An interview with Dr Rose Harris-Birtill from the Open Library of Humanities | Open Access | University of Groningen Library | University of Groningen

"The Open Library of Humanities, or OLH, is an open access publisher dedicated to publishing peer-reviewed open access scholarship in the humanities, based at Birkbeck, University of London. We’re a scholar-led, not-for-profit publisher and all of our 28 academic journals are both free to read and free to access, with no article processing charges. Our mission is to support and extend open access to scholarship in the humanities – for free, for everyone, for ever.

The OLH model was established to spread the costs of open access publishing fairly and collectively. Initially funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and from OpenAIRE, part of the European Commission, the OLH is funded by an international consortium of libraries and institutions which each contribute an annual membership. Rates are banded according to the institution’s size, and are kept low to ensure affordability, while smaller institutions pay less.

We’re incredibly grateful to our supporters for their help; as a supporting institution, the University of Groningen is part of an international community of nearly 300 supporters from 18 countries. Each of our supporters plays an invaluable part in keeping the OLH working – so a huge thank you to the University of Groningen from us all at OLH. Each supporting member is entitled to a voting position on the Library Governance board, with the ability to vote on the inclusion of new journals, allowing the OLH to be collaboratively governed by its supporters...."