Open Access He had more advice for me too: ‘You


might be able to get the likes of UNESCO or Soros interested in sponsoring it but, in my experience, it’s hard. People generally start OA journals because they believe in the idea of OA as a philosophy, because it’s easy to do so, they’re cheap to operate and run and they can do so without needing to satisfy the requirements of a commercial publisher (for profits etc.).’ So, with so many challenges highlighted,


what business model does Hall use? According to the title of a recent presentation Hall gave about how the Open Humanities Press works, ‘We don’t have funding, we don’t charge subscriptions, and we don’t have author-pays – we just have friends!’ Other issues he raised were around getting


the right people on the editorial board. After many emails to leading figures in academic journalism, I received some encouragement but there was a feeling that nobody wanted to be the first to have their name associated with the idea. A pathfinder grant application for the project was refused on the grounds that the project did not appear to generate enough revenue to sustain it after the grant ran out (even though part of the idea was to continue seeking grants).


No-cost publishing? The next stage was to see if it could be published for nothing. At least that would allow me to prove my concept and maybe others would then jump in and help get funding. That part was relatively easy. There are countless Open Source Journal Management Systems, even some hosted services, but these all seemed to want some money. Until I found ePress. This service is based at the University of Surrey, UK and its charges are based on the number of articles you wanted to publish. Amazingly, the first 10 articles – enough for a launch issue – would be free. EPress began in 1995 as an “electronic libraries” research project funded by the UK’s JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) as a pioneering electronic publishing venture. It was taken on by Nigel Gilbert, a very techno-savvy sociologist. As Gilbert explained, ‘We were funded for


three years to employ someone to run some electronic journals. He got fed up with the repetitive nature of the work and produced a Perl script. When he left I rewrote it in PHP. I now edit a journal of sociology so if something goes wrong I know about it very quickly and fix it. Other than that the only


www.researchinformation.info


cost is some university servers.’ Today, nearly 50 journals use the EPress service, although this number is small compared with others in the field. Gilbert also had some encouraging words


about the idea of publishing OA journals in the humanities and social sciences. He believes that academics in developing countries are just as interested in the humanities as in any other part of the world; they just don’t have the money to pay journal subscription charges. He comments that it is important to make social science and other literature available to the widest possible audience rather than assume they are just interested in road building and crop rotation.


Attracting authors So, for my journal proposal I had a way to publish, but as yet no high-profile names to launch my title and attract authors. It felt


‘There are so many books in social sciences and humanities that would never have been published without subsidy because you will never sell enough copies to get the costs back. Some books are being published under an OA model and are being downloaded in their thousands’ Caroline Sutton


FEATURE


Nigel Gilbert


like trying to launch a new political party. You either had to have a lot of money or enough charisma to persuade people to join you and work for free, or both. Then, just to cap it all, someone else launched a blog on the same subject using WordPress, stealing all my thunder! My OA journal idea was quietly shelved


but what does this experience say about OA publishing in social sciences and the humanities? Caroline Sutton, a founder of OA publisher Co-Action Publishing and president of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, said there are some small publications around that have been put together by academics relying on favours. But she added that journal publishing is not always the first choice for academics in the social sciences and humanities anyway. She said: ‘They tend to write books, but


journal articles could be thought of as a teaser for their next book. Ironically, there seems to be money around for publishing books. There are so many books in social sciences and humanities that would never have been published without subsidy because you will never sell enough copies to get the costs back. Some books are being published under an OA model and are being downloaded in their thousands.’ The European Commission has helped to


fund the OAPEN project, which has seen university presses from all over Europe co- operating to publish OA books. Maybe the next round of EU funding might include journals? Sutton believe that, while we may have to wait a little longer for this idea to become common, it will eventually happen just as it did in STM.


As well as writing for Research Information, John Murphy lectures in journalism at the University of Hertfordshire, UK


AUG/SEP 2011 Research Information 11


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28