Open access in the humanities
Depending on what your role is at the university – staff, student, actively involved but distant cousin of a student or staff member – your relationship to open access will likely vary.
Maybe you’ve published open access yourself, or maybe you have yet to navigate open access publishing options. Maybe you already reaped the benefits of such publicly available scholarship when you were putting together a PhD or MSc proposal, or maybe you aren’t quite clear on what open access even is.
The relationship to open access differs especially on the discipline in which you do your research. Broadly speaking, while the sciences have been relatively quick to heed the open access call to arms, humanities have avoided any quick bandwagon jumping.
This hesitancy is for a myriad of reasons, some of which are genuine challenges worth considering.
What are some challenges of open access in the humanities?
The rise of contingent, precarious employment in academia over the last few decades, and particularly in the humanities, has fostered an environment in which academic labour, and particularly editing or writing journal articles and books, has become increasingly precarious, with much of this work being done in unpaid time. This means the economic model in which a person is paid a continuing, stable salary to teach, write, and do research is not the reality for many working academics.
When such scholars hear open access, sometimes that translates as, ‘more free labour, please!’
On top of this precarity, then, publishing open access can sometimes even cost money, with many publishers and journals requiring article or book processing charges, thereby creating new barriers to publishing for underfunded groups such as the humanities.
Furthermore, given there is less funding and unstable employment, disciplines like the humanities tends to run on cultural capital—that is, accumulating via publication and other impacts the kind of prestige that might lead to better employment or funding. The thinking goes, then, in publishing open access, is this capital—so integral to the current, admittedly broken system—at risk?
These are just a few challenges that come up when discussing open access and the humanities, and there may be others that we’ve missed. With these questions and issues in mind, why would someone go and publish open access?
Why open access?
Before responding to the challenges above, it is worth touching on the broader benefits of open access.
Briefly, open access to research increases its visibility and reaches a wider audience, increasing potential for citations and impact, and even possibly enhancing your reputation by getting your name out there. It also creates a more equitable environment for accessing research results.
Much of the research surrounding these benefits, however, is often drawn from open science materials, and not the humanities. However, there are still benefits to be had in terms of increased citations.
Green open access (more on this below) has been noted for its citation advantages, for example, with one study in The Journal of Academic Librarianship finding that ‘articles in open access repositories (green) received 50% more citations than paywalled articles, which is a remarkable finding independent of funding status.’
That same study found that ‘there is a greater open access citation advantage for unfunded articles. This advantage is consistent across various fields and is largely due to the hybrid gold modality and author self-archiving in green open access repositories.’
This is particularly relevant to the humanities, which does not typically receive the same kind of funding that scientific research does.
What of prestige and cultural capital is available in open access? Well, certainly increased citations should correlate to a larger imprint in whatever academic conversation one finds themselves in, with a larger imprint then translating into some form of cultural capital and cachet.
Largely, as Professor Martin Paul Eve notes in his book, Open Access & the Humanities, the question of cultural capital plays out the same in open access as in closed models, with scholars imbuing certain journals with said capital by submitting to and publishing in it over time. As such, Eve writes, ‘there is, theoretically, no reason why a new gold open access venue could not accumulate substantial academic credibility and prestige over time, should it attract the prerequisite submissions and reviewers’ (p49-50).
If the concern is over print versus online publication, this too is a somewhat moot point, with many open access publishers offering print copies, and many closed publishers increasingly opting for online only.
But what about the actual money? Cultural capital—open access or otherwise—is fine and good, and might lead to employment, but what about the actual money? Why should precariously employed humanities authors give their work away for free while even possibly then paying behemoth publishers at the same time?
These questions are fair, but also are built on various assumptions, one of which being that the current, subscription-oriented economic model is functioning just fine, with writers gaining profits and prestige a plenty. This is not usually the case. Meanwhile, libraries have experienced dramatic increases in the costs of subscriptions to non-sustainable levels.
Of course, being compensated for your work is ideal, but publishing articles in regular subscription journals or publishing monographs through regular publishers does not often translate to tremendous profits.
On the other side, publishing open access doesn’t necessarily mean that authors are not compensated for their work. As John Sherer, director of the University of North Carolina Press, notes in this video, some open access publishers do, in fact, give royalties or stipends to authors.
Perhaps more importantly, open access is required by many funding bodies for journals and academic (though generally not trade or creative writing) book projects, including UKRI (and therefore the Arts & Humanities Research Council). and Horizon Europe.
Publishing where you wish and green open access
The University wants researchers, however, to publish where they believe the best option is, to not feel coerced into picking a publisher based on policy alone. As such, there are options for doing so while still remaining compliant with open access requirements and expectations. Having your research made open access doesn’t require destroying the economic models that one may hold dear.
Green open access, for example, is when, upon publication or following a necessary embargo, you deposit the research into a repository, usually in the form of an author accepted manuscript, which is the accepted version of your work, before it’s gone through copyediting, layout, or design.
But, you may ask, wouldn’t this affect print sales?
The answer is mostly inconclusive, though some have argued that publishing open access, given its easy accessibility, could bolster readers’ desire to actually purchase your work, thereby increasing print sales.
As to the charges that publishers can levy at authors, this too has ways of being mitigated. At the University of St Andrews, we have almost 30 agreements with publishers of varying disciplines that can either give large discounts for such charges, or pay for them entirely.
It is best to contact us ahead of time about this though, so you don’t end up with a bill you weren’t expecting.
Finally, though, sometimes it can feel like your research just isn’t suited to open access, particularly when it involves third-party copyright material. Indeed, managing copyright is an important part of publishing, especially in the humanities, and is often cited as the reason why works can’t be made open access.
There are many options, however, such as including material under more restrictive licences or identifying alternative content. UKRI have produced a useful guide for this, and you can also find a practical example in Kate Rudy’s Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print, which was published fully open access by Open Book Publishers.
Your research and social change
Bettering our understanding of the world and how we live and work within it is a difficult agenda if no one outside a select few can access the research surrounding it.
In his book, Martin Eve describes the current situation with academic publishing, with many books and journal articles costing a small fortune to access for anyone outside of the academy. Eve notes this model is prohibitive for any social change to occur, writing, ‘[Social change] cannot be effected from an external, prestigious site that simply tells others what to do and think. Advocates argue that open access could enhance the ability of the university to change society for the better’ (p53).
Some academics may counter that all the public talks and events, trade books for popular audiences, podcasts, etc. are meant to get their research out there, to possibly even effect change through thoughtful discussion rather than having dense material siloed on a repository. Through these venues, they argue, we can elaborate and articulate our research in clear, relevant ways for broader, non-academic audiences.
This might be partly true, and these actions are excellent and to be encouraged, but the point comes with some caveats.
The most obvious issue is that placing emphasis on events can put a hindrance on accessibility. Talks and events, while excellent for localised discussion, are limited in their own ways, whether by venue or region. Meanwhile, trade books are still expensive to purchase, and that’s if you can locate a copy. These books may be available at public libraries, but this too is an assumption, one that doesn’t take into consideration the fact that libraries are not located around every corner, with every book in the world at their disposal, and print runs for books are getting smaller and smaller.
Community over commercialisation: options for open access
This brings us back to the theme of Open Access Week 2024: community over commercialisation. Open access is a movement for the community. Its aim is to expand the academic community to include those outside its walls. It is an aim to put research first and foremost, beyond the profits of more commercial entities.
Certainly, commercialisation has put its sharp talons on open access initiatives, with large publishers using open access to sometimes bolster their own profit margins. But there are ways, already mentioned, to counter these, such as the green open access route, or finding a diamond open access publisher, which are publishers and journals that are fully open access, with no charges to the author, as they are financially supported through other means, such as sponsorship, subsidies, membership programmes, or other models.
First, academics can, of course, keep publishing in traditional, subscription-model journals and publishers. This is not a problem, and you can still be compliant with funders’ open access requirements by simply depositing your accepted manuscripts in Pure!
This option, the green route, is preferred by the university, with no costs for authors, and can be supported by the Rights Retention Strategy.
Second, publish in an open access journal or with an open access publisher. If it is gold OA—that is, the final version is freely available on the publisher’s website, but this often requires charges for authors—talk to us to see if we have any agreements or funding in place that might help.
If, however, it is diamond OA, then you have no worries. Examples of this include the Open Library of Humanities, and on the Directory of Open Access Journals site, you can find over 280 humanities, arts, and social sciences journals with the DOAJ Seal that do not charge fees while also allowing the author to retain all rights.
Whatever you do, open access can open your research out to the broader world, widening the academic community and connecting your work to those who might not access it otherwise.
Let’s work together to make it happen.
If you have questions or are interested in seeking clarity on any of the issues presented, then please reach out to us at [email protected].