OLH Executive Director Caroline Edwards Elected to the OASPA Board of Directors

We are delighted to announce that our Executive Director and co-founder of the Open Library of Humanities Dr Caroline Edwards has been elected to the OASPA Board of Directors. She and three other newly elected members will begin their 3-year term in September 2023. The other elected members include Susan Murray from African Journals Online, Sofie Wennström from Stockholm University Press, and Juan Pablo Alperin from the Public Knowledge Project, who has been re-elected.  

About OASPA: Launched in 2008, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) is a not-for-profit membership organisation of scholarly publishers and related organisations that works to support the transition to a world in which open access becomes the predominant model of publication for scholarly outputs. 

The OASPA Board of Directors comprises 11 members who serve for a term of 3 years. Board members are appointed by the OASPA membership. At least half of the Board must be representatives of members who obtain at least 50% of their income from activities related to the publication of fully Open Access journals and fully Open Access books. The Board is charged with the management of the foundation and Board members are expected to be involved in regular meetings to discuss and direct the activities of the association to ensure that the mission and purpose of OASPA is fulfilled.

About OLH: The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is an award-winning, academic-led, diamond open-access publisher of 28 journals based at Birkbeck, University of London. With initial funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and subsequent support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin, the OLH covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium rather than any author fee. This funding mechanism enables equitable open access in the humanities disciplines, with charges neither to readers nor authors.

Congratulations to Caroline (and the others) for her election and for all her brilliant work in support of diamond OA publishing.

“I’m really excited to be joining the Board of Directors. OASPA’s mission – to encourage and enable open access as the predominant model of communication for scholarly outputs – is so important in a rapidly-changing and uncertain world," said Caroline Edwards. "We need access to high-quality scholarship to help inform public debate as well as support scholars in parts of the world where paywalls are a huge barrier to knowledge production. I’m proud to be representing diamond open access publishers, advocating for not-for-profit routes to achieving open access, and challenging the rampant commercialisation of university research.”

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/.