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]
History
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]
Journals
Open Library of Humanities
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
