the humanities without APCs. The model proposed by the OLH is one<br> where publication costs do not fall on the institution or researchers but, are instead financed<br> collaboratively through an international library consortium, where each member pays an<br> annual fee according to the country and size of the institution. Reducing and distributing the<br> costs of publication across its members, with an economy of scale that improves as more<br> institutions join. Our idea is that research organisations and libraries make a relatively small<br> contribution that covers the costs of running a publication platform on which peer-reviewed<br> scholarly journals can then be published as open access. The international consortium of<br> libraries is comprised by nearly 300 institutions that collectively fund the platform including<br> Harvard, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, and many others. What we propose is a scholar-led and<br> consortial business model that can be adapted to other ventures/contexts and that allows<br> researches and universities alike to take back control of their own publications and research<br> dissemination. Scholar-led initiatives such as the OLH have proven for years now that there are alternatives<br> to the standard APC model (pay-to-publish) and that it is possible to sustain them in the longterm.<br> Our mission is to support and extend open access to scholarship in the humanities – for<br> free, for everyone, for ever.