This webinar will increase your understanding of the opportunities provided to HSS scholars by Open Access publication and the approaches scholars, academic societies or HE bodies may take to adopt and develop Open Access publishing initiatives. PLEASE NOTE THE CC BY LICENCE.

1. Open Access in the
Humanities
Rupert Gatti
19 Feb 2014

2. What is Open Access?
• Free to read online
• Free to share a digital edition
• Free to reuse (subject only to author
attribution)
Ref: http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read
19 Feb 2014

3. Green & Gold OA
Green OA
A final copy of the published work is available
under an OA licence from a repository.
• There is no requirement for an embargo period.
Gold OA
The published edition of the work is available
under an OA licence.
• There is no requirement for an apc.
19 Feb 2014

4. Humanities vs Sciences
• Monographs and book chapters remain important
outputs
• Research accessible by broader community
• National/language specific research
• Engagement with reader
• Integrity of the text
• Greater inclusion of third party material within published
work – copyright issues
• Less grant & project funded research
• Many more independent scholars
• Less experience with OA dissemination
• Less collaborative research
19 Feb 2014

5. AHRC (UK) Data
Books
Chapters
Journal
Other
(%)
(%)
Articles (%)
(%)
English
39
27
31
3
French
37
23
39
1
Philosophy
14
20
65
1
Sociology
22
10
64
3
Law
18
15
65
1
Politics
29
9
62
0
Economics
1
2
89
7
Chemistry
0
0
100
0
Discipline
Proportions of output types in a sample of RAE 2008 submissions
Source: Nigel Vincent “The monograph challenge” in N. Vincent & C. Wickham (eds) Debating Open Access, British Academy 2013. (p.
106) <https://www.britac.ac.uk/openaccess/debatingopenaccess.cfm>

6. OA Mandates
http://roarmap.eprints.org/
Typically have allowed longer embargoes (12-24
months) for Humanities disciplines
Avoid books
19 Feb 2014

7. Journals
• Many thousands of Gold OA journals exist
in the humanities.
• The vast majority make NO charge on
authors to publish.
• Within HSS, apc's are important for the
'legacy' and the 'predatory' publishers.
19 Feb 2014

8. Some Data
http://www.doaj.org/
• 9,763 Journals listed
from 141 countries
6,527 (2/3) make no author charges
About 45% are in HSS
19 Feb 2014

9. Humanities data

Literature: 672 journals
55 languages (498 in English)
67 countries (Brazil 84, USA 81, UK 29)
625 (93%) have no charges, 37 with charges
• History: 238 journals
28 languages (141 in English)
35 countries (Brazil 37, USA 28, UK 8)
223 (94%) have no charges, 9 with charges
Published by Universities (50%), Research Institutes (20%) and
Societies (15%)
19 Feb 2014

10. No mega journals / repositories
• No equivalents of
–
–
–
–
PloS (apc),
arXive (institutional),
PubMed Central (public funding),
PeerJ (membership)
• Open Library of the Humanities
<https://www.openlibhums.org/>
– library subscription
19 Feb 2014

11. Business Models
• apc model small in Humanities
• Academics input
• University/Institutional support
– the entire internet developed that way
• Open infrastructure – vitally important
– Open Journal Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/)
– Open Edition – revues.org (www.openedition.org)
– Directory of Open Access Journals
19 Feb 2014

12. The publishing cycle
Step 1: The text
Step 2: The published work
Step 3: The reader
Step 4: (Re)use
To be successful as a system Open Access
initiatives need to free up all aspects of this
cycle – presently dominated by protective
practices.
19 Feb 2014

13. Books
• The existing publishing model is broken
–
high prices (£50) & low sales (300)
–
financial model: relies on DENYING access to knowledge
– at a time when HSS is fighting for recognition and funding
we have a system where almost all our research is
inaccessible to anyone beyond an elite few.
• This has nothing to do with Open Access, this is where
the publishing industry, and academia, has led itself.
• Open Access is potentially a saviour – not a threat – for
HSS
19 Feb 2014

14. Opportunities
•
•
•
•
•
•
Broader readership
Reader interaction
Multi-media publications
Relating research and primary sources
Reuse of publications
Innovation in research & dissemination
19 Feb 2014

15. http://www.doabooks.org/
http://books.openedition.org/
1662 books
55 publishers
Languages:
English (909)
German (319)
Italian (93)
French (16)
Spanish (2)
Portuguese (0)
1161 books
33 publishers
Languages:
French (959)
English (118)
Spanish (72)
Italian (11)
Portuguese (0)
Published 2013-14: 185 books
Published 2013-14: 46 books
19 Feb 2014

18. Broader Readership
OBP Online Readers
18 Jan – 18 Feb 2014
OBP Reader
7,349
Google Books
7,512
Total Online Readers
14,861
Av per title in month
391
19 Feb 2014

19. 133 countries
UK 25%
USA 20%
Algeria 6%

20. Reader Interaction
Having full text available online enables readers to
comment on and add to the work.
• Ingo Gildenhard - Cicero, Against Verres, 2.1.53–86
(OBP)
Uploaded to The Classics Library
(http://inverrem2_1.theclassicslibrary.com/)
• Kathleen Fitzpatrick - Planned Obsolescense (NYU)
http://mcpress.media-commons.org/plannedobsolescence/
• Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty - Writing History
in the Digital Age (UMichiganPress)
http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/
All three use free WordPress plugins
19 Feb 2014

21. Multimedia Publications
Born Digital research output – incorporating,
text, video, audio and web applications.
• Digital resources can be linked to and
integrated with the ‘publication’
• Allows new ways of presenting research
findings
• Reader can order/structure content as
required
19 Feb 2014

25. http://scalar.usc.edu/
http://scalar.usc.edu

26. Alternative Funding Models
Institutional Support
Athabasca University Press, ANU Press
Research Centre & Society Partnerships
WOLP, IES, CREATe
Research Funding Subsidy
Wellcome Trust, Max Planck Society
Library Expenditure
OpenEditions, Open Library of the Humanities, Knowledge
Unlatched, Unglue.it
Direct Publication Charges
legacy publishers: Palgrave Macmillan, SpringerOpen ....
19 Feb 2014

27. Next steps:
Enabling a diverse OA publishing ecology
The publishing cycle:
Step 1: The text
Print on Demand, typesetting software (not OA), competitive market for services
Step 2: The published work
This is dominated by publisher provision
Need: Libraries take an active role to facilitating this process
Step 3: The reader
Need: Universal standards/protocols to facilitate creation of broadly applicable tools to prevent
publisher hijack
Step 4: (Re)use
Need: Publisher independent methods for assessing, archiving etc new media formats
Libraries/funders need to recognise the important role they can take in
providing platforms and developing standards to create an architecture
which allows competitive publishing initiatives to operate.
Incentives are all wrong if this left to publishers to provide and (so) control.
19 Feb 2014