[BOAI] Open Humanities Press Launches Five Open Access Book Series

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Open Humanities Press.  --Peter Suber.]


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
7 August, 2009
Wellington, New Zealand

Contact: Sigi Jöttkandt 
(sigij at openhumanitiespress.org) or Shana Kimball (kimballs at umich.edu)

NEW OPEN ACCESS MONOGRAPHS SERIES - Open 
Humanities Press (OHP), in conjunction with the 
University of Michigan Library's Scholarly 
Publishing Office (SPO), is pleased to announce 
the following forthcoming open access series in 
critical and cultural theory: New Metaphysics 
(ed. Graham Harman and Bruno Latour), Critical 
Climate Change (ed. Tom Cohen and Claire 
Colebrook), Global Conversations (ed. Ngugi wa 
Thiong’o), Unidentified Theoretical Objects (ed. 
Wlad Godzich), and Liquid Books (ed. Clare Birchall and Gary Hall).

In a unique collaboration, the scholars of the 
Open Humanities Press are partnering with the 
University of Michigan Library's Scholarly 
Publishing Office to launch five new OA book 
series, edited by senior members of OHP's 
editorial board. All of the books will be freely 
available in full-text, digital editions and as reasonably-priced paperbacks.

"This is a tremendously exciting development for 
humanities publishing," said Barbara Cohen, 
Director of HumaniTech and a Steering Group 
member of OHP.  "For faculty and libraries to 
work directly together to address the monographs 
crisis in this way makes perfect sense. It is a 
savvy solution to a long-standing problem of 
access whose effects have been having a major impact on scholarship worldwide."

"We are delighted the scholars of OHP approached 
us to support their innovative vision," said 
Maria Bonn, Director of SPO. "We are 
enthusiastically supportive of what they are 
trying to accomplish, and excited about the 
opportunities our collaboration offers for 
rethinking existing models of scholarly publishing."

All books published by OHP in conjunction with 
SPO will go through the highest standards of 
editorial vetting and peer review that will be 
managed by OHP's series editors and board, which 
contains some of the most well-respected names in 
literary criticism and cultural studies including 
Alain Badiou, Chair of Philosophy at the École 
Normale Supérieure, Donna Haraway, Professor of 
the History of Consciousness and Feminist 
Studies, UC Santa Cruz, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 
Director of the International Center for Writing 
and Translation, UC Irvine, Gayatri Spivak, 
Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, 
Columbia University, Peter Suber, Open Access 
Project Director for Public Knowledge and 
Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and 
Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of 
the Humanities, Harvard University.

After the vetting and peer review process, 
manuscripts will be handed on to SPO for 
conversion to structured XML for electronic and 
print on demand publication, metadata creation 
and cataloging, and archiving in the University 
of Michigan Library for long-term preservation. 
The books will be available electronically 
through the OHP and SPO websites, and in 
paperback through the usual online distributors. 
"This model allows us the speed, editorial 
flexibility and boldness to focus on purely 
academic considerations in our series, and with 
the sharp sense of mission that accompanies such 
ventures," said Graham Harman, Associate Provost 
for Research at the American University of Cairo, 
who is co-editing OHP's New Metaphysics series 
with Bruno Latour, Directeur scientifique of Sciences-Po, France.

Authors will retain the copyrights for their 
works and have a choice of Creative Commons 
licenses. They will also have the option of 
making their manuscripts available online in 
various pre- and post-publication versions for 
reader commenting and annotation if they so wish. 
"As well as creating a prestigious open access 
venue for humanities monographs publishing, our 
collaboration with SPO will also enable OHP to 
explore new directions that the book-length 
argument might take once it's released from 
marketability concerns," said Gary Hall, one of 
the co-founders of OHP (with Paul Ashton, Sigi 
Jöttkandt and David Ottina), and co-editor of the 
forthcoming Liquid Books series with Clare 
Birchall. "Liquid Books is intended as a series 
of experimental digital 'books' published under 
the conditions of both open editing and free content."

Commenting on OHP's Critical Climate Change 
series, J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Professor 
of English at the University of California, 
Irvine, OHP board member, and long-time supporter 
of the Open Access movement said, "The world is 
changing so rapidly and in so many interconnected 
ways that theory has only begun to make the 
innovative responses demanded. This series is at 
the frontier of new developments in theoretical and practical thinking."

"I love the New Metaphysics prospectus," added 
Donald N. Levine, Peter B. Ritzma Professor of 
Sociology at the University of Chicago. "It gives 
promise of a badly needed entrée into the kind of 
philosophizing that Georg Simmel advocated: the 
pursuit of questions that can never be 
definitively answered but which our intellects 
cannot stop themselves from asking. The 
experience of joining voices as we explore such 
questions can lead to some of the most magnificent moments in human life."

"Any venture aiming to lower the linguistic 
barriers that inhibit free discussion among 
thinkers pursuing related projects is to be 
warmly welcomed," said Derek Attridge, Leverhulme 
Research Professor, Chair of English, University 
of York. Ngugi wa Thiong’o's series, "Global 
Conversations," promises to take advantage of new 
technological possibilities to overcome enduring 
problems in the world of learning, and deserves to be a resounding success."

###

Open Humanities Press is an international Open 
Access publishing collective specializing in 
critical and cultural theory. OHP was formed by 
academics to overcome the current crisis in 
scholarly publishing that threatens intellectual 
freedom and academic rigor worldwide. OHP 
journals are academically certified by OHP’s 
independent board of international scholars. All 
OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published 
under open access licenses, and freely and 
immediately available online at www.openhumanitiespress.org.

The University of Michigan Library, through its 
Scholarly Publishing Office, provides academic 
publishing services that are responsive to the 
needs of both producers and users, that foster a 
sustainable economic model for academic 
publishing, and that support institutional control of intellectual assets.





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