The Library Partnership Subsidy model
The OLH recognises that the economics of the humanities work differently to other disciplines. The current level of Article Processing Charges (APCs) makes Gold OA publishing unaffordable for the majority of unfunded humanities scholars. The APC model concentrates costs on a specific part of the system (whether the academic or the institution), but the money is not necessarily available at those places. Our consortial funding model for open access solves this problem by bringing the distribution of the economics to the basis of our business model. We are funded through a model of Library Partnership Subsidies (LPS) that collectively fund the platform and its array of journals. Over 300 libraries and institutions worldwide already support us, which makes for a sustainable, safe platform.
Thanks to the support of our members, the OLH has expanded from 99 supporting institutions and 7 journals in 2015 to more than 345 supporting institutions and 31 journals in 2023. The OLH employs 8 full-time members of staff and has developed our own field-leading, open source publishing platform, Janeway, which was launched in 2017 and is developed fully in-house by our team of software developers.
For more information read, Eve, M. P., Vega, P. C., & Edwards, C. (2020). Lessons From the Open Library of Humanities. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of the Association of European Research Libraries, 30(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10327.
Publishing Costs
We currently publish c.560 articles across 28 journals (with 3 more journals joining OLH in 2023-3024). Below is a breakdown of our operating costs for 2021-2022.