Open Library for the Humanities
Although the Open Library for the Humanities (OLH) was launched only two years ago, their responsiveness to the specific needs of Humanities researchers provides a promising foundation for the creation and sustainability of high-quality open content for the field. Currently, the platform hosts 23 open journals for all to use. OLH’s business model eliminates author imposed Article Process Charges (APC) in favor of a consortium based business model. There’s no requirement for authors or their institutions to be or become consortium members in order to publish on OLH. Journals on OLH are by default licensed with a CCBY (Creative Commons-Attribution) license, but authors have the option to add a more restrictive license if they choose. Creative Commons licenses provide flexibility for activities such as the creation of course packs, online pedagogy and digital humanities projects.
Works on OLH are:
- Fulfilling current submission criteria for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework
- Rigorously peer review
- Assigned a DOI for improved indexing/findability
- Open: Freely available for users and free for authors to publish
- Archived with sustainable archiving processes
See all 23 journals or explore a few here:
- The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship
- Journal of Embodied Research
- Open Library of the Humanities
- Orbit: A Journal of American Literature
OLH also curates special collections of articles in the OLH journal such as:
- From TV to Film
- Station Eleven and Twenty-First Century Writing
- New Voices in Jewish-American Literature
- Postcolonial Perspectives in Game Studies
You might use OLH if you’d like to find open content for your course or your Digital Humanities project. You might also use OLH if you’d like to publish on a rigorous open platform without having to pay article process charges. If you don’t find what you are looking for on OLH, take a look at the GSU Library’s Open Education Guide. Or, contact Denise Dimsdale, Affordable Learning Georgia Library Coordinator, at the GSU Library. The GSU Library is happy to assist instructors with locating open resources, publishing open content, and locating course content and library resources that provide affordable options for students and pedagogical opportunities for instructors.