Two Highly Unexpected Emails and a Tap on the Shoulder: A personal account of the benefits of open access in the humanities

Abstract

Open access is one of the most heated topics in the world of scholarly publishing. Humanities scholars sometimes critique electronic publishing – and Creative Commons licences in particular – as a threat to the publication format that they cherish the most, viz. the monograph. This article argues otherwise. Based on personal experience, its author argues that open sharing of monograph-size theses and dissertations in repositories facilitates uptake by serious academic book publishers. Moreover, publishing an open access monograph with a Creative Commons licence paves the way for translations into other languages at no cost whatsoever. Humanities scholars should embrace open access instead of seeing it as a threat and explore new possibilities offered by the emerging diamond open access model.