Open Access and the Humanities 
Samuel Moore, King’s College 
London 
About me 
• Humanities background (philosophy & 
literature) 
• Joined PLOS in 2008  
• Began PhD on Open Access and the 
Humanities in 2012 
• Now also work for the researcher-led, open-
access publisher Ubiquity Press  
Why is Open Access important?  
• Increased access (obviously) 
• Should save significant sums of money 
for the global research budget  
• Opportunity to reassess publication 
practices in the humanities 
 
The Humanities Situation 
• Underfunded (1% of research budget in EU, 
0.5% in USA1)  
• Employment is both scarce and precarious 
• Rising scientific journal prices affect libraries’ 
ability to purchase books 
 
All of this is relevant to publication practices 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1. http://4humanities.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/humanitiesmatter300.pdf 
Excessive Managerialism 
“Everyone in academia had come to learn 
that the REF is the currency of value. A 
scholar whose works are left out of the 
tally is marked for assisted dying.” 
- Marina Warner, ‘Why I Quit’, London Review of Books 
Disincentives for Experimentation  
• Prestige is the currency (difficult for 
new/experimental publishers to gain traction) 
• Economic dimension to publishing research 
• Multi-author publications not rewarded 
– Collaboration discouraged 
• Non-paper-centric scholarship un-assessable 
by traditional mechanisms 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Open Access = Opportunity regain 
control of humanities publication 
for the betterment of the 
humanities as a whole   
What can ECRs do? 
• Publish Open Access (obviously!) 
• Support/Start Scholar-Led Initiatives 
• Experiment! 
 
 
 
 
Publish Open Access 
• Upload your research to repositories  
• Open Access journals (DOAJ) 
• Negotiate publishing contracts 
• Link to public domain versions of studied texts 
– e.g., Open Shakespeare  
• Release digital source material (open data) 
 
 
 
Support Scholar-Led Initiatives 
• Open Library of Humanities  
• Open Humanities Press 
• Mattering Press 
• Open Book Publishers 
• Start your own? 
Experiment! 
• Open Peer-Review 
• Online Commentary/Annotations 
• Remixed/Liquid Books  
• Wiki-based Authorship 
• Anonymous/Pseudonymous 
Authorship? 
 
 
 
Open Peer-Review 
Remixed/Liquid Books 
Anonymous Authorship 
“One significant means by which the humanities 
may come to impact on the open access 
movement in the future, then, is through the 
very openness of some of those in the field to 
the challenge to academic authority and 
professional legitimacy presented by digital 
modes of reproduction.” 
- Gary Hall, ‘Pirate Philosophy (Version 1.0)’