University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main joins OLH LPS model

We are extremely pleased to announce that the University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main has joined the Open Library of Humanities' Library Partnership Subsidy system. Goethe University Frankfurt, positioned among the top international research universities, offers a wide variety of academic programmes, a diverse group of research institutes, and a focus on interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex problems. The university is named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Frankfurt-born polymath renowned for his exceptional contributions to literature, science, and philosophy.

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.

Professor Martin Paul Eve, a founder and academic project director of the OLH, welcomed the University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: “It is sometimes assumed that the Article Processing Charge model that has come to dominate certain fields of open access in the sciences will be the way that we achieve widespread open access. The humanities have a different funding challenge for OA. With the help of institutions such as Goethe University in Frankfurt, we will expand our open-access model and ensure that we never charge authors for publishing in our journals.”

Dr. Heiner Schnelling, director of the University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg, adds: "We are glad that OLH offers a framework to support journals that are totally free of costs for readers and authors alike. We believe that this approach is a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to Article Processing Charge models."