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Parent company | Birkbeck, University of London |
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Status | Nonprofit |
Founded | 2015 |
Founders | Martin Paul Eve, Caroline Edwards |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Headquarters location | London, England |
Publication types | Academic journals |
Nonfiction topics | Humanities |
Official website | openlibhums.org |
The Open Library of Humanities is a nonprofit, diamond open access publisher in the humanities and social sciences [1] founded by Martin Paul Eve and Caroline Edwards. [2] Founded in 2015, OLH published 27 scholarly journals as of 2022, [3] and as of 2025 lists 33 journals [4] , including a mega journal, also called Open Library of Humanities, which was modeled on PLOS but not affiliated with it. [5]
The Open Library of Humanities was officially launched on 28 September 2015. [6] The project was funded by core grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [7] [8] and uses a library partnership subsidy model to cover costs. [9] It has a number of advisory committees, such as the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee which includes PLOS co-founder Michael Eisen, [1] Quebec-based academic Jean-Claude Guédon, and the Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association, Kathleen Fitzpatrick. [10] An internationalization committee was formed in 2013 to develop an international strategy. [11] A member of this committee, Francisco Osorio, has written that the open access model of the Open Library of Humanities may be beneficial for researchers publishing in languages other than English. [12]
Although originally intended to run on Open Journal Systems, [13] in 2017 OLH started development of a new platform, Janeway. [14] Initially the main press site and the journal Orbit [15] were hosted on the new platform. In of March 2022 the project to migrate the remaining journals was completed. [16] The University of Lincoln, in partnership with the Public Knowledge Project, offered a funded place for an MSc by Research in Computer Science to develop an open-source XML typesetting tool as proposed by the Open Library of Humanities technical roadmap. [17] In November 2013 it was announced that the Public Knowledge Project will be funding the development of the typesetter, known as meTypeset. [18]
The Open Library of Humanities publishing model relies on support from an international group of libraries, which enables the publication of articles without the need for article processing charges. [19] In 2021, OLH became part of Birkbeck, University of London, maintaining its nonprofit status while reducing overhead. [20]