OLH partners with LingOA and Ubiquity Press to provide long-term sustainability for flipped journals

We are very pleased to announce that the Open Library of Humanities has partnered with the LingOA initiative and with Ubiquity Press to support the transition of subscription linguistics journals to a pure OA model. The LingOA project is designed to move linguistics journals out of unaffordable subscription models and into a pure, gold OA environment. Ubiquity Press is the technological platform provider that underpins the OLH.

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.

The LingOA project has significant funding to achieve its goals over a five-year period. Yet five years is only the beginning. OLH will offer its model as the long-term sustainability plan for flipped journals, ensuring that authors never have to pay article processing charges. Journals that are to convert to an OA model will be proposed to the OLH’s Library Board in aim with our charitable objects to make high-quality knowledge available to all. The first journals to be proposed will be the subscription publications LaPhon and the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics.

Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a founder and academic project director of the OLH, said of the partnership: “we are delighted to be working with LingOA and our existing partner, Ubiquity Press, to assist in the transition to an open-access environment. However, while it’s clear in the short term how we can bridge-fund a transfer, longer term sustainability needs must be met. This type of sustainable transition away from subscriptions to gold OA is precisely what the OLH is designed to achieve and we are delighted to participate.”

Professor Johan Rooryck, the initiator of the LingOA project, added “The journals of LingOA are very excited about this partnership with the OLH. The OLH provides the first framework by which we can move away from subscriptions and into a sustainable open-access ecosystem without the challenges of authors having to find APCs. In this way, the long-term sustainability of the LingOA Open Access model is assured.”

Journals wishing to join the platform should submit an initial enquiry to martin.eve@openlibhums.org. After the September launch of the OLH, applications will be be subject to the platform's joining procedure. 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.