University of Manchester joins OLH LPS model
Posted by Martin Paul Eve on 5 August 2015
We are extremely pleased to announce that the University of Manchester has joined the Open Library of Humanities’ Library Partnership Subsidy system. Part of the prestigious Russell Group of universities, The University of Manchester is the largest single-site university in the UK, with the biggest student community.
The Open Library of Humanities is an academic-led, gold open-access publisher with no author-facing charges. With initial 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 Manchester: “I am delighted that the University of Manchester has joined the OLH LPS model. Manchester has in many ways been a pioneer of open access in the UK and the library team have worked hard to bring these benefits to their researchers. There are still economic challenges for the humanities disciplines, though. With the help of institutions like Manchester, the OLH will provide another route to open access in the humanities that may work better for these disciplinary spaces.”
Jan Wilkinson, University Librarian and Director of the John Rylands Library, added: “At Manchester we take a keen interest in publishing innovation and we are delighted to become a supporting partner of the OLH. We recognise the need for affordable open access options for humanities scholars and the importance of developing a sustainable financial model for open access publishing. Only by supporting new initiatives of this kind will we see significant transformation in the scholarly communication landscape.”
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.