University of Virginia joins OLH LPS Model

We are delighted to announce that the University of Virginia Library has joined the Open Library of Humanities' Library Partnership Subsidy system. Founded as the heart of the University of Virginia in 1819, the Library’s original purpose remains unchanged: to provide access to accumulated knowledge and increase advanced learning. UVA Library serves as the foundation for the University to build a transformative educational community. The Library offers five million print volumes of books, 16 million manuscripts, and is home to a vast digital archive that works to preserve rare physical works such as the Jefferson Papers and video from the Civil Rights Era.

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.

"We are delighted to have the support of the University Virginia," said Paula Clemente Vega, Marketing Officer for the Open Library of Humanities. "Our model for open access works on distributing costs across our nearly 300 supporting institutions, rather than concentrating and charging expensive publication costs to — mostly unfunded — authors in the humanities. Universities on the other hand are currently facing the financial impact of the pandemic, but many are however choosing to redirect their increasing tight budgets to support scholar-led, community owned, non-for-profit open access initiatives such as OLH.  It is thanks to the support of institutions such as the University of Virginia that we can continue to exist and provide an alternative to the often unaffordable APC model for open access publications."

Beth Blanton, Director of Collections at the UVA Library, commented that "the University of Virginia Library is excited to join this community-supported endeavor to re-imagine publishing for humanities researchers and scholars. The Library is pleased to collaborate with other research institutions to create a sustainable, broad-based approach to scholarly communication by publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs)."

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/.