Building the Future of Digital Publishing: Lessons from the Open Library of Humanities

• In Event: Digital Publishing: Considering Form and Formats

Abstract

This paper will consider the latest developments in open access publishing within the humanities. In her capacity as Co-Founder and Editorial Director of the Open Library of Humanities (OLH), Dr Edwards has gained invaluable insights into the challenges and opportunities that confront new OA ventures. Since it launched as an international project in early 2013, the OLH has built a strong reputation as a charitable publisher of open access journal articles across the humanities disciplines. Led by academics and collectively funded through library subsidies, the OLH offers scholars a high-quality publishing platform that incurs no author-facing fees for “gold” open access publishing. Addressing crucial questions of prestige, peer review, scholarly societies, and funding the transfer towards open access are vital. Moreover, the possibilities for transforming the way in which we read, catalogue, archive, and share academic work offer an unprecedented opening up of scholarship and scholarly dialogue today.

Author

• Caroline Edwards, Birkbeck, University of London