Dublin City University becomes first Irish institution to join OLH

Dublin City University is excited to join the Open Library of Humanities, becoming the first Irish University to do so. Christopher Pressler, DCU’s Director of Library Services said, ‘DCU has a strong history in supporting Open Access, and as Ireland’s University of Enterprise we are very pleased to add our support to the OLH.’ DCU also holds the Co-Chair, (with University College London) of the European OA portal to e-theses, DART-Europe. The University is ranked highly in the World Top 100 under 50 Years Old and is known as a dynamic and adventurous institution. DCU Library Services will be pleased to work with Schools and Faculties in contributing academic content to OLH, and will also use its own Historic Collections Research Centre to publish new research through OLH.

Dublin City University began supporting open access in 2006 with the launch of its institutional repository, DORAS. DORAS (DCU Online Research Access Service, and also the Gaelic word for ‘Door’) aims to host all of the scholarly research outputs emanating from DCU. As of October 2015 DORAS held over 6,000 full text open access items including journal articles, conference items, and research theses. These research theses number almost 2,500 and comprise Ireland’s only fully online (and complete) open access thesis collection. DORAS maintains the highest standards of metadata cataloguing and as a result is fully indexed by Google and Google Scholar achieving the very highest of results rankings.

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 Dublin City University: “I am delighted that Dublin City University – an active player in the open-access scene – has joined the Open Library of Humanities model. We should not expect that a single mode of delivery for open access will be applicable to all disciplines. With the help of institutions like Dublin City we will build a model that works in the humanities.”

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.