The Open Library of Humanities is a nonprofit,

diamond open access Diamond open access refers to academic texts (such as monographs, edited collections, and journal articles) published/distributed/preserved with no fees to either reader or author. Alternative labels include platinum open access, non-commercial op ...

publisher in the humanities and social sciences founded by

Martin Paul Eve Martin Paul Eve (born 1986) is a British academic, writer, and disability rights campaigner. He is the Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck College, University of London and Visiting Professor of Digital Humanities at ...

and Caroline Edwards. Founded in 2015, OLH publishes 27 scholarly journals as of 2022, including a

mega journal A mega journal (also mega-journal and megajournal) is a peer-reviewed academic open access journal designed to be much larger than a traditional journal by exercising low selectivity among accepted articles. It was pioneered by '' PLOS ONE''. This " ...

, also called Open Library of Humanities, which was modeled on

PLOS PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and laun ...

but not affiliated with it.

History

The Open Library of Humanities was officially launched on 28 September 2015. The project was funded by core grants from the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...

and uses a library partnership subsidy model to cover costs. It has a number of advisory committees, such as the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee which includes PLOS co-founder

Michael Eisen Michael Bruce Eisen (born April 13, 1967) is an American computational biologist and the editor-in-chief of the journal eLife. He is a professor of genetics, genomics and development at University of California, Berkeley. He is a leading advocate o ...

, Quebec-based academic Jean-Claude Guédon, and the Director of Scholarly Communication of the

Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...

, Kathleen Fitzpatrick. An internationalization committee was formed in 2013 to develop an international strategy. A member of this committee, Francisco Osorio, has written that the open access model of the Open Library of Humanities may be beneficial for researchers publishing in languages other than English. Although originally intended to run on

Open Journal Systems Open Journal Systems, also known as OJS, is a free software for the management of peer-reviewed academic journals, created by the Public Knowledge Project, and released under the GNU General Public License. History Open Journal Systems (OJS ...

, in 2017 OLH started development of a new platform, Janeway. Initially the main press site and the journal ''Orbit'' were hosted on the new platform. In of March 2022 the project to migrate the remaining jouranls was completed. The

University of Lincoln , mottoeng = Freedom through wisdom , established = 1861 – Hull School of Art1905 – Endsleigh College1976 – Hull College1992 – University of Humberside1996 – University of Lincolnshire and Humberside2001 � ...

, in partnership with the

Public Knowledge Project The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative that is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making th ...

, offered a funded place for an MSc by Research in Computer Science to develop an open-source

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

typesetting tool as proposed by the Open Library of Humanities technical roadmap. In November 2013 it was announced that the Public Knowledge Project will be funding the development of the typesetter, known as meTypeset. The Open Library of Humanities publishing model relies on support from an international group of

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

, which enables the publication of articles without the need for

article processing charges An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making a work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal. ...

. In 2021, OLH became part of

Birkbeck, University of London , mottoeng = Advice comes over nightTranslation used by Birkbeck. , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £4.3 m (2014) , budget = £10 ...

, maintaining its nonprofit status while reducing overhead.

Journals

*''Open Library of Humanities'' *''19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century'' *''ASIANetwork Exchange'' *''

Architectural Histories ''Architectural Histories'' is a peer-reviewed open access scholarly journal publishing historically grounded research into all aspects of architecture and the built environment, since 2013. It is published on behalf of the European Architectura ...

'' *''Body, Space & Technology'' *''C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings'' *''

The Comics Grid ''The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship'' is a peer-reviewed open access academic journal covering comics studies. The journal also publishes scholarly articles in comics form. History The project was originally conceived between 2009 a ...

: Journal of Comics Scholarship'' *''

Digital Medievalist Digital Medievalist is an academic project and community-building organization for those who are interested in the use of computers and computational techniques in the academic field of medieval studies, a sub-field of digital humanities. History ...

'' *''Digital Studies / Le champ numérique'' *''Ethnologia Europaea'' *''Francosphères'' *''Genealogy+Critique'' *'' Glossa: a journal of general linguistics'' *''International Journal of Welsh Writing in English'' *''Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry'' *''Journal of Embodied Research'' *''Journal of Portuguese Linguistics'' *''Laboratory Phonology'' *''Marvell Studies'' *''Open Screens'' *''Orbit: A Journal of American Literature'' *''Pynchon Notes'' *''Quaker Studies'' *''Studies in the Maternal'' *''Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal'' *''Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung'' *''The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies''

References

External links

* {{Authority control Non-profit academic publishers Open access publishers Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Continuous journals Charities based in the United Kingdom 2015 establishments in the United Kingdom