Open access in the humanities: Why we need it and how to do it

Groningen University. 21st October 2015.

A book

Dr. Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck, University of London

Why do we publish?

To be read. To be assessed.

A research paper

Dissemination: Quality Control, Validation and Space-Time Compression

  • Dissemination of work
  • Preservation of record
  • Footnotes and scholarly genealogy (vs. science?)
  • Labour of reading: reading-avoidance techniques
  • Dissemination at a distance
    • Difference to conferences?

Assessment

Symbolic Economy

The Symbolic Economy Maps onto the Real Economy

Library Economy

Reading and assessment are in conflict

  • Drive to produce ever more work
  • Hyper-inflationary price increases
  • Libraries cannot afford to purchase
  • Micro-monopolies

Dual crises of supply and demand

For assessment to work, we must restrict publication volume to size of academic job market: predicated on teaching

Three Problems

Three Problems: researcher access, public access and re-use

Problem 1: Researcher access

See under "serials crisis".

Problem 2: Public access

  • Increasingly educated populace
  • Institutional missions to benefit society
    • Or what is a university?
  • The academy becomes irrelevant
    • Especially the humanities

Problem 3: Restrictive Re-Use Rights

  • Photocopying licenses
    • Even for teaching
  • Text mining/derivatives prohibited
  • Inclusion in Wikipedia and other resources
  • Community translation

Open Access (OA)

  • Peer-reviewed research
  • Free to read online
  • Permission to re-use

  • Gold: at publisher/source
  • Green: institutional/subject repository

  • Gratis: free to read
  • Libre: free to re-use
Background image © PLOS. Used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

History of OA

  • 1989: Richard Stallman drafts GPL
  • 2002: First Creative Commons license
  • 2002-2003: BBB Statements on OA
  • 2003: First sub-institutional mandate
  • 2003-2013: Exponential increase in green mandates

  • Scientific drive but hums. present
  • Informal histories of OA experiment

But APCs problematic for the humanities

APC graph

Monographs

  • Monographs acknowledged as different
    • e.g. HEFCE mandate
  • Higher barriers to entry for new publishers
  • Open source platform development in infancy
  • Production toolchain likewise
  • Different discoverability and value-conferral sites

Our Solution

Open Library of Humanities Megajournal / Multijournal / Not-for-profit / Collectively Funded

Planning since 2013

Press and Committees

Support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Mellon
  • $90,000 planning grant
    • University of Lincoln, UK, 2014-2015
  • $741,000 sustainability grant
    • Birkbeck, University of London, UK, 2015-2018

The Subscription Model as it Exists

The current system: many libraries all paying relatively large amounts

The OLH Library Partnership Subsidy Model

Many libraries all paying smaller amounts

114 Libraries Financially Supporting the OLH in First Ten Months

Some of the libraries supporting OLH: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge

(And Groningen!)

7 Journals on the Platform at Launch (150 articles in first year)

Journals on the OLH platform Cost per institution per article: between $3 to $6. Target of 300+ libraries by end of year three.

Ongoing Project to "Flip" Subscription Journals

LingOA

Building Open-Source Publishing Technology

  • meTypeset: a JATS XML typesetter
  • CaSSius: a CSS regions PDF generator
  • Translation Layer

The End

Thank you!

Presentation licensed under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. All institutional images excluded from CC license. Available to view online at http://meve.io/Groningen2015.