The Open Scholarship Project: creating sustainable growth for open access publishing in the humanities and social sciences

Abstract

Some successful approaches to open access publishing have grown organically from the cultures that sustain them. For example, arXiv has leveraged the need for the quick transfer of research findings by providing a preprint service. Alternatively, PLOS One has met a need for timely, methods-based review (particularly in the grant-supported health and life sciences) and sustains publishing by levying article processing fees. A successful approach to open access publishing in the humanities will also need to grow from the unique needs of its authors while complimenting existing value structures. Thus, the Open Scholarship Project (OSP) seeks to build a no-fee, subscription-free, transparent and unbound approach to open access publishing. The development of the OSP aims to incorporate four principles: 1) no-fee ("Diamond") open access, 2) versioning, 3) open peer review, and 4) badging. Here we share some prototypes of the system that will support these principles, including: asynchronous, threaded, open peer review at the paragraph level; versioning inspired by GitHub; and a use of the Mozilla Open Badges Framework to permit interdisciplinary authors to solicit imprimaturs from relevant societies and organizations. We also describe initial steps to leverage a library publishing partnership to establish a sustainable, no-fee approach to open access publishing. By joining with others, we believe that ventures like the OSP can create an environment for scholarly communications that respects the culture of the humanities while taking advantage of a fully unbound digital model.