Open Library of Humanities

A consortium of libraries and academics has banded together to create a platform (or what they're called a mega-journal) to support gold open access  in the Humanities. It's called the Open Library of Humanities and there are already an array of editors and referees in place, so anything published in the library will be subject to double-blind peer review and editorial scrutiny. They plan to launch and host 5 new open access journals in September 2015 and are currently welcoming any other OA journals in the humanities that might like to join up. More about the OLH plans and model can be found here.

What's interesting about this model is that there will be no Article Processing Charge (APC) for publishing in the journals. Because the economics of the Humanities are different from other disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the OLH recognises that coming up with the requisite £600-£2000 to publish in gold OA journals isn't going to be possible for most humanities researchers. There's a major funding agreement in place with JISC, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and an institutional subscription model from universities (Leah's alma mater, Wesleyan, is one of the most recent universities to sign up).

The names and institutional affiliations of the librarians consulting on the project are impressive. Does it look like something that's going to be useful in your discipline?

OpenLibHums Twitter feed.