OLH welcomes the Dutch Research Council (NWO) as its first Platinum super-supporter

Open Library of Humanities is thrilled to announce the Dutch Research Council (NWO) has committed to a further three years of funding OLH. NWO originally joined OLH in 2020 in line with its long-standing support of a variety of open access initiatives. The research council was an early signatory of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Science and Humanities, and has had an official open access policy since 2009.  As the national research council of the Netherlands, the organisation funds world-class scientific research that has significant scientific and societal impact.

Additionally, NWO has become the first member to join our new Platinum tier of support. This higher level of support enables OLH to expand our portfolio of diamond open access journals. Platinum, gold, silver and bronze tier support is now available to all universities and research organisations that would like to contribute at a higher fee to facilitate the flipping of subscription journals to open access.  We currently have 18 higher-tier supporters, most of whom have joined in the last two years.

“We are delighted to continue our relationship with NWO and to welcome them as our first Platinum member,” said Paula Clemente Vega, Marketing Officer for the Open Library of Humanities. “Our new platinum level of support enables organisations to voluntarily assist us in our mission to bring high-quality open-access humanities research to scholars for free, for ever.”

“We are proud to contribute to the continued success of Open Library of Humanities,” said Hans de Jonge, director of Open Science NL, part of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). “In recent years, NWO has already committed to fund several diamond open access initiatives. In line with the EU-council Conclusions of May 2023 and in the current policy period 2023-2026, NWO wants to further pursue and contribute to a national and international transition towards a more open, accessible, equitable, diverse and cost-transparent academic publishing landscape. Funding fully proven diamond OA initiatives such as Open Library of the Humanities is unconditionally part of this strategy.”

About OLH: The Open Library of Humanities is an award-winning, academic-led, diamond open-access publisher of 30 journals based at Birkbeck, University of London. 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 author fee. This funding mechanism enables equitable open access in the humanities disciplines, with charges neither to readers nor authors.  ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

If you are interested in 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/.  To enquire about joining OLH has a platinum, gold, silver or bronze level, please email paula.clementevega@bbk.ac.uk.