OLH Launches in the UK with Jisc Collections

We are delighted to announce that the Open Library of Humanities has become the UK's first collaborative publishing consortium partnerning with Jisc Collections, who procure electronic content for all of the UK's research libraries in higher education. Our transformative Library Partnership Subsidy (LPS) business model is now available to UK libraries, who can sign up here to help shape non-profit open access scholarly publishing in the humanities. This is a significant step towards achieving a sustainable publishing model for scholarly journal articles, in which libraries have a decisive role in shaping the future of open access in the humanities. As members of the LPS, UK libraries will play a part in the governance of the Open Library of Humanities with membership on our Library Board.

Liam Earney, Director of Jisc Collections, said of the launch:

“We are keen to engage with a variety of business models to help universities in making their research openly available and compliant with open access policies.

The OLH has a transformative business model that is supportive and inclusive of all humanities scholars. It strengthens the relationship between publishers and libraries by actively involving the libraries in the governance of the OLH. This collectively-funded model offers a cost competitive, sustainable path to gold open access that our universities have told us they want.”

Dr Martin Paul Eve, Co-Director of the Open Library of Humanities, said:

“We are thrilled and privileged to be working with Jisc in the UK to implement another route to achieve open access. The humanities disciplines still pose a substantially greater challenge than their scientific counterparts.

With our unique financial model and innovative approach to transition, we hope to contribute to a solution.”

This launch follows the success of the OLH's exclusive partnership with LYRASIS, which manages digital content for US libraries through a number of collaborative partnerships. Since launching in January 2015 more than 60 US libraries have now signed up to the LPS model, including Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the GALILEO consortium which includes over 2,000 institutions within the state of Georgia.

See here for the Jisc Collections OLH Launch press release.

See here for more information about the OLH's transformative business and publishing model.

Featured image by heipei under a CC BY-SA license.