6 innovations from the humanities that make Open Access publishing a reality to everyone
One of the common beliefs that often comes up when discussing research dissemination strategies is that Open Access publishing equals high publishing costs. Shifting the burden of payment from readers to authors (or their funders or institutions) indeed creates a new set of inequalities in open scholarly communication as article or book processing charges (APCs or BPCs) are not affordable for many scholarly communities. This recognition gave rise to more equitable forms of Open Access publishing. These models rely on library consortial funding mechanisms, crowdfunding, freemium services, institutional grants or funders’ collective investments into shared infrastructures and therefore create and maintain publication forums that are openly and freely available both for authors and readers. Some of the most successful free-to-publish Open Access endeavors have been emerging from arts and humanities in response to the particular needs of the humanities scholars concerning publishing formats, academic evaluation, and funding availability. In the...