11 SCELC institutions join the OLH LPS model

We are pleased to announce that 11 SCELC institutions – Whittier College, Claremont School of Theology, Occidental College, Concordia University Texas, Mount Saint Mary’s, University of the Pacific, Claremont Colleges, Santa Clara University, Loyola Marymount University, University of San Francisco and Texas Christian University – have come together to join the Open Library of Humanities' Library Partnership Subsidy system. This move is part of the recently launched OLH Open Consortial Offer, an initiative that offers consortia, societies, networks and scholarly projects the possibility to join the Open Library of Humanities Library Partnership Subsidy system as a bloc and get a discount.

The Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) was established in 1986 to develop resource-sharing among the libraries of private academic institutions in Southern California. Since its inception, SCELC has evolved to include all of California, including 112 member institutions and 219+ affiliate institutions.

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.

Paula Clemente Vega, Marketing Officer for the Open Library of Humanities, said: “We are extremely grateful at the initiative taken here by SCELC institutions. It is great to see that universities are uniting forces to support the Open Library of Humanities. With the help of SCELC institutions we will continue to expand our vision for open access in the humanities, without charging authors, which is the main obstacle for humanities scholars.”


Paige Mann, a member of SCELC’s Scholarly Communications Committee, added: “As academic communities from an array of disciplines advocate for equitable scholarly infrastructures, OLH is enabling a wide variety of institutions to participate in this work. Larger, better-resourced institutions and smaller institutions with limited resources all have roles to play as we build our future.”