The OLH Open Access Award 2023: call for applications

The OLH Open Access Award 2023: call for applications 

The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is proud to continue its work towards its open access mission across the globe with the OLH Open Access Award 2023, a fund dedicated to promoting the benefits and impact of open access to humanities scholars and disciplines and to knowledge worldwide. 

The Open Library of Humanities is an academic-led, diamond open access publisher of 28 journals. With initial funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and subsequent support from Arcadia, a charitable fund, the platform covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium, rather than any kind of author fee. 

We welcome applications that further our commitment to creating an open access scholarly environment within academia and beyond, and reflect our mission: to support and extend open access to scholarship in the humanities – for free, for everyone, for ever.  

Applications for OLH funding of up to £500 are welcomed from individuals or organisations in any location, and may be used to help fund events, projects or activities on open access or with an open access component, or other related costs that will be considered on a case-by-case basis in accordance with need and feasibility. 

Please note that the award is for projects that will promote open access within the humanities disciplines as widely as possible, and so will not be awarded to pay for individual Article Processing Charges (APCs) or article fees.

Applications should be no more than two pages, and should include: 

• The name of the organisation or individual applying; 
  
• A description of what the award will be used for; 
  
• How the proposed event, project or activities will further the OLH mission; 
  
• A full budget, listing how the award funds will be spent; 
  
• A timeline of proposed activities and expenditure; 
  
• Brief biographies of all individuals or organisations applying; 
  
• Details of any other financial support or funds already secured, or being applied for. 
  

Successful applicants must submit a report to the OLH after completion of the project or activities, and within one year of the award, noting how funds were spent. Past winners of the OLH Open Access Award can be found at https://www.openlibhums.org/news/379/. 

The application deadline is Friday 30th June 2023; applications should be emailed to Dr Rose Harris-Birtill at rose.harris-birtill@openlibhums.org 

About the OLH 

The Open Library of Humanities is a multi-award-winning charitable organisation based at Birkbeck, University of London dedicated to publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges. We are funded by an international consortium of libraries who have joined us in our mission to make scholarly publishing fairer, more accessible, and rigorously preserved for the digital future. 

The OLH publishing platform supports academic journals from across the humanities disciplines, as well as hosting its own multidisciplinary journal. Launched as an international network of scholars, librarians, programmers and publishers in January 2013, the OLH has received two substantial grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and subsequent support from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin –  and has built a sustainable business model with its partner libraries that delivers open access to 28 peer-reviewed journals, all of which are free to read and free to publish in. 

We are delighted to have won a Coko Foundation Open Publishing Award in the category of Open Publishing Models in 2019, to have achieved Highly Commended for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2020, and to have won an award for Small Digital Publisher of the Year from the Association of Online Publishers in October 2020. 

The Open Library of Humanities journal publishes internationally-leading, rigorous and peer-reviewed scholarship across the humanities, with Special Collections that showcase the latest research on a single topic or theme from experts in the field. The scholarship that we publish showcases some of the most dynamic research taking place in the humanities disciplines today – from classics, modern languages and cultures, literature, philosophy, theology and history, to political theory, sociology, anthropology, film and new media, and digital humanities. 

Our articles benefit from the latest advances in online journal publishing – with high-quality presentation, annotative functionality, robust digital preservation, strong discoverability and easy-to-share social media buttons. 

Our mission is to support and extend open access to scholarship in the humanities – for free, for everyone, for ever. To learn more about the Open Library of Humanities please visit: https://www.openlibhums.org/  

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 at: https://www.openlibhums.org/plugins/supporters/signup/.