Become a supporter.
By joining the OLH, you contribute to the development, sustainability and governance of an award-winning diamond open-access publishing platform.
Your investment funds the publication of 30 humanities journals while supporting our collective goal to make scholarly publishing fairer, more accessible and rigorously preserved for the digital future.
The benefits of supporting us.
1. Join us
Join a collectively-funded sustainable publishing ecosystem.
2. Fund
Fund 30 diamond open-access humanities journals.
3. Network
Join a growing network of 340+ international supporters.
4. Archive
Robust archiving and indexing for maximum discoverability.
5. Badges
Show your support for scholar-led, diamond open access.
6. Flexibility
Flexible membership tiers from c. £1000 per year.
Your investment.
We are not a subscription publisher, charging fees for exclusive access to our journals. Instead, your investment funds 30 open access journals in the humanities, with no author-facing charges, making them accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
By supporting us, you join over 340 libraries worldwide who are taking a stand against exploitative commercial publishing practices to invest in progressive change in scholarly communications. As more libraries join our partnership network, we divert library budgets away from commercial subscriptions. This redistributes library investment towards a not-for-profit, academic-led publishing future.
Standard-level OLH membership sustains our publishing activities and helps build open-source publishing technologies that benefit the entire academic community. In 2022, we published and funded a total of 469 articles across journals. These publications were downloaded 1,122,354 times and viewed 2,539,747 times. We now publish 30 journals and 4 journals are archived.
Higher-level OLH membership helps us expand. We use these funds to rescue high-profile titles that are at risk from ceasing publication due to austerity cuts to humanities research funding. Higher-level membership also enables us to flip more subscription journals to diamond open access.
Flipping journals strengthens libraries’ bargaining power with large commercial publishers. This puts pressure on these publishers to adopt more transparent business models and reduce their fees to reflect the realities of library budgets.
“We’ve heard two different stories from libraries and journals. On the one hand, some libraries are struggling to keep afloat and need us to freeze our prices. On the other hand, some libraries have said that they want to support us in expanding and converting more humanities titles to a diamond open-access model. Our membership options cater for both groups.”
Prof. Martin Paul Eve, OLH co-founder.
Sustaining partners.
Higher supporters.
- Iowa State University Library
- King's College London
- Lancaster University
- Sächsische Landesbibliothek Staats – und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden
- The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
- The Open University
- University College London (UCL)
- University of Aberdeen
- University of Arizona Libraries
- University of Edinburgh
- University of Glasgow
- University of Manchester
- University of Oxford
- University of Sheffield
- University of Southampton
- University of York
- Yale University
Sector-leading standards.
The OLH has proven that it is possible to publish high-quality humanities scholarship at an affordable cost. We’ve shown that bringing publishing technology in house, under academic control, does not compromise quality. Our publishing platform Janeway removes the profit margins of commercial infrastructure providers. This generates substantial savings to the library partners that financially support us.
OLH journal articles benefit from the latest advances in online journal publishing – with strong discoverability, robust digital preservation, and high quality presentation. All OLH content is registered with and assigned a Digital Object Identifier and our journals are indexed in the Directory of Open Access (DOAJ) and many key indexers. Journal information is harvested by Google Scholar and metadata is available for harvesting via OAI-PMH.
This means that our journal content is discoverable for researchers using library catalogues at your institution. However, content is also available for the benefit of all who have an internet connection, regardless of geographical location or financial means. You can read more about the preservation, discoverability and accessibility of our journal content by downloading our Library Brochure.
“The OLH is such good value for money. Library budgets are always tight, but we feel that we should be doing more to support academic-led publishing. The OLH puts a lot back into the academic community and we are pleased to help with its ongoing sustainability.”
Theo Andrew, Scholarly Communications Manager at the University of Edinburgh.
Governance and advocacy.
Since launching in 2013 as a scholar-led movement, the OLH has worked closely with library allies to build an alternative model to commercial journal subscriptions. In recognition of this partnership between scholars and librarians, all library members are given a governance stake in the OLH. The Library Board is one of three advisory boards elected to represent our membership interests and vote on strategic issues.
We are also actively involved in open-access advocacy. On our a Resources page, you will find materials including campaign posters, videos, infographics, and reading lists. We also provide links to other organisations that equip librarians to advocate for open access in the humanities and strengthen the argument for an OLH membership or renewal.
Badges.
We provide digital supporter badges in recognition of our members’ commitment to supporting diamond open access in the humanities. OLH library members are entitled to display a standard supporter badge on their institutional website, while higher tier supporters are entitled to display one of our super-supporter badges in recognition of their extra contribution.
Other ways to support.
There are other ways you can support the OLH, in addition to membership. Recommending OLH journals to scholars in your institution can raise academic awareness about scholar-led and not-for-profit publishing models. We encourage you to suggest our 30 journals to your academics for their publications and use on university curricula. We also welcome expressions of interest to write for our Open Insights blog series, which contains guest-written posts, interviews, and provocations about open access.