Open Access in the Humanities and The Open Library of Humanities
KCL. 9th February 2017.
Professor Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck, University of London
Why do we publish?
To be read. To be assessed.
Dissemination: Quality Control, Validation and Space-Time Compression
- Preservation of record
- Footnotes and scholarly genealogy (vs. science?)
- Labour of reading: reading-avoidance techniques
- Dissemination at a distance
Assessment
The Symbolic Economy Maps onto the Real Economy
Three Problems
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
- Third-party re-use rights
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
But APCs problematic for the humanities and some other disciplines
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
BPCs for monographs scale badly
- 5,023 monographs in UK in 2013 by largest 4 publishers (source: Crossick)
- At a £5,050 BPC (UP price): £25,366,150
- At a £6,500 BPC (CUP price): £32,649,500
- At an £11,000 BPC (Palgrave price): £55,253,000
- UK spend on all books 2010/2011: ~£60,000,000 (source: SCONUL)
BPCs for monographs scale badly
Our Solution
Megajournal / Multijournal / Not-for-profit / Collectively Funded
Planning since 2013
Support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- $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 OLH Library Partnership Subsidy Model
>220 Libraries Financially Supporting the OLH
18 Journals on or Supported by the Platform (909 articles in first year)
Cost per institution per article: around $1.10 per institution per article. Target of 300+ libraries by end of year three.
118,686 unique readers. Average of 131 readers per article. $0.008 per institution per reader.
Ongoing Project to "Flip" Subscription Journals
Six additional journals joining in January 2017
Organizational Structure
- UK Company Limited by Guarantee
- Converted to Charitable Company with Trustees
- Income threshold > £5,000
- Trustee independence and no benefits
- Stict regulations on fund use
- Unusual: 2x co-CEOs
Accountancy
- Charity commission can audit
- Professional accountants
- Use a professional solution from the start, like Xero
- Income proportionate (pro rata) over the year
- Legal advice on charitable conversion provided by Birkbeck
- Trustee meetings held once per year minimum
Staffing
- Birkbeck currently handles our staffing admin
- But, we'll eventually need:
- PAYE
- Pension enrollment
- National Insurance contributions
Building Open-Source Publishing Technology
- meTypeset: a JATS XML typesetter
- CaSSius: a CSS regions PDF generator
- Translation Layer
CaSSius: Heavyweight typesetting with lightweight technology
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/Kings2017.