Submissions/Open Scholarship and the Humanities

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2014 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no. 6013

Title of the submission: Open Scholarship and the Humanities

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): presentation

Author of the submission: Dr. Martin Paul Eve

E-mail address: martinmartineve.com

Username: MartinPaulEve

Country of origin: UK

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): University of Lincoln, UK

Personal homepage or blog: https://www.martineve.com

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

There has been much misplaced resistance to open access scholarship in many humanities disciplines. This is, however, on the cusp of change. With new funding, the Open Library of Humanities promises to build a megajournal platform for open access publishing in the humanities. Furthermore, the project aims to implement a novel sustainability mechanism that will enable scholars to publish without resorting to article processing charges; a bone of contention in the humanities.

In this session, we would like to present our initial work to date, give a timeline to launch, an update on progress and to then receive suggestions for how maximum community engagement across wiki projects can be fostered. We are interested in hearing suggestions on this front in both technological and social terms.

In addition to this, we would like to begin to query how wiki projects can actively make the most of green open access, especially in the humanities. Citation practices in humanities disciplines are extremely conservative and concepts of versioning have not yet caught on. This could be hindering the uptake of open access in these fields and we would like to open up a discussion as to how best to combat this, seemingly simple, but deeply socially embedded, problem.

Finally, we would like to discuss our plans for research stratification. In order to achieve maximum benefit to all parties, it is necessary for academics to learn to re-write their work for broader audiences. There could be a space within the wiki world for such material and we wonder whether this, too, might foster broader engagement with original source material.

To sum up: this presentation will demonstrate our progress but we would like to aim to move rapidly towards a discussion for best practices. In all, there are positive signs of progress for the humanities, but a way to go.

Track: Open Scholarship

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Undecided

Slides or further information (optional)

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