FEATURE
Open Access
The lone publisher - in search of silver
John Murphy shares his experiences of attempting to launch an open-access journal T
he open-access (OA) model is well established in scientific, technical and medical publishing. Organisations that fund research are prepared to pay for the results to be
openly published and thus shared freely with those who cannot afford to pay for serials. It’s a bit harder to sell the idea in humanities and social sciences. Are there donors who want to fund the publication of monographs on Renaissance poets? Or the use of Facebook by rebels in Libya? Or the depiction of food consumption in Hollywood films? If so, please get in touch. OA journals are an excellent way to
transfer knowledge from rich economies to less rich ones. Yes, developing countries need STM information and the latest ideas on crop rotation, but to develop fully a country might also need to grow its cultural life, media and social aspirations. I noticed that many general newspaper publishers were having trouble making a profit in the face of intense competition for readers and advertising revenue from online
10 Research Information AUG/SEP 2011
publishers. It occurred to me that if major news corporations are feeling the pinch, where does this leave small newspaper publishers in emerging democracies where they might face competition from state or local government- funded propaganda sheets? With this in mind, about two years ago
I began to investigate the idea of an OA journal focusing on case studies of general newspapers that have come up with new business models or ways of garnering revenue, in order to support independent editorial content. Journalism in Transition was the working title and it was intended to be read by editors of newspapers in “emerging democracies”. I sought advice from an existing OA publisher in the humanities in the shape of
Gary Hall of Coventry University in the UK. He is a co-founder of the Open Humanities Press and also co-founder of the online OA journal Culture Machine. His response to me was: ‘it’s an interesting
idea but will there be enough people willing and able to write about this topic to sustain such a journal over the long term?’ He pointed out that journalists are used to getting paid for their writing and that there is an additional challenge with OA titles in that there is no income from subscriptions to play with. ‘If you are looking for sponsorship to help
support the running of such a journal, you may be better off simply taking the idea to a publisher, and getting them to publish it with you as the editor,’ he suggested.
Epress is based at the University of Surrey, UK and its charges are based on the number of articles you want to publish. Amazingly, the first 10 articles – enough for a launch issue – would be free
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