Scholar-led open access without APCs

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Open Accessscholar-led

without APCs

SLE, 1st September 2015

George WalkdenUniversity of Manchestergeorge.walkden@manchester.ac.ukhttp://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/george.walkden/

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Overview

About me:– Associate Editor of Language

(Historical Syntax) (formerly Journal of Historical Syntax, eLanguage)

1. Business models for open access journals

2. The Open Library of Humanities (OLH)

3. Exciting announcement!SLE, 1st September 2015

Scholar-led open access without APCs

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Presupposition 1: Journals cost money

• JHS ran for two years without any money changing hands. But there are costs:– Typesetting and copy-editing–Web hosting, archiving, curation– (For big journals) Communicating with

authors and reviewers can be extremely time-consuming

– Indexing, marketing (if desired)

• NOT unskilled work!SLE, 1st September 2015

Scholar-led open access without APCs

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Presupposition 2: Green doesn’t cut it

• Problems with self-archiving:– Proliferation of versions– No quality control– (relatedly) Not great for dissemination– Doesn’t address the situation that

caused many to turn to OA in the first place

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs

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Business models for journals

• Subscription charges• Gold Open Access:– Article Processing Charges (APCs)– Funding by learned societies or

professional organizations• BUT: journals often major source of revenue

for these

– The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) model

–…SLE, 1st September 2015

Scholar-led open access without APCs

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APCs: fool’s gold

• “Pay to say”: danger of only grant-funded/wealthy academics getting published

• Often bear little relation to work done by publishers

• Encourage predatory journals, e.g. SCIRP’s Open Journal of Modern Linguistics

Natural pyrite, from Wikimedia Commons (by user Stas1995)

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs

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Predatory APC-funded OA

• The Open Journal of Modern Linguistics:– $600 per article under

10pp; $50 each extra page

– No evidence of thorough review process

– Poor production standards

– Accepts submissions in the fields of “Cosmic Linguistics” and “Paralinguistics”

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs

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Open Library of Humanities (OLH)

• A “gold open access, peer-reviewed, internationally-supported, academic-led, not-for-profit, mega-journal, multi-journal and books platform for the humanities”

• Funding model: Library Partnership Subsidies– Libraries pay a small amount to fund

publishing–Massive economies of scale possible– Funds are already in the system!

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs

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Structure

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs

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Linguistics Unlocked

• An OLH overlay journal in general linguistics

• Coming 2015-16! Editorial board so far:– Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam)– Alison Biggs (University of Oxford/University of Pennsylvania)– Roberta D’Alessandro (Leiden University)– Laura Downing (University of Gothenburg)– Hanne Martine Eckhoff (Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø)– Ingrid Lossius Falkum (University of Oslo)– Daniel Gutzmann (University of Cologne)– Hae-Sung Jeon (University of Central Lancashire)– Gijsbert Rutten (Leiden University)– Mamoru Saito (Nanzan University)– Benjamin Slade (University of Utah)– Sali Tagliamonte (University of Toronto)– Danielle Turton (Newcastle University)– Rebecca Woods (University of Huddersfield)

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs

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Overlay journals

• Users can submit either to OLH or directly to the journal

• Material published elsewhere in OLH can be curated by the editors into the overlay journal

• All material is peer-reviewed as standard

• Enable economies of scale while matching content to audience

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs

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Thank you for your attention!

This and other resources available on my website: http://tinyurl.com/oalingBlog: https://oaling.wordpress.com

Twitter: @oalinguistics

SLE, 1st September 2015Scholar-led open access without

APCs