Category Archives: oa.humanities

Register now! COPIM “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books” conference, April 20 & 21, 2023 @ online | Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

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Save the date & register now! The Community-Led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is happy to announce its Final Conference,“Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”, to take place online on April 20, 3.30-8.15pm (BST), and April 21, 3-7pm (BST).

Full programme online at: https://scalingsmall.pubpub.org/programme-overview

 

The Scaling Small philosophy (see e.g. Adema & Moore, 2021) that COPIM has been following is explicitly and intentionally an alternative to large-scale, commercial approaches to academic publishing. This principle has guided COPIM’s main outcomes and objectives, and has supported us in building various models, systems, and platforms as part of our work to start removing the hurdles preventing new and existing open access book initiatives from adopting open access workflows. In addition to creating the community-led governance structures, archiving and preservation best practices, and experimental book pilots and resources to support this, Scaling Small comes to the fore very clearly in three of COPIM’s main outputs: the Open Book Collective (OBC), a UK charity governed by its members that brings together open access publishers, libraries, and publishing service providers to enable sustainable collective funding for open access books without charging authors; ‘Opening the Future’ (OtF), a revenue model which enables the transition of legacy publishers to OA by offering their closed access backlist to libraries via a subscription scheme, and using the revenue to fund new OA books; and Thoth, an open dissemination system that enables publishers to share their open access books much more widely, by easily creating high quality open metadata in a wide variety of formats.

As COPIM concludes, we hope to discuss and extend the organisational principle of Scaling Small in several ways, and with a variety of collaborators, while also thinking ahead about what our next steps will be in the future.

 

Guest Post – Open Access for Monographs is Here. But Are we Ready for It? – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“At the University of North Carolina Press, we recently completed a four-year initiative to support the publication of open access (OA) monographs by university presses in the discipline of history. Through the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot (SHMP)—generously funded by the Mellon Foundation — we published fifty-nine titles with nineteen different presses. SHMP was unique among OA initiatives in that it did more than simply provide offset funding. It required an intervention in publication workflows where university presses and their authors had to submit to a standardized process with templated outputs that aligned with the requirements of digital platforms. The pilot recorded successes and challenges indicative of ongoing and future needs, some of them general to all OA publishing and some specific to OA monograph publishing.

There were several areas of encouraging news. The titles we published are being accessed and used exponentially more than digital editions that are behind paywalls. And standardization significantly reduced the costs required to create a high-quality university press monograph. But there were also discouraging results. Authors and presses remain deeply cautious about OA as a legitimate, sustainable mode of publishing. They are even more skeptical about the trade-offs associated with standardization. And we learned that there are serious gaps in the infrastructure needed to disseminate open scholarship efficiently and measure its impact….”

Event: COPIM End-of-project conference “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”, April 20 & 21, 2023 @ online. Full programme now live! | Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs

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The Community-Led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is happy to announce its Final Conference,

“Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”,

which will take place online on April 20, 3.30-8.15pm (BST), and April 21, 3-7pm (BST).

 

The Scaling Small philosophy (see e.g. Adema & Moore, 2021) that COPIM has been following is explicitly and intentionally an alternative to large-scale, commercial approaches to academic publishing. This principle has guided COPIM’s main outcomes and objectives, and has supported us in building various models, systems, and platforms as part of our work to start removing the hurdles preventing new and existing open access book initiatives from adopting open access workflows. In addition to creating the community-led governance structures, archiving and preservation best practices, and experimental book pilots and resources to support this, Scaling Small comes to the fore very clearly in three of COPIM’s main outputs: the Open Book Collective (OBC), a UK charity governed by its members that brings together open access publishers, libraries, and publishing service providers to enable sustainable collective funding for open access books without charging authors; ‘Opening the Future’ (OtF), a revenue model which enables the transition of legacy publishers to OA by offering their closed access backlist to libraries via a subscription scheme, and using the revenue to fund new OA books; and Thoth, an open dissemination system that enables publishers to share their open access books much more widely, by easily creating high quality open metadata in a wide variety of formats.

As COPIM concludes, we hope to discuss and extend the organisational principle of Scaling Small in several ways, and with a variety of collaborators, while also thinking ahead about what our next steps will be in the future.

 

Are the Humanities Ready for Data Sharing? – Ithaka S+R

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“The Nelson memo is not the first federal policy to address data sharing and open access, but it is the first to apply to not only large funders such as the NSF and NIH, but to smaller ones such as the NEH. While the NEH funds only a tiny percentage of research and publications in the humanities, its inclusion in the Nelson memo and in the “year of open science” is clear evidence that humanists—who have largely existed on the margins of major trends towards mandatory data sharing that are transforming research practices and scholarly communication in other fields—must now consider their place in this policy landscape.[2]

Humanists—who have largely existed on the margins of major trends towards mandatory data sharing that are transforming research practices and scholarly communication in other fields—must now consider their place in this policy landscape.

It is not yet clear how the NEH will define data for the purposes of compliance with the Nelson memo, but the requirement that they do so should stimulate conversation about data sharing in the humanities. When should the evidence humanists collect be considered data? How might humanists adopt STEM-oriented norms around data sharing, and what might humanists bring to the table that would help other fields improve their data sharing practices?…”

Keynote panel: Experimental Books – Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing, 13 March, 16:50-18:45 (GMT) | Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

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16:50-17:00 (GMT): Welcome

Prof. Gary Hall (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University)

 

17:00-18:30: Keynote panel session with a response by Dr. Lozana Rossenova (Open Science Lab, TIB Hannover)

 

Writing a Book As If Writing a Piece of Software
Keynote by Dr. Winnie Soon (Course Leader at the Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London, Associate Professor (on leave) at Aarhus University, visiting researcher at the Centre of the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI), London South Bank University)

The term “computational publishing” has emerged in recent scholarship and is used specifically to describe books as dynamic and computational objects that are open to re-versioning. Within this specific genre of computational publishing, this presentation focuses on characteristics and common approaches like free and open source software, community practices and programmable processes by discussing three examples. They are related to a Git repository, collaborative publishing software and a DIY book to explore the possible computational extensibility that is oriented more toward collective interventions, actions and practices. These examples examine a parallel between writing and coding that blurs the boundary between books and software, arguing that writing (publishing) a computational book is like writing (publishing) a piece of software.

 

Digital Space as Indigenous Territory, Scholarly Writing as Relational Practice: Reflections from the Collaborative Production of an Open Access Book
Keynote by Prof. Paige Raibmon (Department of History, University of British Columbia (UBC)).

As I Remember it is an open access digital book that shares teachings presented by the ?a?am?n Elder and knowledge keeper Elsie Paul with wide-ranging audiences.  Paul collaborated in order to produce this work with two of her grandchildren, Davis McKenzie and Harmony Johnson, and myself, a historian based at the University of British Columbia.  In this talk, I share discuss our multi-year, collaborative process in which we strove to design a digital book whose form aligns with the meanings embedded within the its content (i.e. the teachings as shared and remembered by Paul).   Principles of relationality, respect, and humility were central to our methodology and helped us navigate the potential promise and pitfalls of bringing Indigenous knowledge into an open access digital space.   Using a range of means, we visibly and interactively embedded ?a?am?n authority over ?a?am?n knowledge into the book.  We invite readers to approach the book as guests of a ?a?am?n host; and to consider the website itself as ?a?am?n territory.  Thus, this digital book attempts to do something quite different than simply sharing information about Paul’s life. It challenges wide-spread assumptions about scholarly method, production, authorship, expertise, and copyright.

I invite and encourage people to explore the book before my talk at: ravenspacepublishing.org/as-i-remember-it/

 

18:30-18:45: Closing Remarks

Dr. Janneke Adema (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University)

 

The Future of the Monograph in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: Publisher Perspectives on a Transitioning Format | SpringerLink

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Abstract:  A web-based survey of academic publishers was undertaken in 2021 by a team at Oxford International Centre for Publishing into the state of monograph publication in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. 25 publishing organisations responded, including many of the larger presses, representing approximately 75% of monograph output. Responses to the survey showed that the Covid 19 pandemic has accelerated the existing trend from print to digital dissemination and that Open Access (OA) titles receive substantially greater levels of usage than those published traditionally. Responses also showed that for most publishers OA publication stands at under 25% of output and that fewer than 10% of authors enquire about OA publication options. Continuing problem areas highlighted by respondents were the clearing of rights for OA publication and the standardisation of title and usage metadata. All responding organisations confirmed that they expect to be publishing monographs in ten years’ time, but that they anticipate the format and/or the model will be different, with open access expected to play a key part in the future, perhaps in the context of a mixed economy of OA and ‘toll access’ publication.

 

Will Humanities and Social Sciences Publishing Consolidate? – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Today, I want to introduce a scenario that I believe should be modeled out by strategists, both in the publishing and library communities. In introducing this scenario, I want to underscore that I do not believe it to be inevitable, nor do I wish to advocate for it. But part of my job is to wonder about the future and to identify some scenarios that can inform planning in our sector. One of the scenarios that I have been considering more and more is a major consolidation among humanities and social sciences (HSS) publishers. 

In this piece, I focus primarily on consolidation among the US, UK, and EU commercial primary publishers. In this segment, consolidation is pursued largely through market-driven acquisitions and strategic partnerships. The same market factors that I discuss below will equally impact not-for-profit HSS publishers, but they may not wish, or may find it difficult, to consolidate in the same fashion. In some ways, though, this analysis may be of greatest importance for those that will find it most difficult to lead….

Finally, given the largely reactive concerns in academia and academic libraries to consolidation in STEM scholarly communication and infrastructure segments, is there any form of strategic investment or advocacy that can, from advocates’ perspective, constructively shape the HSS market before the consolidation scenario develops any further?”

Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship | Perspectives on History | AHA

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“n January 5, 2023, the AHA Council approved the Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship. In most history departments, “scholarship” has traditionally and primarily encompassed books, journal articles and book chapters, and papers presented at conferences. The weight and significance of each of these vary considerably by institution. The most valued coin of the realm remains not just the book—especially for early and midcareer scholars—but a particular kind of book known only in academia and scholarly publishing as a “monograph.” Yet many other categories of books don’t count: textbooks, official histories, anthologies, translations and critical editions, reference books, and more. These have not been deemed to be “creating new knowledge.” …

The AHA Council has decided that it is time to map a broader terrain of scholarship, with more flexible boundaries. There are many ways to be a historian, many ways to do historical work….

This recommendation and the guidelines that follow rest on four pillars:

A wide range of scholarly historical work can be undertaken in ways consistent with our disciplinary standards and values, from writing briefing papers and op-eds, to testifying in legislatures and courts, participating in the work of regulatory agencies, publishing textbooks and reference books, expanding our media presence across a wide range of platforms, and more.
To support such publicly engaged and/or policy-oriented work, history departments should give it appropriate scholarly credit in personnel decisions. Not doing so diminishes the public impact of historians and cedes to others—observers less steeped in our discipline-specific methods, epistemologies, and standards—the podium from which to shape the historical framing of vital public conversations.
Historians cannot expect decision makers or other potential audiences to appreciate the value of our work if we don’t affirm its value ourselves.
All historical work can be peer-reviewed, whether before or after publication….”

 

AHA: use public-facing work in hiring decisions | Times Higher Education (THE)

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“Textbooks, congressional testimony, media appearances, historical gaming – the American Historical Association is urging universities to accept more types of work from candidates for hiring, promotion, tenure and other benefits.

It is a development that historians say follows movement – particularly within the field of public history – towards broader recognition. That field involves work regarding national parks, museums, documentaries, archives and historical preservation….”

NWO Roadmap Grant for Digital Infrastructure Social Sciences and Humanities – ODISSEI – Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations

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“The collaboration between ODISSEI (Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations) and CLARIAH (Common Lab Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) and fifteen national partners has been awarded a Dutch Research Council (NWO) Large-scale Research Infrastructure Grant of €15.2 million. This new collaboration, Social Science and Humanities Open Cloud for the Netherlands (SSHOC-NL) will make it possible for researchers to securely and ethically link and analyse a huge range of data such as historical records, textual data, images, survey data, and social media data. This will help researchers address some of the most pressing issues that society faces such as polarisation, social inequalities, and environmental changes. SSHOC-NL builds the digital infrastructure to help researchers do that.”

[2302.04084] Reception Reader: Exploring Text Reuse in Early Modern British Publications

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Abstract:  The Reception Reader is a web tool for studying text reuse in the Early English Books Online (EEBO-TCP) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) data. Users can: 1) explore a visual overview of the reception of a work, or its incoming connections, across time based on shared text segments, 2) interactively survey the details of connected documents, and 3) examine the context of reused text for “close reading”. We show examples of how the tool streamlines research and exploration tasks, and discuss the utility and limitations of the user interface along with its current data sources.

 

COPIM conference “Experimental Books – Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing” – Part One, 20 February 2023 @ online | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs

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COPIM’s Experimental Publishing group is delighted to announce Experimental Books: Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing, the final conference of COPIM’s Experimental Publishing and Reuse work package including talks, roundtables, and workshops, exploring archival data performances, re-using as re-writing, and computational books. 20 February, 9 March, & 13 March 2023   REGISTER NOW: https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.org/ This three-part conference – including talks, roundtables, and workshops – will discuss alternative publishing options for the humanities by showcasing some of the experiments that are currently taking place in the realm of academic book publishing. It aims to inspire authors, publishers, technology developers and others, to (continue to) speculate on new collaborative futures for open humanities research and publication. It also aims to discuss how these book experiments could sit within more standardised or established workflows for print and online book production, dissemination, and preservation.

Part One: Monday, 20 February 2023

13:00-13:20 (GMT)

Welcome & Conference Outlook

Dr. Janneke Adema (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University)

 

13:20-14:40

Introducing Computational, Combinatorial, and Data Books

A roundtable conversation with Dr. Janneke Adema (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Simon Bowie (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Joana Chicau (Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London), Prof. Gary Hall (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Dr. Kat Jungnickel (Goldsmiths, University of London), Dr. Julien McHardy (COPIM), Dr. Gabriela Méndez Cota (Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, Department of Philosophy), Rebekka Kiesewetter (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Dr. Simon Worthington (Open Science Lab, TIB Hannover)

 

COPIM’s Experimental Publishing Work Package has worked with authors, designers, developers, providers of open source platforms and tools, and publishers on a series of Pilot Projects that are examining ways to align existing open source software, tools, workflows and infrastructures for experimental publishing with the workflow of open access book publishers. To do so, we have co-developed a set of pilot experimental academic books together with the scholar-led  presses Open Humanities Press, Mattering Press, and Open Book Publishers. 

This roundtable session serves as a pre-launch for the resulting pilot books Archival Conversations, Ecological Re-writing as Disappropriation. Situated Encounters with the Chernobyl Herbarium, and X-Sketchbook.  Joined by many of the involved makers and writers, we will collectively reflect on the journey that lead to these books and, looking forward, looking back, consider what it takes to nurture experimentation in scholarly publishing.

 

14:40-15:00 Coffee Break

 

15:00-17:00

Publishing from Collections: Introducing Computational Publishing for Culture

Workshop with Dr. Simon Worthington (Open Science Lab, TIB Hannover)

 

Computational publishing was developed in the life sciences and STEM subjects to allow publishers and authors to embed executable code, visualisations and advanced media objects alongside conventional text in a document. This hands-on workshop demonstrates one way how humanities scholars might use computational publishing.

During the workshop, we will auto-compile catalogue publications for exhibitions or publication listings from multiple open data sources; and show how such compilations can be published multi-format: web, PDF, ebook, etc. A series of exercises, using Jupyter Notebooks for code and the Quarto platform to wrap up the notebooks for multi-format outputting, will give participants a practical introduction to some of the tools, possibilities and concepts of computational publishing.

Participation in this workshop is limited. Please register HERE.

 

17:00-17:15 Coffee Break

 

17:15-18:30

De-schooling rewriting: or the promise of desapropiación

Keynote by Dr. Gabriela Méndez Cota (Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, Department of Philosophy)

 

Cristina Rivera Garza’s theory and practice of desapropiación has inspired numerous rewriting experiments in the Mexican context, among them the rewriting of The Chernobyl Herbarium by graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with COPIM.

Open access: a journey from impossible to probable, but still uncertain | Profesional de la información

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An overview of the evolution of open access (OA) to scientific publications over the last 20 years is presented. This retrospective look allows us to make two observations that seem to overlap: on the one hand, how close the initial objective seems to be to what initially seemed utopian and, on the other, the unanticipated and solid obstacles that open access has encountered along the way, as well as the unexpected and diverse solutions that are emerging to overcome them. The overall assessment of OA is positive, and it underscores that open access is (or is becoming) possible, that it is good, and that it is necessary. However, this overall positive evolution has come up against two major obstacles that are slowing its progress: the double payments generated by hybrid journals (subscription and article processing charges [APCs]) and the unchecked growth in APCs. In addition, this intensive use of APCs is creating a publishing gap between publishers that charge fees to authors and those that do not, and ultimately, it is causing dissension regarding the (previously shared) strategy toward open access. There are no immediate, one-off solutions to overcome the aforementioned dysfunctions, although three actions that, in the medium term, can remedy them can be mentioned: changing the approach to the evaluation of science, adopting measures to regulate APCs, and promoting alternative publication models. Finally, it should be noted that OA has acted as the vanguard and spearhead of a broader movement: that of open science.

A new JSTOR fee model option to maximize access to knowledge: A letter from Kevin Guthrie – News – About JSTOR

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“I recently shared the 2023 priorities ITHAKA has set to help provide the infrastructure the academic community needs to support research, teaching, and learning in an increasingly digital world. One of our most important aims is to provide universal access to as much content as possible. We are pursuing this through a range of initiatives, including Path to Open launched last month. I am excited to share another effort today: a new archive fee model that offers libraries another option to provide comprehensive access to all of our JSTOR Archival Journal and Primary Source collections.

Through this new model, the more than 5,000 institutions that have participated in our Expanded Access Program have an affordable way to continue the level of access they’ve had during the pandemic. It is also available to institutions that are not part of this program. We spent several years researching, testing, and refining this model in collaboration with libraries, consortia leaders, and publishers, and are grateful for their thoughtful guidance and encouragement. After hundreds of conversations and meetings, we have defined an approach that supports the broadest possible access to this material in a way that is sustainable for libraries, publishers, and JSTOR.

In brief, we have created a new single collection composed of all JSTOR Archival Journal and Primary Source collections and set an annual access fee (AAF) for this full collection for each institutional classification. Institutions who opt into this model will gain immediate access to the complete collection while starting at their current AAF level plus a modest adjustment of 2%-5% that continues to be applied annually until they reach the full fee. The annual fee adjustment percentage is based on the number of collections an institution currently licenses to recognize current investment. Institutions will eventually reach the same AAF for each classification, but the number of years to reach it will vary….”

Sidney Lapidus ’59 gift to Princeton University Library opens digital access to collection of rare Revolution-era books and publications | Princeton University Library

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“Sidney Lapidus ’59 has donated a collection of rare Revolution-era books and publications to Princeton University as part of the Venture Forward campaign, enabling Princeton University Library (PUL) to greatly enrich the Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution. The collection includes more than 2,700 original books, atlases, pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines relating to human and political rights, liberty, and independence around the time of the American Revolution. Lapidus also made a financial gift that enabled the PUL team to digitize the collection, making it keyword-searchable and openly available to the world….