Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future

Citation

David Stuart (2015), "Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future", Online Information Review, Vol. 39 No. 5, pp. 755-756. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-07-2015-0229

There can be no doubt about the increasing importance of Open Access (OA) to the scholarly community. As new policies and mandates from governments and research funders attempt to leverage the maximum value from research, it is increasingly necessary for all researchers to have a greater understanding of the changing landscape of publishing. The models that will dominate the future of OA and its impact on the wider research environment are still unfolding, but the considerable consequences of OA to the publishing of research, and therefore to research itself, mean that it is essential that a researcher’s understanding goes beyond the mere difference between Green and Gold access and that they actively participate in the debate. In Open Access and the Humanities Eve explores both the benefits and the controversies of OA for those in the humanities.

It is a relatively short work consisting of five chapters. The first provides an introduction to both OA and the work itself. This is followed by chapters exploring the economics associated with OA, the licensing of OA content, the case of the monograph, and finally the opportunity that OA provides to reappraise associated scholarly activities such as peer review.

Open Access is a rapidly developing topic within an increasingly complex publishing system, with many different players and policies. Eve nonetheless succinctly summarises much of this complexity, with a wide range of example policies from around the world and recent research findings into the impact of different OA policies and publishing models. Such a short work cannot hope to be a comprehensive introduction to the topic, and, as Eve himself puts it, the book is “designed less as a comprehensive introduction and more as a critical introduction”. Here he has undoubtedly struck the right balance for reaching out beyond existing OA enthusiasts.

The humanities has not been as fast to adopt Open Access policies as the sciences, and such an engaging introductory work focusing specifically on the humanities should encourage wider discussion (and action) within the associated disciplines. Eve has striven to provide a balanced exploration of the topic, providing both sides of the argument rather than a polemic, and if the arguments in favour of OA are stronger than those against it, this reflects the inherent strength of those arguments as much as Eve’s own role as a proponent of OA.

As Eve shows, whilst there are differences between the sciences and the humanities (most notably with regards to budgets available for publishing and the importance of the monograph), the differences are not necessarily as large as we imagine, and such an accessible introduction is likely to be of interest to researchers both in the humanities and beyond, as well as those with a stake in the current publishing system (publishers and librarians).

As is fitting for a work on OA, the book has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316161012), although I have no hesitation in recommending it to those who have the funds to purchase the hard copy.