The Open Library of Humanities is a nonprofit, diamond open access publisher in the humanities and social sciences[1] founded by Martin Paul Eve and Caroline Edwards.[2] Founded in 2015, OLH publishes 27 scholarly journals as of 2022,[3] including a mega journal, also called Open Library of Humanities, which was modeled on PLOS but not affiliated with it.[4]
History
The Open Library of Humanities was officially launched on 28 September 2015.[5] The project was funded by core grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation[6][7] and uses a library partnership subsidy model to cover costs.[8] It has a number of advisory committees, such as the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee which includes PLOS co-founder Michael Eisen,[1] Quebec-based academic Jean-Claude Guédon, and the Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association, Kathleen Fitzpatrick.[9] An internationalization committee was formed in 2013 to develop an international strategy.[10] 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.[11]
Although originally intended to run on Open Journal Systems,[12] in 2017 OLH started development of a new platform, Janeway.[13] Initially the main press site and the journal Orbit[14] were hosted on the new platform. In of March 2022 the project to migrate the remaining journals was completed.[15] The University of Lincoln, in partnership with the Public Knowledge Project, offered a funded place for an MSc by Research in Computer Science to develop an open-source XML typesetting tool as proposed by the Open Library of Humanities technical roadmap.[16] In November 2013 it was announced that the Public Knowledge Project will be funding the development of the typesetter, known as meTypeset.[17]
The Open Library of Humanities publishing model relies on support from an international group of libraries, which enables the publication of articles without the need for article processing charges.[18] In 2021, OLH became part of Birkbeck, University of London, maintaining its nonprofit status while reducing overhead.[19]
Journals
Open Library of Humanities
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
