The Dutch Research Council (NWO) commits three years of funding to OLH

We are very pleased to announce that the Dutch Research Council (NWO) has joined the Open Library of Humanities' Library Partnership Subsidy system and has committed to three years of funding for OLH. This cements NWO’s belief in a diversity of business models to support open access.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO's mission is to advance world-class scientific research that has scientific and societal impact. That’s why for many years NWO has been a strong supporter of open access and open science. It signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in May 2005. It has had an Open Access policy since 2009, followed by an open research data policy in 2016 and is also a member of cOAlition S.

The Open Library of Humanities is an academic-led, gold open-access publisher with no author-facing charges (diamond). 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.

“We are delighted to welcome NWO to our library partnership scheme,” said Paula Clemente Vega, Marketing Officer for the Open Library of Humanities. “It is always great to see that in the context of Plan S funders are opting to support scholar-led, community owned and non-APC open access initiatives.”. 

Professor Martin Paul Eve, a CEO of the Open Library of Humanities, added: “cOAlition S has spoken often in recent days of the need for diverse revenue models to achieve OA across various disciplines. We are, therefore, grateful to NWO – as we are to The Wellcome Trust and the Austrian Science Fund FWF who have funded us for several years – for their support for our ‘diamond’ OA platform. This kind of commitment allows us to operate a high-quality OA offering for the humanities disciplines that does not rely on author fees. The NWO has shown terrific leadership in this regard and we are most grateful.”

Stan Gielen (president executive board NWO) “At NWO we strongly believe there are multiple routes to Open Access and a variety of business models that can support the transition to Open Access. This includes non-commercial and non-APC based Open Access models – also known as 'Diamond' Open Access. The Open Library of the Humanities stands out as a high-quality publication platform for scholars in the humanities based on a highly innovative business model. We are very happy to support OLH for the coming three years”.

Science Europe in collaboration with cOalition S recently commissioned a study to analyse collaborative non-commercial Diamond publishing journals and platforms and to identify concrete ways to support and strengthen these journals. More information about this study can be found here. 

If you like the work that the Open Library of Humanities is doing, please consider asking your institution to support us financially. We cannot operate without our library members. More details for libraries can be found here: https://www.openlibhums.org/plugins/supporters/signup/.