Open Access Publishing in the Social Sciences and Humanities in Canada

"This research project intends to uncover the experiences of the editors of open access journals in order to learn the practical philosophies behind open access, and what motivates these editors to continue their open access ventures. Much is said about open access, but little research searches out the people on the ground to find out what is actually going on. Using a symbolic interactionist framework (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Prus 1997) and a grounded theory methodology (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Glasser 1978; Charmaz 2014) I explore the various competing philosophies, continuing struggles, and successes experienced by open access editors.  As such, this thesis hopes to present the realities of open access as an enacted social phenomena. The findings in this thesis can be used to check and improve the accuracy of academic conceptions of open access. More generally, these findings are useful since they can be applied to other fields of cultural production that confront and attempt to subvert a dominant logic tending to privilege capitalist profits rather than cultural innovation."