Recently, I accepted appointment to the Editorial Committee for the Open Library of Humanities, an open access publishing platform. Its founder, Dr. Martin Paul Eve is a Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln. It is well known that the state of publishing in academia is sick. “Since 1986, subscription costs for academic journals have risen by 300% above inflation. In addition to exponentially increased research output over this period this has triggered what is known as “the serials crisis”; the inability of library budgets to keep pace with the prices set by publishers.”
As a librarian, open access is something that I fight for. I want it, give it to me. However, in the humanities, a field that is known for its low-funding, has been unable up until this point to be able to launch such an endeavor. The sciences have PLOS (Public Library of Science), which has been publishing open access articles for 10 years – and again, nothing comparable in the humanities fields.
I guess that is why I am so excited for this project, so hungry for submissions to start rolling in. This is the solution to our serials crisis, and here is our mission:
The Open Library of Humanities aims to provide a platform for Open Access publishing that is:
- Reputable and respected through rigorous peer review
- Sustainable
- Digitally preserved and safely archived in perpetuity
- Non-profit
- Open in both monetary and permission terms
- Non-discriminatory (APCs are waiverable)
- Technically innovative in response to the needs of scholars and librarians
- A solution to the serials crisis
Want to get involved? Help us to build the future of academic publishing in the humanities by pledging to publish a paper with us in our first year.
Amy Pajewski 