Reclaiming Academic Publishing: The Launch of the Open Journals Collective

Earlier this week we launched the Open Journals Collective (OJC), an equitable, sustainable, community-led alternative to the big deals and transformative agreements offered by corporate academic publishers.

The OJC is a collective of libraries and university-based publishers working to change the way academic research is supported and disseminated. Drawing on more than a decade of digital publishing innovation, the OJC confronts the crisis in academic journal publishing with a viable path toward bringing publishing back in-house at universities. We will launch a large collection of hundreds of diamond open access journals in the humanities and social sciences in January 2026.

The OJC Library Board includes library directors, intellectual property specialists, and open research leaders from institutions such as Iowa State University, Princeton University, the University of Edinburgh, Harvard University, MIT, Yale University, Lancaster University, the University of York, the University of Cambridge, the National Library of Scotland, the University of Sussex, and the University of St Andrews.

Publishers that have already joined the OJC include the Open Library of Humanities, LSE Press, UCL Press, the University of Michigan Press, the California Digital Library, and Edinburgh Diamond at the University of Edinburgh — with more publishers joining soon. While we are primarily based in the US, Canada, and the UK, we are also actively working with colleagues in Europe and beyond.

Learn more about OJC: : 🔗 www.openjournalscollective.org

Read the accompanying LSE blog by Dr. Caroline Edwards: 🔗 Academic libraries cannot afford to carry on with transformative agreements

Follow OJC on Bluesky for updates

For Libraries.

Three points about transforming academic publishing for libraries: 1) Offering an alternative to commercial agreements, 2) Transitioning high-quality journals to open access, 3) Leveraging academic networks for budget savings

For Academics.

Three points about supporting open access in academia: 1) Collaborating with university-based publishers for free access, 2) Raising investment for paywall-free research, 3) Protecting against commercialisation by strengthening university collaborations

For Publishers.

Three points about supporting open access publishing for publishers: 1) Raising investment for sustainable journal publishing, 2) Empowering journals to transition to open access, 3) Creating a collective voice to defend academic integrity and challenge for-profit publishers

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 on our signup page.