Frequently asked questions.

The OLH was one of the first not-for-profit publishers to fund humanities journals publishing their research diamond open access. Our library membership network means that university and public libraries financially support open-access publishing without transferring the costs onto authors or readers. This model of collective funding has been influential, leading to a number of other publishers adopting similar schemes.

As an innovator in this space, the OLH remains one of the best-known and most prestigious open-access publishers. Many of the journals that we publish have award-winning articles in their back catalogues. Other articles published in our journals have received international press coverage. We have also received awards for best practice in open-access publishing standards.

We are also well known for innovation in publishing technologies and community-supported infrastructure. Our publishing platform, Janeway, is used by hundreds of academic journals, libraries, and university presses worldwide under an open-source copyleft license. When you join the OLH, you are supporting a vibrant international community of scholars, librarians, publishing technology engineers, and like-minded open-access publishers.

Janeway was developed by the OLH as our in-house, not-for-profit publishing platform. It is strictly open source and shared under a copyleft license, which prevents against commercial acquisition of any part of the code base. The OLH tech team run and maintain Janeway, which powers all of the OLH's journals as well as being used by a growing number of of academic journals, scholarly societies, and university presses.

Members will have full access to all published content in OLH journals, which are widely indexed in library catalogues and also available to read online at the publisher's website for anyone with an internet connection. Academics at members' organisations are eligible to submit their research for publication at any OLH journal without incurring author fees.

Every member is given a seat on the OLH Library Members’ Network, which is represented by the elected OLH Library Board. The Board is responsible for overseeing the governance of the OLH and representing library members’ interests. Members receive a yearly report including financial and publishing data. Library members are listed on the OLH website and are entitled to display a supporter badge in recognition of their contribution to funding open access.

There is no special benefit to higher-tier membership in terms of exclusive access. Our mission at the OLH is to transition towards sustainable not-for-profit open-access publishing, so that libraries can move away from unaffordable commercial publishing costs (including journal subscriptions, bundles of titles, transformative agreements, and Article Processing Charges).

Over time, librarians will see savings on these costs as more journals flip towards diamond open access. By supporting the OLH at a higher tier, libraries can accelerate this transition away from commercially-published open access and put more pressure on commercial publishers to adapt their business models.

We welcome expressions of interest from consortia, societies, networks, and scholarly projects interested in joining the OLH as a bloc. Members joining in a consortial group gain a discount of: 5% if 10 libraries join; 10% if 20 libraries join; 15% if more than 30 libraries join.

For further information about our consortial offer, please email our Marketing Officer Paula Clemente Vega: paula.clementevega@bbk.ac.uk.

By joining the OLH, your library is helping fund a sustainable transition away from commercial open-access publishing towards community-owned and scholar-led publishing. Without this transition, libraries will remain beholden to unaffordable journal subscription costs or transformative agreements for their academics to publish open access. Our membership rates are banded according to institutional size and gross national income (GNI) per capita, which is a fair pricing structure that contributes towards the repatriation of financial resources from the Global North to the Global South.

As a not-for-profit publisher with our own in-house publishing platform, the OLH has dramatically reduced the cost of high-quality journal publishing online. It’s cheaper for your library to join the OLH and pay an annual membership, which funds the publication of 500 articles across 30 journals each year, than to pay a single Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish one article open access with a legacy publisher. (Typically, it costs a humanities researcher c.£2,500 / €2,894 / $3,067 for an APC to publish their journal article open access with a publisher whose profits derive from library subscriptions).

We don't currently produce any institution specific statistics, as the OLH is a completely open-access publisher we have no paywalls or requirements for login that would allow us to accurately capture this information. More information is available regarding the context for this decision.

The OLH employs staff for technical support, maintenance, and ongoing platform development of our Janeway in-house publishing platform, as well as editorial and marketing. Revenue is spent on these staff costs, as well as publishing costs such as indexing, archiving, typesetting, web and server hosting costs.

You can see the breakdown of our publishing costs on our Governance and Finances page.

OLH memberships are banded according to FTE size and geographical location. We adjust fees by country using data from the World bank on gross national income (GNI) per capita. You can use our calculator to assess your membership fee.

If our flexible banding is still too expensive for your current budget, we also have a donations button where you can give an amount of your choosing. If you would like to discuss this further, please get in touch.

Check our Resources page, where you can find our collection of essays, interviews and blog posts. You can also access our collection of posters, infographics, and promotional materials.