Enabling Open Access In The Humanities

By Anthony Watkinson (Principal Consultant, Ciber Research; Phone: +44 1993 811561; Honorary Lecturer Department of Information Studies University College London; Director Charleston Conference)

This is an informal introduction written by me as guest editor for the February issue of Against-the-Grain. The informality of an editorial addition, usually in the form of an editorial (not uncommonly used by editors), makes it possible to begin with an explanation of the origin of this special issue on this topic. All the contributors were part of a team I convened to speak about this topic for a session at the Fiesole Retreat 2023 held in Basel [Session 2 May 3rd https:// www.casalini.it/retreat/2023/#program]. I was honoured when, after the session had finished, Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub) who was in the audience, asked me to be a guest editor for an upcoming ATG issue based on this session, drawing upon some of the presenters for contributions. This is the result, one which I am pleased with and which represents a good approach point to the topic produced by people who know what they are talking about. I think the articles you will be reading show that my judgement was sound. When I convene a session of this type, it is my practice to ask people to take part whose knowledge I am aware of and whom I trust to do a good job rather than asking people to fill in particular roles in a schema presented as comprehensive.

One other point about the Fiesole Retreats in general: the aim is to bring together a group of people who buy into a “desire to foster and stimulate dialogue and collaboration within the scholarly communication sector.” Hence, in planning this session, I provided time to make possible not only interaction among the speakers but also among the audience, thus, bringing into play further experience and perceptions. This went well in Basel but does not fit well within the structure of a journal. The contributors have touched on some points that came up but as far as others are concerned, I shall take editorial privilege to mention some of those that I would personally like to stress and hope that readers may wish to follow up with contributors who (in my opinion) represent an unrivalled body of knowledge.

A key reason for a session then and a publication like this one has been highlighted recently in a report from Ithaka that “the differences between scientific (STEM) journal publishers and humanities and social sciences (HSS) publishers have grown only starker” (The Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing: Strategic Context and Shared Infrastructure by Tracy Bergstrom, Oya Y. Rieger, Roger C. Schonfeld. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.320210).

As some of the contributors have pointed out, Humanities scholars characteristically use monographs preferentially for the dissemination of their research findings, which is an obvious focus for the differences from STM researcher, but even more important is that funders and government take STM article-based publishing strategies to the norm. The values of humanities scholars are ignored as irrelevant and (as I have personally observed at a meeting between government, funders and publishers not long ago) as even being deliberately difficult.

Another part of the picture (also often overlooked) is that humanities researchers often work on their own whereas STM researchers invariably work in groups. Funders provide money for research groups which can be used for article publishing charges. Book publishing charges are prohibitively expensive for authors on their own. This is clearly expressed by one of the publishers: “The high costs involved in publishing a scholarly book and the low levels of direct grant funding in the subjects that most rely on monographs … mean that if we are to make open access a reality for more than a small proportion of scholarly books, we are likely to need solutions that go beyond the prevailing open-access fee model.”

It will be observed that much of the difference between the OA models presented by contributors concern how other parts of the ecosystem are asked to bear the burden. Other players in the ecosystem are among those writing in this issue which provides a broader perspective. The emphasis is on collective access to foster open access publishing.

Another additional perspective reflects the origin of this collection. In the year before we met in Basel, we were in Athens where I convened a humanities-related session entitled “Delivering Humanities Scholarship” https://www. fiesoleretreat.org/athens_2022. See Session 3. Both in the presentations on that occasion and in the discussion afterwards (and in the discussions in Basel), the use of other outputs were given a place. One of our current contributors tellingly references Pierre Mounier (a speaker in Athens) as follows: “The diversity of publication venues reflects the epistemic diversity of social sciences and humanities communities.” If I may add a personal note here: in introducing both these sessions under the Fiesole banner, I asked speakers to explain the role of humanities journals for humanities scholars. They are not (traditional wisdom assures me) just vehicles for recording research findings. Is this the case? I do not think we have an answer in this issue.

Another question I asked and which may not have been answered was the strength of enthusiasm for open access among humanities scholars. My own work has demonstrated to me that STM researchers want to publish open access more actively (gold) than they once did [https://ciber-research.com/ harbingers.html]. It is no longer the case that library advocates of open access seemed to some to be trying to force an unpopular model on mostly unwilling research communities. I am aware that a problem facing publishers in the humanities used to be that first reluctance or even distrust among the scholars had to be overcome but has this now changed.

Finally, in inviting this group of contributors, I have encouraged them to concentrate on providing routes to open publishing and have not probed what they have committed to paper (as us older people would once have phrased it) to discern the sort of competition which is (properly) endemic to this business. There is clearly a divide between the university presses who have a special role in monograph publishing. One of our contributors writes: “I worry that larger publishers with better resources to handle complexities like transformative agreements are sucking away the resources to support open access books and journals. Small, independent publishers (barely for-profit, if commercial) face similar challenges to university presses. We must ensure that funder and library policies don’t accidentally erase the bibliodiversity that independent and institutional presses have brought to their regions and disciplines for decades.” This comes from an interview back in March, and not in his contribution here, but it reflects a concern not confined to humanities publishing that the big and even smaller commercial companies have somehow managed to leverage open access offerings so that they come out on top.