Review of the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, (RHETM) flips to diamond open access with the Open Library of Humanities

We are very pleased to welcome another title, Review of the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, (RHETM) to our portfolio of diamond open access journals.  RHETM is the successor of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, one of the longest-running and most respected English-language journals on the topic of history and methodology of economics. Founded in 1983 by the late Warren Samuels, one of the best regarded historians of political economy of the 20th century, RHETM has been published serially since then. RHETM is dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to a broad range of topics related to the history and methodology of economics and its relationship to other fields in the humanities and social sciences. Research published in the journal covers the following (non-exhaustive) list of disciplines: economics, political economy, epistemology, philosophy of science, history of science, sociology of science, intellectual history, economic history, economic methodology, economic sociology, science and technology studies, moral philosophy, political philosophy, and behavioural science. 

RHETM has been published by Emerald under a subscription-based model since 2000, after being housed at JAI Press between 1983 and 1999. The journal will be published by the Open Library of Humanities from Winter 2024 onwards, using our in-house publishing platform Janeway. The hope is to eventually digitise much of the RHETM back catalogue and make past issues available through OLH. Thanks to the OLH’s diamond open access model (funded by an international network of more than 340 supporting libraries), moving forward, RHETM will be free to read and will not charge authors publication fees. 

Dr Caroline Edwards, Executive Director of the OLH, said “RHETM is a great addition to the OLH’s growing portfolio of diamond open access journals. The journal’s prestigious reputation has been built on interdisciplinarity between the humanities and the social sciences. Flipping RHETM open access will increase the journal’s visibility and ensure its articles can find the wider readership they deserve.”

“RHETM’s founding editor, Warren Samuels, was a committed advocate for pluralism in economics. And what better way of promoting pluralism than inviting more people to join the conversation? We believe the move to a diamond open access model, making RHETM broadly accessible to everyone regardless of their academic background or institutional support, will go a long way toward fulfilling Warren’s vision and keeping his legacy alive.”  

RHETM is one of seven new journals joining the OLH in 2023-2024, which includes five other journals that are “flipping” away from subscription models: Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture; Political Philosophy; Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, and Quaker Studies (formerly published by Liverpool University Press in partnership with the OLH). Thanks to the support of our international network of library members, the OLH has been able to undertake the complex, skilled technical work of migrating these journals and committing to fund the cost of their publication in perpetuity.

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. 

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