The Open Library of Humanities: a Sustainable Scholar-led Model for OA without Publication Fees

In the last few years in the context of UK, as in many other countries, new policies that promote the implementation of Open Access have been developed and implemented. As a consequence of these new policies, all projects funded by public money must be published through open access channels. Being in this case, the golden route, that in most cases entails having to pay a publication fee (APC), the most recommended. However, the transition phase of this move has given way to a hybrid environment in which inflated APCs and subscription fees frequently converge, with prices that are often unaffordable for the humanities, so poorly funded in comparison to other scientific disciplines. It is within this context that the academics Martin Eve and Caroline Edwards from Birkbeck University in London launched, together to an international network of scholars, librarians, programmers and publishers, the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) in 2015. The OLH is a charitable organisation dedicated to publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). The main thrust of this project emerged from the need of institutions and researchers to regain control over their own publications through channels that were not dominated by classical-economics-based solutions but by a model that responded directly to their needs. The model proposed by the OLH is one where publication costs do not fall on the institution or researchers but, are instead financed collaboratively through an international library consortium, where each member pays an annual fee according to the country and size of the institution. Reducing and distributing the costs of publication among the members, with an economy of scale that improves as more institutions join.

The international consortium of libraries is comprised by more than 200 institutions that collectively fund the platform including Harvard, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, and many others. The OLH has also received two substantial grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to date. The platform publishes 27 journals in various disciplines and languages from classics, modern languages and cultures, philosophy, theology and history, to political theory, sociology, anthropology, film and new media studies, and digital humanities.

Scholar-led initiatives such as the OLH have proven for years now that there are alternatives to the standard APC model (pay-to-publish) and that it is possible to sustain them in the long-term. Our mission is to support and extend open access to scholarship in the humanities – for free, for everyone, for ever.