DS/CN and Digital Medievalist to Join OLH Platform

Posted by Martin Paul Eve on 14 September 2016

dscn-and-dm-logos

We are extremely pleased to announce that Digital Studies / Le champ numérique (DS/CN) and Digital Medievalist are to join the Open Library of Humanities platformDS/CN is published by the Société canadienne des humanités numériques (CSDH/SCHN), a partner in the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO) that has been running for 24 years, with the journal publishing peer-reviewed articles for the past 7 years. The journal’s official languages are English and French, although DS/CN also publishes in other languages (such as Polish, for example), provided an English and/or French version is also published. 

The partner journal, Digital Medievalist: The Journal of the Digital Medievalist Community (DM), is a peer-reviewed journal that supports the international community of medievalists working with digital media, providing a network for technical collaboration and instruction, exchange of expertise, and the development of best practice, as well as organising conference sessions at international medieval and humanities computing congresses. The importance of the DM community is attested to in its status as the first Digital Humanities disciplinary-focus community of practice and a model for other groups (e.g. Digital Classicist, Digital Victorianist), and it serves a number of disciplinary fields, including digital humanities, medieval studies, cultural heritage, archaeology, literary studies, history, linguistics, and museum & archival studies. 
An external peer reviewer noted of these publications that “[t]he editorial board has combined decades of experience in the digital humanities, with some of the leading voices of the field participating in the current board”. Another remarked of Digital Medievalist that “[t]he journal is highly regarded by the community […] The trajectory of the journal and its impact on the field cannot be ignored”.

In recent years, both DM and DS/CN have been hosted by the Lethbridge Journal Incubator, an innovative Open Access publishing programme that gives graduate students hands on experience with contemporary scholarly communication. The Incubator is a joint project of the University of Lethbridge Library, School of Graduate Studies, Centre for the Study of Scholarly Communication, and Faculty of Arts and Science and it will continue to host editorial operations at both journals.

Professor Martin Paul Eve, a co-founder and CEO of the OLH, said of these journals: “I am really pleased that DS/CN and Digital Medievalist are joining the Open Library of Humanities. As a born-digital, open-access publisher, it is fantastic to see pioneering digital humanities journals coming on board. We very much look forward to continuing to support the radical work of these publications.” Dr Caroline Edwards, co-founder and Editorial Director of the OLH, added: "Bringing DS/CN and the Digital Medievalist onto the OLH platform secures the financial future of two important journals for the digital humanities and medieval studies communities. These two journals have been groundbreaking in introducing computer technologies to the study of medieval scholarly materials and their international reputation is oustanding. We're also delighted to be supporting their publication of articles in languages other than English – something that the OLH is keen to extend in developing its publishing activities to multilingual scholarly communities."

Professor Daniel O'Donnell, an editor of the journals, added: "The OLH model really represents the next development for the original generation of scholar-led Open Access in the Humanities. Journals which were founded in response to the early promise of the web now have a viable business model that couldn't have been imagined ten or fifteen years ago. With this move, our students will gain an even better appreciation for the new frontiers in Scholarly Communication."

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. 

Existing journals wishing to move to the platform should submit an initial enquiry to martin.eve@openlibhums.org. Libraries outside the US and UK interested in joining the OLH Library Partnership Subsidy model should contact Dr. Martin Paul Eve: martin.eve@openlibhums.org. UK-based libraries can join through Jisc Collections at http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/Catalogue/Overview/Index/2120. US-based libraries can join through LYRASIS at https://lyrasis.openlibhums.org. European libraries can join here: http://lps.openlibhums.org/ or send an enquiry to our European Library Partnership Manager: saskia.devries@openlibhums.org. 

Featured image (La cena en casa de Simón [fragmento], 1480) from the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Image in the public domain.