Open Access in the Humanities

Rupert Gatti

19 Feb 2014

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

Green & Gold OAGreen 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 OAThe published edition of the work is available

under an OA licence.• There is no requirement for an apc.

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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

AHRC (UK) Data

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>

•

Discipline 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

Proportions of output types in a sample of RAE 2008 submissions

OA Mandates

http://roarmap.eprints.org/

Typically have allowed longer embargoes (12-24 months) for Humanities disciplines

Avoid books

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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.

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Some Data

• 9,763 Journals listed from 141 countries6,527 (2/3) make no author chargesAbout 45% are in HSS

http://www.doaj.org/

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Humanities dataLiterature: 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 journals28 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%)

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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

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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

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The publishing cycle

Step 1: The textStep 2: The published workStep 3: The readerStep 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

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

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Opportunities

• Broader readership• Reader interaction• Multi-media publications• Relating research and primary sources• Reuse of publications• Innovation in research & dissemination

19 Feb 2014

1662 books 55 publishers Languages:

English (909)German (319)Italian (93)French (16)Spanish (2)Portuguese (0)

Published 2013-14: 185 books

http://www.doabooks.org/ http://books.openedition.org/

19 Feb 2014

1161 books 33 publishers Languages:

French (959)English (118)Spanish (72)Italian (11)Portuguese (0)

Published 2013-14: 46 books

Broader Readership

OBP Reader 7,349

Google Books 7,512

Total Online Readers 14,861

Av per title in month 391

OBP Online Readers

18 Jan – 18 Feb 2014

19 Feb 2014

133 countries

UK 25%

USA 20%

Algeria 6%

Reader InteractionHaving 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

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Multimedia PublicationsBorn 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

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

Alternative Funding ModelsInstitutional Support

Athabasca University Press, ANU Press

Research Centre & Society PartnershipsWOLP, IES, CREATe

Research Funding SubsidyWellcome Trust, Max Planck Society

Library ExpenditureOpenEditions, Open Library of the Humanities, Knowledge Unlatched, Unglue.it

Direct Publication Chargeslegacy publishers: Palgrave Macmillan, SpringerOpen ....

19 Feb 2014

Next steps: Enabling a diverse OA publishing ecology

The publishing cycle:

Step 1: The textPrint on Demand, typesetting software (not OA), competitive market for services

Step 2: The published workThis is dominated by publisher provision Need: Libraries take an active role to facilitating this process

Step 3: The readerNeed: Universal standards/protocols to facilitate creation of broadly applicable tools to prevent publisher hijack

Step 4: (Re)useNeed: 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