Austrian Science Fund (FWF) commits to five years of funding for OLH

We are extremely pleased to announce that the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has agreed to support the Open Library of Humanities’ Library Partnership Subsidy system at a rate equivalent to 15 institutions from 2016-2020. The purpose of the FWF is to support the ongoing development of Austrian science (including the humanities) and basic research at a high international level. In this way, the FWF makes a significant contribution to cultural development, to the advancement of our knowledge-based society, and thus to the creation of value and wealth in Austria. The FWF has become the first public funding agency to support OLH, which has also received support from the Andrew. W. Mellon Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

The Open Library of Humanities is an academic-led, gold open-access publisher with no author-facing charges. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the platform covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium, rather than any kind of author fee.

Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a founder and academic project director of the OLH, welcomed the FWF: “It is wonderful to have the support of the FWF and we are most grateful for their contribution. As a forward-thinking public research funder, it is clear that FWF and its funded research will benefit from open access. We will use this funding to extend our journal flipping model in the humanities disciplines.”

Falk Reckling, Department Head of Policy, Evaluation and Analysis at the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) stresses: “We are very happy to support OLH. OLH not only allows authors from the Humanities to publish without costs, it also offers also a professional platform for journals to switch to Open Access. And even more important, OLH has developed a very fair crowd-funding model which shares the cost for professional publishing services among research institutions and funders worldwide. Finally, together with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna we hope our initiative will lead to an Austrian consortium which ensure a sustainable funding of OLH.”

The FWF also coordinates the Open Access Network Austria (OANA) which has today published 16 recommendations how to shift the academic publication system in Austria to full (Gold) Open Access by 2025, see: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.34079.

Existing journals wishing to move to the platform should submit an initial enquiry to martin.eve@openlibhums.org. Libraries outside the US and UK interested in joining the OLH Library Partnership Subsidy model should contact Dr. Martin Paul Eve: martin.eve@openlibhums.org. UK-based libraries can join through Jisc Collections at http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/Catalogue/Overview/Index/2120. US-based libraries can join through LYRASIS at https://lyrasis.openlibhums.org.