Document Type
Presentation
Publication Title
2025 Southern Humanities Conference
Publication Date
1-31-2025
Keywords
open access, publishing, arts and humanities, scholarly communication
Abstract
Although open access (OA) has the capacity to democratize knowledge and access for readers worldwide, arts and humanities scholars do not publish their work OA as frequently as their colleagues in the sciences. A variety of factors contribute to their relative lack of engagement with OA publishing, including disparities in research funding, the format of research outputs, and the availability and prestige of OA publishing venues. In this session, we will report on interviews conducted with arts and humanities scholars that explored participants’ approaches to OA, their motivations for engaging with OA, and the barriers they encounter.
Even though most participants had positive views about the principles underpinning OA, each scholar’s positionality impacted their perception of its practical application, and several themes emerged about the real and perceived barriers to OA publishing. Although scholars agreed that insufficient funding presents a real and significant challenge, the interviews surfaced nuanced and often contrasting views regarding the reputational costs associated with OA publishing, the pressures of tenure and promotion when selecting publication venues, the feelings of exploitation adjacent to current payment-based OA publishing models, and the amount of time spent navigating the OA publishing landscape. While most voiced concerns about the ethics of payment-based OA, the majority indicated that they would publish in a payment-based venue provided that the publication was sufficiently rigorous and they were not responsible for covering the cost, indicating dissonance between scholars’ principles and practices.
The authors, all of whom work as academic librarians, will present these findings along with implications for arts and humanities scholars navigating OA and how the library can support them. We investigate OA publishing in the arts and humanities through the lens of “real, artificial, superficial,” examining real barriers that inhibit meaningful engagement with OA, artificial but powerful pressures related to research evaluation, and superficial yet persistent concerns about reputational costs.
Funding Source
This research was funded by an Illinois State University - Milner Library University Research Grant.
Recommended Citation
Skaggs, Lindsey; Scott, Rachel; and Cilento, Colby, "Barriers to Open Access Publishing in the Arts and Humanities: Real, Artificial, Superficial?" (2025). Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library. 242.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/fpml/242
Comments
This presentation was delivered at the 2025 Southern Humanities Conference in Greenville, SC. Speaking notes are available as a supplemental document.