Conversation with two religious studies scholars on committee at Open Library of Humanities

The other day I checked-in on developments over at Open Library of Humanities. As I reported earlier here and here, the idea for this very interesting project sprang from a number of often asked questions: Why hasn’t anyone created an analog to the Public Library of Science (PLOS)—meaning, a broad-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to publishing open access research—for the Humanities? What would it take—meaning, at least, editorial and technical infrastructure, sustainable funding, and broad-based scholarly support—to create such a PLOS analog for the Humanities? Given our deep and long-standing scholarly communication traditions, would such an approach—meaning, in particular, developing a multi-disciplinary “mega-journal” like PLOS ONE—even work in the Humanities?

OLH’s advisory committee structure appears to be in place. There are still numerous details to work out, but posted minutes from recent meetings of two of the committees (Academic Steering & Advocacy and LibTech) suggest conceptual outlines of the OLH platform are beginning to take shape. Summarized from the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee meeting minutes of February 25, 2013: “The committee overwhelmingly favoured, with some caveats, a mega-journal structure, but one which also had the option to present as a ‘traditional’ journal through overlay function.” “Overlay journals” are created by curating and filtering subject-specific content pulled from submissions to the central mega-journal platform, branded to “give the appearance, and benefits, of more localised journals.”

Somewhat surprised but very proud: Religious Studies scholars well-represented on OLH committees

As I looked over the lists of assembled OLH committee members, I was somewhat surprised but also very proud to discover representation from not just one (if even one) but three Religious Studies scholars. Peter Webster (an independent historian of religion in twentieth century Britain, whose day job is at the British Library) and Steven Engler (Professor of Religious Studies at Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada) are members on the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee. Justin Meggitt (University Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge) is a member on the Advocacy Forum.

I was surprised because, to put it honestly, the Open Library of Humanities project represents new and non-traditional thinking regarding the nature and future of scholarly communication in the Humanities. Others may reflect similarly from within their own disciplines, but as a generalization, I know religion and theology scholars are committed to long-standing and authoritative academic traditions. They tend to be skeptical of fads or what they perceive to be change for its own sake. Would they be able to see any relevance for themselves in an open access and multi-disciplinary project like this? And yet, I felt proud to see these particular scholars coming out to engage this new thinking through direct participation in the OLH project. It was sort-of a validation of my own open access advocacy in religion and theology, and an opportunity to demonstrate that, yes, there are real scholars within the discipline who are thinking about and embracing new mediums and formats of research communication.

I was interested to get these scholars to tell me about their work and research; about their thinking regarding open access publishing in Religious Studies; and especially about their decision to participate directly in the Open Library of Humanities project. I am pleased to share the conversation I was able to arrange with Peter Webster and Justin Meggitt. I regret that I was unable to contact Professor Engler to participate in this conversation.

The Conversation

Omega Alpha: Thank you, Peter and Justin, for the opportunity to speak with each of you. Can you tell me a bit about your academic career and specific interests. What about your vocation and current activities? Peter, why don’t we start with you. As I understand it, you are what we might call an independent scholar/researcher, and you have a “day job” at the British Library. Is that correct?

Webster: Yes, that’s basically it. For a number of years I have worked in what you might call the interface between scholars and digital resource providers and developers. I worked for eight years, until recently, at the Institute of Historical Research, which is part of the University of London, doing resource development, networking, advocacy, conferences, and various digital projects to support university departments of history, including managing the digital repository for a group of ten specialized research institutes, of which IHR is a part. Last summer, I moved over to the British Library, where I look after communications, engagement and liaison activities in terms of digital projects for the United Kingdom Web Archive. That’s the day job.

Parallel to this, I have nurtured a research interest in twentieth century British religious history. I did my doctoral work on religious music in the Stuart Church in the Early Modern Period of Britain. Through a circuitous route, I started looking at questions relating to religion and the arts in the twentieth century, particularly, initially, contemporary church music in the 1950s and 60s. My research interests have widened-out from there. Right now I’m doing a study of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1960s for Ashgate’s The Archbishops of Canterbury Series. Also, I’m hoping shortly to conclude contract terms on a biographical study of Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, who was a patron of the arts in the Church of England.

Meggitt: My current post is as University Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge. I’ve had a number of ‘normal’ academic posts, such as British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge and lecturer in New Testament Studies in the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge. But I have always had a direct interest and involvement in such things as distance learning (as it used to be called) and continuing education because I would consider it my vocation to enable the widest possible access to the critical study of religion, in all its forms. That explains why I have ended up where I am today.

I continue to straddle the traditional academic world and that of lifelong learning, supervising graduate work in the Faculty of Divinity and producing research appropriate for someone holding a permanent post at the University of Cambridge. But in my role at the Institute of Continuing Education, I contribute to a range of forms of teaching that allow public engagement with current thinking in the study of religion and cognate fields. My interests are somewhat varied, but are largely concerned with religion in ancient and early modern cultures, and the themes of poverty, slavery, madness, magic, and apocalypticism, amongst others.

Omega Alpha: How did you first learn about open access? How did you become a “convert” to OA, if this is the right way of putting it?

Webster: My becoming a ‘convert’ to open access isn’t an inappropriate way of putting it, in some ways. My exposure to open access came mostly through being in charge of the institutional repository at IHR and its affiliated research institutes. I became drawn into open access over time dealing with management policies, talking with faculty, etc. The IR served primarily the Humanities with a bit of Social Sciences on the edge. It was very interesting to see how scholars responded to, and hear what they thought about open access within that quite dedicated humanities space. Incidentally, I think it’s fair to say that the Humanities are a significant distance behind, certainly behind the natural sciences, regarding open access.

I don’t think very many people, if pushed, would dispute the general principle of open access—that academic research ought to be freely available for anyone who might conceivably want to read it, especially if it is publicly funded. I think I would probably stop short of saying there is a moral obligation for open access, though I do agree in the idea of supporting open access as a ‘public good.’ There are benefits to the scholar having their work available to even a lay readership in this way. The material that scholars write about in the Humanities (including Religious Studies) in theory is more easily accessible to the average reader than most of microbiology is, for instance. One might expect humanities scholars to be more engaged in open access precisely because of what there is to be gained from it in terms of getting ideas out for public discourse—knowing that their research has relevance. So I’m surprised by this reticence. Is it a lack of confidence that what we do is too specialised to be of interest to anybody?

I suppose I have it relatively easy, though, because no one pays me to do the research I do. I’m not dependent on it for tenure, or anything like that. But almost all my existing research for which I can get permission to do so is in the repository I used to run. Having seen the usage statistics, I know that it gets the kind of traffic that one couldn’t possibly expect if it were only still available in print. You will have a sense of the average use of a typical theological monograph. I’m pretty sure my stuff has at least been found and the PDFs opened by a much larger number of people. This usage has yet to present itself in citations, but that’s partly because my material is quite new. I would expect to see the ‘citation effect’ build-up over time. There are studies suggesting there is this demonstrable ‘citation effect’ for open access.

The other thing I would add is the whole international dimension. The traffic to the material in the repository is coming from all sorts of places around the world, not just western anglophone countries as you might expect. So, if you want your work to be read as widely as possible this is an obvious way to go. If you can get past the ‘professional drivers’ there’s a lot to be gained.

Meggitt: I do not think I was ever a ‘convert’ to open access, but I see in OA the key values that have shaped my understanding of what higher education teaching and research should be. I have always been driven by the desire to facilitate access to the most recent ideas in the field, and to bring into discussions contributions of those who otherwise would be excluded from usual academic debate, to the detriment of us all. (If I hear anyone studying religion use such exclusive terminology as ‘Academy’ or ‘Guild’ I get an unpleasant, visceral sensation.) Although I have spent years working in the long-established ‘continuing education’ model here in the UK (alongside more traditional responsibilities)—teaching in village halls, and at evening classes, and writing distance learning materials that were delivered by mail—I have also always been interested in the possible liberative effect of technology. Initially, I saw its value for those with disabilities. But then, more broadly, in its capacity to allow access to resources and research beyond the privileged few at well-resourced higher education institutions.

Over a decade ago I became involved in early print-on-demand publishing, partly out of a desire to challenge the prevailing model of academic publishing that was, I believe, consigning most scholarship in Religion (and the Humanities more generally) to functional oblivion through its prohibitive costs (what I’d call the ‘monograph crisis’). The traditional model was also slowing intellectual debate and exchange down to snail’s pace. I hoped technological developments would speed it up. About the same time, I also became a user of and advocate for open source software.

To be brutally honest, all this comes from my religious and political views, enhanced by bouts of (limited) penury and job insecurity earlier in my working life—something that comes with fixed-term contracts and the somewhat unpredictable nature of much UK higher education. It has also come about as a result of my experience of both so-called ‘research intensive’ and ‘non-research intensive’ universities here and in the US, and the widely different access to resources students and scholars have at these institutions.

Omega Alpha: How did you learn about Open Library of Humanities? Tell me specifically about your interest in this project, and why you decided to join one of the advisory committees.

Webster: I follow Martin Eve on Twitter, and back in January after the project idea first got going he put out a call for interested folk to get in touch. I tweeted back saying that I’d be interested to be involved some how. He wrote back inviting me to join the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee.

What is very interesting to me about the project is the way in which peer review may be dealt with. I’ve become more and more convinced that the current system of peer review is an accident—that it is actually the product of a particular historical confluence of a technology (print) and a particular way of rewarding or assessing where academics are in relation to each other. OLH is examining the approach used by the Public Library of Science, which very helpfully separates-out two quite distinct functions of peer review. A basic level of gatekeeping for basic competence in method, and expression, and documentation, and genuine engagement with the field of scholarship as it lies. That’s a useful filter to have. It’s relatively fast and light-weight to do. It can be reasonably objective. You can tell if someone’s footnoting is right, whether there’s engagement with most of the work in the field, and if there’s a coherent argument involved. These are reasonably objective criteria.

We’ve allowed peer review to carry the weight of trying to establish how important something is. It seems to me, that were I a journal editor, I shouldn’t think my judgment, while informed, should necessarily be authoritative in determining whether or not something should be published based on my assessment of how ‘important’ it is. It seems to me that it is the readers who are in a better position of determining whether or not a piece of research is important. I believe ‘the cream will rise to the top.’ There is now no issue of capacity, referring back to the technological ‘accident’ of print above with its inherent limitations of space. We allowed the rationing of scarce space in a print journal to become a proxy for importance. I believe anything that is defensible in scholarly terms should be published, and the genuinely important stuff will be found—it will rise to the top. This second function, which includes various kinds of ‘altmetrics’, is called post-publication peer-review. I don’t see any reason why this approach shouldn’t work in the Humanities.

Meggitt: I came across OLH quite recently, as a result of the reaction to the Finch Report, which recommended that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain. What bothered me was that amongst many colleagues in my field—at least here in Cambridge—there was a strongly hostile reaction to the idea, despite this being a public university. This provoked me to seek out those who could see the potential of open access in the Humanities—those who were thinking creatively and practically about realising it. And so I found OLH. I am associated with the Advocacy Forum because, although I’m not very well known, I’ve done quite a bit of media work here and there, and public engagement (an element of advocacy) is what I do for a living.

Omega Alpha: What do you think about the “mega-journal” and multi-disciplinary format of OLH compared to traditional subject- or association-focused journals in religion? How might this format compare to subject-focused gold open access journals in religion?

Webster: At the pragmatic level, I don’t see lots and lots of open access journals utilizing the PLOS model springing-up in the various disciplines. The strength is in the platform itself, which can serve as a common technical backend for the various disciplines within the Humanities. The platform gives us economies of scale. Having a multi-disciplinary platform doesn’t preclude the creation of discipline-specific journals on the platform. We may find, over time, that the users of the platform are in a position to curate their own subject subsets of material. Or over time, as you build-up a large amount of content, we may find we can create special issue ‘journals’ retrospectively edited, bringing together ‘the cream’ of most significant and important research. A looser structure at the beginning will give us greater flexibility as things develop and mature. Being able to search across disciplines may enable us to to make research connections we might miss in a more siloed environment.

Meggitt: A multi-disciplinary humanities mega-journal will be good for the study of religion as the scrutiny of religion should be a multi-disciplinary endeavour. At present, a number of traditional subject- and association-focused journals in religion—including some extremely prestigious ones—have become parochial backwaters, slaves to tradition or fashion, and frustratingly cumbersome vehicles for enabling academic debate. The OLH model should, amongst other things, disrupt this. I also like the idea of articles—albeit ones that have met the “ready to publish” criterion—being judged on their significance by the users of research rather that journal editors trying to prejudge this. We are, I am sure, all aware that whilst editors do a good (and often unpaid) job—and I’ve done this myself—they can also be problematic, replicating assumptions within the field and restricting its development, or conversely, using their weight to push ideas and approaches that lack substance but survive longer than they should.

Omega Alpha: What would (or do) you say to fellow scholars in religion and theology who may be reluctant to embrace open access as a viable and legitimate scholarly communication venue?

Webster: I don’t have that many opportunities for ‘evangelism’ in that way (going back to your question relating to my ‘conversion’ to open access). But I would simply come back to all the benefits that we were talking about before. I think the various objections to open access come down to getting the implementation right, rather than issues with the principle of freely available access to this work that we’re all doing. I would major on the opportunity to get material out fast to wide audiences, including lay audiences, and of course, the international dimension. You would hope that a healthy Church, or faith community more broadly—if we’re looking at this from a religious point of view—would be an organization or community that engages with its own history and scholarly thinking about what it is that it believes and practices. You would think there would be a greater than average gain for theological scholars in being able to reach those audiences directly.

Meggitt: I would say that they need to think hard about how inequitable and inefficient the current system of academic publication in religion is and whether they really think its a good idea to perpetuate. Why are we so wedded to financially restrictive ways of disseminating research that limit access to knowledge to the privileged few (by which I mean institutions as well as people)? Do we really value work in our subject so little? The reluctance in some quarters seems to come from ignorance about the financial models involved in academic publishing. But I also think the reluctance comes from a fear of what might happen if a form of research dissemination and evaluation emerges that is not tied to certain assumptions about academic status and credibility but the actual, demonstrable, significance of the output. The OLH model, for example, will help break up the patronage networks that afflict the field, and that is not a bad thing.

Omega Alpha: Do you have any final thoughts?

Webster: For scholars who are used to traditional print-form research outputs, engagement with open access will lead necessarily to greater engagement with the digital environment and the use of digital methods of research production and communication, such as blogs and other social media, enabling us to interact more directly with our audiences. Relatedly, this ought to make us think harder about how we write, how clearly we write, and the audiences for whom our research material is written. It’s a cliché to say that academic writing is often opaque, but there is enough of it that is opaque to make it a truism. I do not think it should be impossible to write clear and accessible prose that also conveys difficult ideas. These two things need not be incompatible. It strikes me that communicating with all the groups that have a stake in what it is we do (that is, not just scholars but also interested lay persons) is a good place to test that hypothesis.

Meggitt: The study of religion and theology in the UK is marginal to academic life generally. To most of those involved in higher education, it is only present as a result of historical accident, the legacy of past inequalities of power or reflecting the increasingly uncritical agendas of special interest groups who are in the business of trying to buy influence (particularly as government funding recedes). Some of it, and I am afraid this is particularly true of theology, is judged to be little better than phrenology. Such a picture is unfair but it is a prevailing one. It is, for example, hard to think of someone who would identify themselves as a scholar of religion today who is taken seriously in any other field. If more of those involved in study of religion supported OLH they might well find their work valued by a far wider constituency than is currently the case and it would, I think, disrupt the prejudicial assumptions so many other academics have about what we do and ultimately, what it is worth.

Omega Alpha: Peter Webster and Justin Meggitt, thank you so much for your time and your participation in this conversation. I was struck by many of the common threads that wove their way through your various responses. I will, of course, continue to watch developments at the Open Library of Humanities with considerable interest. Perhaps you will allow me to check-in again with each of you as those developments touch on the impact of open access on Religious Studies research communication.

Croatian Open Access Declaration, the “Hamster” portal, and open access theology journals

I received an email last month from Matina Ćaran, theological librarian at the Biblijski institut/Bible Institute in Zagreb, Croatia about open access initiatives happening in her country. She told me about the Croatian Open Access Declaration that was officially released on October 24, 2012, and about Hrčak (“Hamster”) an open access scientific journals portal, which also hosts a number of journals in theology, including Kairos, a title published by the Bible Institute. I want to thank Ms. Ćaran for bringing these initiatives to my attention. I am also indebted to Dr. Ivana Hebrang Grgić, senior research associate with the Department of Information Science Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, whose book Open Access to Scientific Information in Croatia: Increasing Research Impact of a Scientifically Peripheral Country (2011, pre-publication version) added significantly to my understanding of the current state of open access in Croatia as I was researching for this piece. Thanks too, goes to Google Translate, which helped me immensely with the Croatian language.

Croatian Open Access Declaration

The Croatian Open Access Declaration was presented at a workshop hosted by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Zagreb, on October 24, 2012 during International Open Access Week. The workshop featured presentations by professors, librarians, computer information technologists, and a computer science student. The opening speech was given on behalf of the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports—the central funding body for basic research in Croatia—which has put open access to scientific literature on the national agenda. The first signatories of the Declaration were members of the organizing committee and presenters at the workshop.

To express our concern caused by lack of strategic points of reference on access, dissemination, storage and preservation of scientific information in Croatia, we are making the Croatian Open Access Declaration the purpose of which is to sensitise everyone who participates in creation, publishing, use, and preservation of scientific information in Croatia. In our declaration we are stressing the fundamental importance of scientific information, necessity of it being available to everyone, and obligation of its permanent preservation. Open Access means unrestricted, free, and undisturbed online access to digital scientific information that allows scientific information to be read, stored, distributed, searched, reached, indexed and/or used in any other legal way. Unrestricted in this context means free of any restrictions and terms imposed upon its access and use. For the purpose of having unrestricted access to the information, it is necessary to guarantee anonymity to the information users. … We are inviting the state administration, headed by the ministry responsible for science, as well as scientific and educational institutions, organisations, professional associations, and all the others involved in gathering and publishing scientific information to act decisively and in coordination in order to store all the Croatian scientific information in open access form. (from the Declaration)

As of February 2, 2013, 549 persons have added their names in support of the Croatian Open Access Declaration.

Hrčak (“Hamster”): Portal of Scientific journals of Croatia

In 2003, the Croatian Information and Documentation Society developed an idea for a central online portal for storing and accessing Croatian scientific and professional journals. The platform was developed and is maintained by the University Computing Centre, University of Zagreb, and it receives support from the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia as part of the government’s Science and Technology Policy [PDF]. The portal, which was launched to the public in February 2006, is called Hrčak, or “Hamster,” (apparently) named for that rodent’s remarkable ability to stuff its cheeks with food, which it then safely stores in its nest, to eat as needed at a later time. Not only is Hrčak intended as a portal for current access, it also serves as an archive for ongoing preservation, including journal titles no longer in publication. The Hrčak portal utilizes Open Journal Systems (OJS) publishing and peer-review management backend.

Thanks to Hrčak, publishers have a free, simple and fast tool for creating online versions of their journals, i.e. for small effort and no cost they can become OA publishers. Publishers are responsible for the regular uploading of full text articles and for inputting metadata at journal, issue and article level. Authors can see their articles’ download counters; their articles have better visibility and impact. Research and academic institutions get the chance for better dissemination of their research results. Readers (who can be scientists or the wider general public) can easily access the results of publicly funded research. Web robot software programs can disseminate information about the articles to the global scientific community. (Hebrang Grgić, pp. 48-49.)

According to Dr. Hebrang Grgić the majority of journal publishers in Croatia are not-for-profit, a status that makes them eligible for government support. According to the “Code of ethics for editors on the Hrčak portal” [PDF in Croatian], open access content is a pre-requisite for inclusion in Hrčak, with preference given to content that is immediately available (simultaneous with the release of a print or digital version). In special publishing circumstances, an embargo of up to 6 months is allowed, though issues will not be publicly displayed as published in the portal during this time. Finally, to enhance international visibility of Croatian research published through the portal, bibliographic information such as titles, abstracts, and keywords should be included in English and other languages. Conversely, inclusion of foreign-published Croatian research in Hrčak should include bibliographic information in Croatian. As of this writing, Hrčak has archived 323 journals, 7,013 issues, and 88,218 full-text articles.

UPDATE: I received further information about Hrčak from the portal’s development team at the University Computing Centre, University of Zagreb. The name “Hamster” is an acronym for HRvatski (Croatian) CAsopisi (journals). The portal was developed in-house and has been designed to be easy to use. “It does not support the whole publishing process like OJS, just the publication of ‘finished’ articles. Journal editors do all the manual work. They enter articles (each article as separate pdf) and respective metadata for their journal. We also have an OJS instance for interested journal editors, and have implemented a bridge between OJS and our back-end so there is no need to duplicate effort.”

Theological journals in Hrčak/Hamster

Calling this a portal for scientific journals is technically misleading from a disciplinary standpoint, because Hrčak also includes journals in the social sciences and the humanities. “Scientific” here is meant to encompass any systematic scholarly study of a topic or subject.

Of particular interest are 22 journal titles listed under Theology. A closer look shows 20 titles with content, including 3 titles that are apparently no longer published, but issues are included for archival access. About half the titles include coverage in theology as part of the inter- or multidisciplinary scope of the journal. Ms. Ćaran is not aware of any significant theological journal that is not included in Hrčak.

About a third of the journals are relatively new, having begun publication in the last 10 years. But several have been around for a long time, including Obnovljeni život/Renewed Life (ISSN 0351-3947), published by the Institute of Philosophy and Theology of Society of Jesus since 1919, and Bogoslovska smotra/Theological Review (ISSN 0352-3101), published by the Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb since 1910 and is considered one of the oldest Croatian scientific journals. (I have created links to these titles in the Journal Directory.)

Kairos: Evangelical Journal of Theology

One of the relative new journals is Kairos: Evangelical Journal of Theology (ISSN: 1846-4580 (Croatian), 1846-4599 (English)), published by the Biblijski institut/Bible Institute, Zagreb beginning in 2007. (I have created a link to this title in the Journal Directory.) On the journal’s website, editor Stanko Jambrek lists four goals for the journal.

First, to be a canal for communicating the gospel and biblical values to intellectuals, pastors, preachers, students, believers and society. Second, to be a publishing support to Croatian evangelical theologians and scientists as well as lovers and doers of the Word of God. Third, to be a Croatian Evangelical voice to the world. Fourth, to publish articles of authors from around the world who are important to Evangelical Christianity in Croatia. The academic works of Croatian authors and authors from abroad who work in Croatia or who have been, in some way spiritually connected and influential in Croatia will be published in the articles and discussions section. Articles may be from biblical, systematic and applied theology, ethics, Church history, and sociology of religion, philosophy and church life. The journal publishes academic works that are characterized in accordance with the recommendation of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia. Kairos publishes articles that are reviewed and those that are not subject to review. Articles that may be categorized as “academic” or “expert” need to have at least two positive reviews. Reviews are anonymous. The journal publishes articles without review that are of relative content for Evangelical Christianity, well thought out and well written.

I gathered Dr. Jambrek’s statement that the journal publishes academic works “in accordance with the recommendation of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia” is referring to standards of academic quality, peer-review, etc. But also because the journal is open access.

As it happens, librarian Matina Ćaran is the journal’s secretary. I was able to ask her about Kairos as an open access journal.

We are proud to say that Kairos has always been open access, and will continue to be so. Kairos has so far been published by the Bible Institute, and as of this year it will continue to be published jointly with the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia. It is the first Evangelical theological journal in this region of Europe. Although it is a fairly new journal, over the last six years it has become a true Evangelical voice in these parts of the world, and we are reporting both strong and diverse readership. As a secretary of the Journal, I am happy about our growing exchange with other journals in the region, and presence in various open access databases and libraries.

Ms. Ćaran is also a signatory on the Croatian Open Access Declaration. I asked her about her philosophy of open access.

I am a librarian hoping for the time when I will no longer have say to my fellow students: “This is a article you need, but we cannot get it for you.” My personal philosophy of open access rests primarily on front-line work with students, and my personal experience throughout my previous and current studies: hitting walls of restricted access, having to become skilled in all kinds of ways to get to the requested information, article or book, and trying to work with what one has. However, even before I started working as a librarian at my school, I always believed that scientific information is something that is shared and given, not possessed and bought, and that everyone honestly seeking it for the sake of good should have an equal opportunity to access it.

Doxology: Open access “magnifying lens” on worship scholarship

In a previous post, I related a conversation I had with Geoffrey Moore, the new editor of the recently converted online and open access journal Doxology: A Journal of Worship (ISSN: 2167-0153) regarding the pros and cons of publishing complete periodic issues or publishing articles as they are submitted and reviewed in open annual volumes. In that post I indicated that I planned a follow-up profile of the journal itself. At last…

The scholarly publication of the Order of Saint Luke

Doxology was founded in 1984 as a scholarly publication of the Order of Saint Luke. The Order of Saint Luke is a “religious order in the United Methodist Church dedicated to sacramental and liturgical scholarship, education, and practice.” It was formed in 1946 “to bring about a recovery of the worship and sacramental practice which has sustained the Church since its formation in Apostolic times,” and “to help the Church rediscover the spiritual disciplines of the Wesleys as a means of perceiving and fulfilling the mission for which the Church was formed” (from the website).

I spoke with former editor, Professor Byron Anderson (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary), about the history of Doxology.

Anderson: Doxology began in 1984, primarily as a venue for members and friends of the Order of Saint Luke. It served as a venue for publishing the lectures/papers offered at the annual retreat of the Order, along with a few other occasional pieces—either solicited by or offered to the journal. It did not publish substantive reviews, nor were materials reviewed independently prior to publication. In 1998, with Volume 15, Clifton Guthrie and I took over editorial responsibility for Doxology after conversation with the OSL Council about the future and shape of the journal. Among our goals were moving to a juried journal, broadening and deepening the scholarship offered through the journal, providing a venue through which to support younger scholars, giving emphasis to Protestant worship, and offering “more exacting” and more selective reviews (soliciting particular reviewers rather than accepting unsolicited reviews).

Omega Alpha: I understand the print journal was published once per year, and it is continuing as an annual in its online incarnation. When was the issue typically released each year? How many subscribers did you have prior to Doxology going online?

Anderson: Issues came out in December, although several years we had a print/delivery delay, which helped support our push to go online. The primary subscriber base was the membership of the Order of St. Luke, which has somewhere around 800 members. [They also had 39 institutional subscribers.] The subscription price for individuals and institutions was $10.

Omega Alpha: So the subscription price was primarily intended to help defray the cost of printing and mailing. Did you publish Doxology in-house?

Anderson: The journal was and is a publication of OSL Publications, which usually contracted with a printer and mail service for production and delivery. Printing and postage costs were becoming a concern, and we were beginning to have some problems with timely delivery. Yes, the subscription had been part of the annual membership dues to the organization.

Omega Alpha: Your first online annual issue—Volume 28—was published last year (2011) while you were still co-editor. You mentioned printing costs and delays. Did these things factor into your decision to move Doxology online?

Anderson: Yes. I first broached the possibility that we take the journal online after several years of printing/delivery delays and with changes being made in the staffing of OSL Publications. The first conversation took us as far as agreeing to continue to explore the possibility. After learning about Open Journal Systems, seeing it in use at Methodist Review, and conversing with the editor of Methodist Review, I developed a proposal and pressed for this move. Admittedly, the move also came at a time when financial considerations helped press it forward. Of course, because Doxology has always been produced on a shoe string, there wasn’t much to fund. What we have done is make use of the previous budget for printing and postage to cover the modest cost for the online move. The editors receive a modest honorarium; we do this, in part, as a contribution to the OSL.

Omega Alpha: Volunteerism applied to tasks such as editing and peer review is common and frequently necessary. But it is a long-standing, honorable, and collegial tradition in scholarly communication that reaps a lot of direct value in the online open access environment because infrastructure costs (when coupled with the use of open source tools like OJS) are otherwise low. It is now possible for any group of committed scholars or a scholarly organization to contemplate embarking on a fully credible journal publishing venture with readily available tools. Can you say more about your decision to embrace the open access publishing model for Doxology?

Anderson: Pretty much as I just indicated before. Seeing it in use at Methodist Review, having it recommended to me by my institution’s librarian, and then beginning to explore its “ease of use” from an editorial perspective.

Omega Alpha: Do you feel that open access lends itself appropriately to the mission of The Order of St. Luke?

Anderson: I think it does. The purpose of the journal focuses on the OSL’s desire the “seek the sacramental life, promote the corporate worship of the church, and magnify the sacraments,” attempting to do these things from an academic perspective yet trying to maintain a bridge between the church and the academy. Open access potentially expands our audience beyond the membership. Because we are an annual journal, we had not been able to be listed in ATLA’s Religion Database so our materials did not show up in library searches. But by moving Doxology online, we at least can make an appearance through web searches.

I posed this same question to Daniel Benedict, the Abbot of the Order of Saint Luke.

Benedict: As Abbot, I am responsible for overseeing the spiritual and temporal matters of the Order of Saint Luke. In this regard, the publications of the Order are an important part of our work and service to the church and the academy. Doxology is our scholarly periodical. However, publishing it as an annual print volume was both expensive and limited in the audience it could reach. As an annual publication, Doxology was not indexed in ATLA. Without database indexing, few scholars could know of it or its contents. With Dr. Ron Anderson’s encouragement and background work, I concluded that the Order and the academy would be better served by going to the online/open access approach and advocated for that to the Council.

Omega Alpha: What has been the response to this transition within the Order of Saint Luke?

Benedict: Two part response: First, the Council was favorable because the savings are significant. We are now realizing a $2,500 annual reduction in costs of publishing the journal. Second, the promise of wider availability to the intended audience has appeal to the leadership of the Order and to members who are aware of the shift to online/open access publication.

The new approach to publication costs us nothing, beyond the time given by the editor, Br. Geoffrey Moore. That is not to minimize the gift and sacrifice on his part as a scholar, giving himself to this work. We pay a small stipend for his efforts. Beyond that, the savings realized allows the Order to contribute a significant portion of his expenses for attending the North American Academy of Liturgy, where he is able to interface with other scholars with an eye toward generating potential writers for Doxology.

Omega Alpha: So the move to open access has resulted in reduced costs, timely publication, and the prospect of a broader readership and increased discovery by scholars of worship and liturgy. These were the very goals Drs. Anderson and Josselyn-Cranson articulated in the “Note to Readers” in the first online issue of Doxology.

Benedict: We are still living into the transition and our awareness of what the new approach will mean for our end users. The journal’s end users are not, for the most part, members of the Order. Rather, the end users are scholars who engage in academic considerations with each other for the sake of matters of practice in the church’s liturgy and sacramental life. The Order and the Church benefit from this ongoing conversation.

Doxology 4.0

In the “Note to Readers” from the first online issue of Doxology (Volume 28, 2011), Dr. Byron Anderson writes: “In my count, this issue of Doxology represents either its third or fourth ‘incarnation’—Doxology 4.0 perhaps. … What has changed is the means by which it is delivered to you, our readers. … What has not changed, however, is the quality of the material presented here” (emphasis added). This is a very neat and concise way of communicating the intentions of open access. The quality of scholarship, editorial oversight, and peer review is in no way compromised by open access. Open access is about distribution of scholarship not scholarly quality. [I had dinner with a professor colleague just last evening who still didn't "get" this basic fact about open access—an indication that advocates for open access still have some work to do!]

Another point raised by Dr. Anderson in his “Note” was that a search for new editorial leadership was underway, after his 15-year tenure. That search was successfully concluded this year as Geoffrey Moore, a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University, assumed the post as editor.

I followed-up this profile and my earlier conversation with Moore about plans for Doxology moving forward. The 2012 issue (Volume 29) is slated for publication in December along the lines of the first online issue last year. However, he has decided, beginning in 2013, to adopt an open submission and publication format (publishing articles immediately as they pass peer and editorial review), similar to the approach taken by Methodist Review. “This is a logical choice in the interest of getting scholarship ‘out there’ with greater expedience; and given that we’re already an annual, there doesn’t appear to be a downside with respect to the history of our serial.” Moore is also interested in exploring a print on demand option for individuals and institutions. And as time allows, he wants to scan the back issues to create a complete journal archive on the site.

An open access “magnifying lens” on worship scholarship

The Focus and Scope section on the journal’s “About” page includes these words regarding the mission of Doxology: “Doxology is a refereed scholarly journal. Through the academic and pastoral conversations developed in Doxology, the journal seeks to promote the corporate worship of the church,… While, on the one hand, we seek to ‘lift up the sacraments’ we also seek through the same to apply a magnifying lens to them through scholarly conversation and critique” (emphasis added).

What a great metaphor for the scholarly endeavor and its communication. I am pleased that this particular scholarly magnifying lens is now open access. I wish it continued success.

First library published open access issue of New Theology Review launched today!

Back in June I interviewed Melody McMahon, director of the Paul Bechtold Library at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois following her announcement that the library was assuming publishing responsibility for the institution’s journal, New Theology Review. In addition to becoming the publisher, McMahon would be assuming the role as the journal’s co-editor.

Accompanying the announcement was the news that this long-running print and subscription-based journal (published since 1988) would be converted to online only and going open access.

When I spoke with Ms. McMahon in June she indicated that the first issue of the newly reconstituted New Theology Review (ISSN: 0896-4297) would be released in September. Well, that day has arrived! The journal is now live on its newly designed website newtheologyreview.com. There are also plans in the works to digitize back issues and upload them to the journal’s issue archive.

I encourage you to check out the site, and please drop Melody and the other members of the Editorial Board a note of congratulations to show your support for this wonderful effort.

Open access Journal of Southern Religion adopts Creative Commons Attribution license

Earlier this month, the long-time online open access Journal of Southern Religion (ISSN: 1094-5253) began releasing its content under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The announcement can be found on the JSR blog here.

If JSR was already an open access journal, what is the significance of this development?

Gratis and libre open access

The JSR announcement gives me an opportunity to distinguish between two general concepts of open or “free” access to online academic literature. The distinguishing terms usually applied in this discussion are gratis and libre.

Gratis is related to the word “grace,” often connoting the idea of something given as a gift, and meaning a good or service that is provided without price or requirement of compensation. From the recipient’s point of view, the good or service is provided without charge. It’s free! Gratis open access allows reader access to online scholarly content without a subscription or article paywall barrier. (Access to a browser-equipped computer with an Internet connection, which may not be free, is assumed.)

It is important to keep in mind that just because a good or service is provided without charge, it doesn’t mean that no costs were involved in its production. Additionally, it is particularly important here not to confuse the price of a good or service with its value. Scholarly research is not free to produce (although open access publishing aims to reduce the costs of production by utilizing low marginal costs of network distribution). Scholarly research and its proper peer review should be the focus of any value assessment, not whether the research stands behind a paywall. “You get what you pay for” is neither an accurate nor necessary shorthand for assessing value of academic scholarship. Thinking about open access as a gift can be a helpful corrective here.

As a generalization, all open access is gratis, but not all open access is libre. Libre is related to the word “liberty,” and denotes freedom or a state of being free. I’m free! As applied to the free (gratis) good or service above, libre also indicates what the recipient may do with it once it is received—use, reuse, copy, share, or modify—without the permission of the creator or provider. Creative Commons license provisions differ depending on the license applied. The JSR license is the most open, allowing even commercial reuse of content. The only requirement is that the reuse clearly credits the original creator and source. (Granting use or reuse provisions through licensing does not mean the content creator or original source has surrendered copyright.)

Giving attribution and properly citing sources is a firmly established scholarly practice. The greatest benefit to the scholarly conversation would seem to be satisfied through gratis open access—the removal of reading access barriers to research. Is there anything substantially added by also providing libre open access? The answer may be philosophical or practical. Some would say the movement of information and knowledge should not be restricted in any way as a matter of principle. Or, we should not impose restrictions because we cannot anticipate all possible and potentially beneficial reuse scenarios in advance. Too, granting reuse freedom is a way to assist in the greatest dissemination and prolonged life of a scholar’s research. Imagine, for example, a seminal published monograph or essay that will never go “out of print” because of a libre license.

The JSR “Editorial Policies and Submission Guidelines” page explains the benefit of their license thusly: “This license grants you permission to use the material published in the journal as you see fit, for example, in course packs, on course websites, and in quotations in other scholarly works” (emphasis added). In an email correspondence, the journal editors responded passionately about this: “It’s not enough just to make your content free; you also have to liberate it using an open access license” (emphasis added).

Interestingly, the journal has even released the source code for its open access platform. It is available here on GitHub. “We want other people to be able to run open access journals too, and we hope someone might be able to borrow the JSR‘s model.”

About the Journal of Southern Religion

The Journal of Southern Religion is the first scholarly journal devoted to the study of religion in the American South. The journal is fully peer-reviewed, reflecting the best traditions of critical scholarship. It is an open-access publication, published free of cost in its entirety on the Internet. The JSR publishes articles and book reviews, as well as new media. (from the journal website)

It didn’t seem right to report on this access change without also spending some time learning a bit more about the journal. As indicated at the top, JSR began its existence as an online journal. The first issue was released in 1998, putting it in the company of those relatively early initiatives exploiting the potential of the World Wide Web as a medium for academic research distribution. In his editorial in the inaugural issue, then editor Rodger M. Payne of Louisiana State University wrote:

Cyberpublishing is still in its infancy, but it has already begun to present both challenges and opportunities for scholarship. Perhaps the most significant challenge, as James Adair noted in a recent article, involves the “skepticism from established scholars” who either disparage “the ephemeral nature of much of the material on the Web,” or argue “that the quality of scholarship [in electronic journals] is not as high as in traditional print journals.” As Adair goes on to explain, however, such apprehension is clearly misguided. By employing the same standards of peer review that scholars have come to expect in print journals, there is no reason why electronic publication should not carry the same academic imprimatur as publication in print journals, nor any reason why publication in such “e-journals” should not have the full endorsement of promotion and tenure committees.

Payne went on to identify some of the key advantages of Web published journals over print, including the greatly reduced time between article submission and publication, the “democracy” of the Web that facilitates “public scholarship,” reduced costs of publishing and distribution, and the ability to integrate new media into the context of the journal.

JSR‘s format takes full advantage of reduced publication time by structuring each “issue” as a single annual volume, with new content posted as it clears the review process (see current issue and issue archive). The economics of online publishing puts scholarly disciplines of relatively narrow focus on equal footing with broader treatments in a way that print never could, as Payne himself noted: “[T]he probability of our introducing a journal devoted to the study of Southern religion would be quite small if not for the opportunities made available by electronic publication on the World Wide Web.” Regarding new media, JSR this year launched a podcast featuring interviews and discussion relevant to the study of religion in the American South. JSR is also leveraging major social media channels. As the editors put it: “Scholarship has always been a social activity, and we want to give our readers a little help in finding the JSR that way. We still have a lot of work that we can do in this regard.”

The scope of the study of religion in the American South is listed in the Overview of JSR‘s “Editorial Policies and Submission Guidelines” encompassing:

• Regionalism in southern religion, e.g., Appalachia, the Gulf Coast, south Florida and the Caribbean
• religious aspects of southern culture, e.g., religion and cuisine, music, and southern literature
• southern civil religion
• local and folk religions, including ethnographic studies of congregations and parishes
• ethnicity including immigration and slave religions
• religion and race, class, disability, and gender issues in the South

JSR is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, Google Scholar, and is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). It is sponsored by the Association for the Study of Southern Religion and receives collaborative support from Florida State University, Louisiana State University, and Saint Francis University.

I asked the editors about their funding model. But it turns out their costs are very modest. “We have no funding model currently, or since the journal’s inception. Our web space is institutionally hosted and supported by Florida State University, and all the staff are volunteer.”

I asked if the editors had any thoughts about how to raise the profile or credibility of open access scholarly communication in Religious Studies disciplines. This response continues the tone already evident at the journal’s founding 15 years ago:

I think that the question of how scholars will publish their work is one of the most pressing questions in the academy. Thankfully, there are a lot of great scholars who are thinking through this problem, both as professors, archivists, and librarians, and as leaders at scholarly societies. If I had to hazard one guess about what would help open access the most, it would be changing the default mindset of the academy about publication. The default has to change from locking our content down to opening up.

I have placed a link to the Journal of Southern Religion in my Journal Directory.

Hat Tip: “Starting an Open Access Journal: a step-by-step guide”

“We can change the scholarly publishing world, but it’s up to you.” This is the contention of Martin Paul Eve, doctoral researcher in the department of English at the University of Sussex, Great Britain. My hat tip goes to Martin Eve for posting an excellent five-part guide for starting an open access journal on his blog. He designed the guide “for [humanities] academics who want to establish their own journals that are:

• Peer reviewed, in a traditional pre-review model
• Open Access and free in monetary terms for authors and readers
• Preserved, safe and archived in the event of catastrophe or fold
• Reputable: run by consensus of leaders in a field”

The guide covers, in more or less checklist fashion, the budgetary, technical and social groundwork essential to get an open access journal off on the right foot. Financial costs are fairly modest (e.g., pointing folks to the free open source Open Journal Systems platform from the Open Knowledge Project), though it assumes access to server hosting and a certain level of web-savvy technical support. Martin is encouraging in suggesting that with a little persistence, working through the technical details should not prove too daunting—even for humanities scholars.

Although the technical details are important, Martin places particular stress on the social aspects of building a strong support team (editorial board, peer reviewers, copy editors, proofreaders). He writes:

Academic journals work on a system of academic capital; you need respected individuals who are willing to sit on your board, even if they are only lending their name and you end up doing most of the legwork. It should only be a matter of time before academics realise that journal brand isn’t (or shouldn’t be) affiliated to publishers, but rather to the academics who choose to endow a journal with their support. Get good people who are respected within your discipline(s) and you’re on the right track.

This comment particularly impressed me as a facet of my own belief that scholars can move prestige to open access if they choose because prestige originates and fundamentally resides with scholars.

I caught-up with Martin Eve via email to ask him how he got involved with open access.

I actually first heard of open access several years ago when I setup the tech and structure of the postgraduate journal, Excursions. From there I read more and realised that I fundamentally disagreed with the way in which academic publishing works, particularly when I was seeing colleagues being laid off at universities in order to feed corporate profit machines. After Excursions, I wanted to show what OA could do for my own field and, as the extant journal of my area was slowing its publication rate rapidly, I pitched the idea last year. It had a great response, which is surprising for the humanities. But I had to learn a great deal more about digital preservation, DOIs and typesetting, hence the purpose of this guide.

The new journal Martin referred to is called Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon (ISSN: 2047-2870), which is dedicated to scholarly work pertaining to the writings of contemporary American novelist Thomas Pynchon and adjacent fields. Martin also co-edits another open access journal called Alluvium (ISSN: 2050-1560), and he is a contributor to the British newspaper The Guardian, where he writes on open access and higher education issues.

New Theology Review goes open access with the library as publisher

Melody Layton McMahon is director of the Paul Bechtold Library at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois. She is also Critical Reviews Editor for the open access journal Theological Librarianship—a publication of the American Theological Library Association. Earlier in May, Ms. McMahon posted this announcement (excerpt) to the ATLANTIS email listserv:

The Paul Bechtold Library of Catholic Theological Union is now going to be the publisher of New Theology Review. New Theology Review was published by Liturgical Press as a publication of both Washington Theological Union (WTU) and Catholic Theological Union (CTU), but now the Paul Bechtold Library will be publishing it as an online, open access journal. (Some of you may be subscribers to the past print version; you will be receiving a letter soon that details plans.) I am very happy to be able to act on what I have been preaching for a number of years now, and I have convinced our administration that by being open access we can spread the Word around the world, particularly in the many areas where our students and alums live and work.

I was interested to follow-up with Ms. McMahon, not only to get the story about this former subscription journal moving to open access, but also to hear more about her library assuming the role of journal publisher. McMahon is co-editor (appointed just March 8 of this year) of New Theology Review, and as library director she will also be its publisher.

The conversion to open access

Omega Alpha: Between the time of your announcement on the listserv and my actual preparation for the story Liturgical Press took down all content from the journal’s website. I wasn’t able to get any background information on New Theology Review. A page on Catholic Theological Union’s website, however, does include this blurb regarding the mission, scope, and intended audience of the journal:

New Theology Review is a peer-reviewed and current Catholic journal for ministry. It offers resources that address contemporary trends in theology and pastoral practice. It publishes essays, invited columns, and book reviews designed for clergy, religious, and laity.

The page also mentions that the final print issue was published in November 2011, and that it will begin publishing again in an online only, open access format in September 2012 by the library, under the auspices of Catholic Theological Union. This is an exciting development. What else can you tell me by way of background?

McMahon: New Theology Review has been published for 24 years. It started in 1988 as a joint publication of Catholic Theological Union and Washington Theological Union, published by Michael Glazier (which was later taken over by Liturgical Press). The journal was published quarterly. I cannot confirm the accuracy of this information, but I found something that said in 2010 NTR had 820 subscribers. We also offered it as a perk to members of the alumni organization. I do know subscription fees were only paying for the publication of the journal in print form, however, and not really earning any profits.

In speaking with the previous editor the other day, I learned that Liturgical Press had indicated to Catholic Theological Union already five years ago they wanted to stop publishing NTR. I was not involved when that decision was made, but I know they have also divested from a couple of other journals, including Liturgical Ministry.

It seems like it was a long, protracted period of negotiation and discussion about what to do. WTU was still involved for part of this time. (Regrettably, WTU is now in the processes of closing its doors. I believe that in leading up to this they decided to back away from the relationship with CTU regarding New Theology Review.) There was a discussion with Taylor & Francis. Fortunately, our editors came to the realization that T&F would jack up the price, and they did not want that. The editors suggested a guy who would create the journal on a website, and require subscriptions which he would also manage. All sorts of options were discussed. But very early-on faculty were queried, and as a unit we decided we wanted to continue, transforming into an online, peer-reviewed journal—though at that point not yet open access.

Omega Alpha: So how did the decision to shift away from the subscription model to a library published open access model come about? What was the catalyst?

McMahon: Me! I’m sure my faculty and administration get tired of hearing me talk about open access, but whenever there was a discussion of NTR at faculty meetings I made a point of standing to say we should consider it. At the time, it was thought we would not be able to live without the subscription fees. But I was fairly sure we could. I had also been invited to give a faculty seminar on publishing, and of course, I discussed open access. I think my faculty find my point of view persuasive, though some of them still have other concerns that cause them to choose not to go open access when they publish articles they have written.

Omega Alpha: Concerns such as?

McMahon: Like other faculties, a few are still of the opinion that the jury is out about whether or not online journals are as scholarly or prestigious as print journals. I think my frank discussions with the faculty as a group and individually has turned around this opinion with most. A larger concern is that some still have ties to for-profit publishers or to journals that are published by for-profit publishers. I hope this will change as time goes by. I think they are persuaded by the notion that open access is more consistent with our ‘mission’ to get our word, the Word, out there. 

Omega Alpha: These are commonly expressed concerns. Who was finally involved in the decision to go open access?

McMahon: Old and new editorial teams, and the executive council which includes the president, dean, and VP for finance. We met and talked about the realities of dealing with subscriptions, and I piped up to say that we could just do away with all that hassle!

Omega Alpha: Getting support from both faculty and administration is essential. Was it also at this point that the decision was made to have the library assume the role as publisher?

McMahon: Yes, I had read the article “Library as Journal Publishers” and combined with my experience with Theological Librarianship was convinced that the library could take this on. I piped up again and suggested this, and it proved acceptable to everyone. (Maybe they were just relieved!) This meeting was held in April of this year. We will have a live journal website any day now, and our first issue out in September.

The Library as journal publisher

Omega Alpha: Wow! That’s fast work. So tell me more about the library at Catholic Theological Union and yourself as library director assuming the role of publisher, and co-editor of New Theology Review.

McMahon: My role as a co-editor is as a faculty member and includes the editorial functions of receiving manuscripts, doing a first editorial review, sending to peer-reviewers, moving through the system to publication.

My publisher role includes applying for online ISSNs, setting up the Open Journal Systems (OJS) site (the journal platform we decided to use), making sure all the editorial staff understand how to use OJS, making sure that the server is there for the publication, and preservation of the journal. This is the side that I am figuring out as I go. I feel comfortable because of my prior knowledge of open access publishing with OJS in my editorial role at Theological Librarianship. I am convinced we can handle it.

As I said earlier, I read a recent article about libraries as journal publishers, and that was all the justification I needed. There is a continuum chart in the article ranging from “Barebones” to “Premier” which had a huge impact. It made me realize that one could offer a package that was doable somewhere in the middle of the continuum that would result in a very professional looking journal we could be proud of. It broke down the levels of service into manageable parts. What especially inspired me was the article authors saying “e-publishing activities are now among core services for libraries.” I could see how my library could be among these forward-looking libraries. I try to be a leader for open access, and I need to make my actions speak louder than words. My administration and faculty expect us to be on the cutting edge when it is fruitful.

I think that over the years I have achieved a familiarity with OJS that made me think with help I could do this. I have a great IT and marketing guy, Chris Meyer, who is helping with the technical things I don’t understand. (Let’s just say I understand the front of the platform, not so much the back-end.) I have also been able to call on folks at ATLA because of my work with TL, to answer my questions and assist me in designing our “look.”

As publisher I’ll obviously be putting more time into this than I have as Critical Reviews Editor at TL. Just let me say that I am really trying to discern how my publisher role is different, separate from my co-editor role. I do not want to get them mixed. I’m thinking it could be possible for the library to take on publication of another one or two journals that need help going online. So I want to define the roles I am playing here fairly clearly. Eventually I’ll rotate off as an editor, but continue in the role of publisher.

Omega Alpha: Who else is on your editorial team?

McMahon: My faculty colleagues, Antonio Sison, C.PP.S. and Dawn Nothwehr, O.F.M. Our colleague vanThanh Nguyen, S.V.D. will edit book reviews.

We are also in the process of putting together our advisory board. We already have agreements with 8 of the 10 we have asked. As we expect to have a global audience, we have selected people from all parts of the world. It’s very exciting to hear that these people want to be part of this venture!

Omega Alpha: Can you say anything about how this effort is being funded, and how much you anticipate it costing?

McMahon: CTU is budgeting about $5,000. I anticipate that this will cover ongoing needs. The library purchased a new server for the OJS platform. We are also going to use the server for our digital archives projects. So it is coming out of general library budget and archive budget lines. The NTR budget includes lines for small stipends for the co-editors, to pay a graphic designer to come up with logo and items needed to make the journal look professional, marketing, and for a professional proofreader.

I’m fortunate to have an in-house marketing whiz, Nancy Nickel, who recently joined CTU, and Sara Corkery, formerly at ATLA, who has done a fabulous job working on our graphics.

Looking toward the 25th Anniversary/first online open access issue launch

Omega Alpha: The website blurb indicated that the first online-only open access issue will be coming out in September. Will you be continuing the volume count where it left off, or starting a “new series” with Volume 1, Issue 1?

McMahon: We are just going on with this as the 25th volume.

Omega Alpha: What is the planned format (e.g., editorial content, articles, reviews, etc.)?

McMahon: The journal will have peer-reviewed articles, a couple of book reviews, and four columns (Word and Worship, one on Catechetics, one on current topics of interest in theology or pastoral ministry called Theology of the Cutting Edge, and one on world events and socio-cultural trends with a pastoral ministry slant called Signs of the Times).

When the journal first started it was decided that each volume would have a theme. There was a call for papers on the theme, and also people were invited to write on that theme. Now we will not necessarily have a theme, but we might occasionally. For example, we hope to have a Vatican II theme for our second issue. Our first issue will publish some recent papers given at The Lay Centre in Rome, an organization with whom we have recently formed an alliance. This decision was made prior to the new editorial board being formed, but we are quite happy with the contents.

Omega Alpha: How many issues a year will you be publishing?

McMahon: Two for now.

Omega Alpha: Do you have access to all the back issues of New Theology Review to digitize for inclusion in your OJS web archive?

McMahon: Yes, we have them, and once we get up and running it will be a task to import them into the OJS platform and make them available as well. We are hoping subscribers will consent to donating the remainder of the amount they are owed from subscriptions to help us with the project of making past issues available on the site.

Omega Alpha: I am pleased that you will have access to back issues for a digital archive. How deep are you going with metadata (TOCs, tagged articles, full-text searching)?

McMahon: I have given this no thought yet, other than feeling quite sure we will be able to put each article pdf in OJS, and create the same digital issues that the print issues were. This just has to wait until we have the first issue published.

Incidentally, the journal website is not yet live, so I don’t have a URL to share as yet. I think you will like our new look! I will let you know when it’s ready so you can add a link to NTR on your journal directory page.

Omega Alpha: Thanks. Will New Theology Review continue to be indexed in ATLA’s Catholic Periodical and Literature Index (CPLI), and will you be working to get indexing into Google Scholar and other search engines?

McMahon: I sure hope so! I will do everything I can to optimize searchability and discoverability. The OJS platform offers some help with this.

We will also have a Facebook page. Theological Librarianship has found that a valuable way to get readership.

Omega Alpha: Do you have any events or celebrations planned to mark the 25th Anniversary of New Theology Review?

McMahon: Wow! What a great idea. Thanks!

Omega Alpha: Do you have any final thoughts?

McMahon: I say this quite often, but I feel it is of tremendous import that theological publications think about their mission. Is it to make a profit on subscription fees, or is it to get their word, THE Word, out to the folks who need and want to hear it? I am obviously pro-open access for journals in all disciplines. But it seems to me that Christian journals have an even stronger reason for going open access. The open access community is very willing to help. I would love to see more journals, especially those published by churches and seminaries think through these issues. I know at Theological Librarianship we have been so surprised by our global readership. At CTU, we have students from about 35 countries, and our alums are working in about 65 countries. It is vital to get information to them and their colleagues. Finally, I am quite willing and happy to answer questions if folks are thinking about taking on a project like this! You can contact me at mmcmahon @ ctu.edu.

Omega Alpha: Thank you so much for sharing this story. Blessings and best of luck to you, and to New Theology Review as it begins its new life in open access.

Open access journal profile: Theological Librarianship

The program schedule for the American Theological Library Association’s 2007 Annual Conference in Philadelphia, PA listed a roundtable discussion: “Theological Librarianship: A New Online Journal.” It looked interesting, so I decided to attend.

The roundtable was convened by Andrew Keck, then chair of the ATLA Publications Committee (Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC), and Ronald W. Crown (Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO) and David R. Stewart (Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN), who would serve as co-editors of the new journal.

Specifics of the conversation now somewhat elude me, though I do remember the roundtable was well attended, and the atmosphere was lively and engaged. The prospect that ATLA would have its own peer reviewed publication for professional and scholarly communication was exciting. Thankfully, re-reading the report on the roundtable in the Summary of Proceedings (Volume 61, 2007, pp. 231-232) brings back to mind many of the discussion topics, such as the journal’s planned composition, the peer review process, the prospect of organizing issues around themes, the importance and function of the advisory board, and opportunities for members to write and otherwise contribute. The report concludes:

Judging from how many of the attendees expressed an interest in contributing to the journal in some way, and from the caliber and variety of good ideas brought forward, it is evident that there is a great deal of enthusiasm surrounding this new project. The editors look forward to following up over the coming months. (p. 232)

The inaugural issue of Theological Librarianship: An Online Journal of the American Theological Library Association (ISSN: 1937-8904) was launched in June 2008. The focus and scope of the journal is outlined in the front matter of the first issue:

Theological Librarianship publishes essays, columns, critical reviews, bibliographic essays, and peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of professional librarianship in the setting of a religious/theological library collection (whether or not that collection comprises the entire library collection). The primary intended audience includes professional librarians in colleges, universities, and theological seminaries and others with an interest in theological librarianship in those settings.

The purpose of the journal is to support the professional development of theological librarians; contribute to and enrich the profession of theological librarianship; contribute to and enrich theological and religious studies; and to serve as the official publication of record for the American Theological Library Association.

Policies and Submissions

Theological Librarianship is published twice a year (July and December) by the American Theological Library Association utilizing the Open Journal Systems platform. The journal has a well-established Editorial Team, which works in consultation with ATLA’s Publications Committee, and is served by an Advisory Board. The journal site provides clear Submission Guidelines to assist authors in preparing and submitting manuscripts. Journal contents are published utilizing a Creative Commons “Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works” license. Articles and bibliographic essays are reviewed using double-blind peer review. Other submissions (essays, columns, reviews, etc.) are subject to review by the editorial board.

Funding and Sustainability

ATLA provides a basic budget for the journal, including modest stipends for the Editorial Board, infrastructure support (server space and software maintenance), and a layout editor. This financial and infrastructure support from the Association is essential to the success and sustainability of the journal.

Open Access: “We sense that we are part of something bigger”

The Open Journal Systems platform provides wording for a generic “Open Access Policy,” which is also included on the Theological Librarianship site. But looking back on the roundtable in 2007 and the editorials in the first couple of issues of Theological Librarianship, it is interesting (from the perspective of this blog) to note that the term open access as such was never used. Concerns at the start seemed to be more practical and less “ideological” (if that is the right word). The journal was going to be published online using an open source platform as a cost consideration. Co-editor David Stewart indicated a concern that making the journal subscription-based would have driven down interest. “ATLA wanted to have a more direct channel to potential readers.” The fact that the journal would be easily distributed to and accessed by the ATLA membership, and freely read by other interested persons, was seen as a consequential benefit of this approach. Stewart essentially confirmed my assessment:

The point you make about open access being a more pragmatic concern for ATLA and Theological Librarianship early on is well taken. I would surmise that what is true for our journal at this point is true for many others as well: there’s been a certain amount of collective “consciousness-raising,” and the lines have been drawn more clearly between traditional publishing models and OA. In other words, 2007-08 turned out to be a propitious time to be launching an open access journal, in ways we didn’t appreciate fully at the time.

Indeed. As I scanned the editorial and article content in the journal archive, it wasn’t until the third issue (Vol 2, No 1, 2009) that an article by Kevin Smith entitled, “Open Access and Authors’ Rights Management: A Possibility for Theology?” (PDF, pp. 45-56) actually raised and then delved into the concept of open access as a topic for serious reflection and purposeful action. It was Smith’s article that introduced me to the idea that theological librarians, associations, and institutions might embrace a “task of building an ‘open access culture’”—a phrase that continues to served as an inspiration for this blog.

David Stewart provided me with some additional background leading to ATLA’s decision to start the journal. Jack Ammerman, head librarian at Boston University’s School of Theology at the time, had earlier developed a plan to start a “Journal of Theological Bibliography.” He had also explored online publishing platforms, including OJS. It was his idea and prior groundwork that “morphed into something broader,” becoming Theological Librarianship.

As an interesting footnote, Stewart shared that the publisher of the Journal of Religious & Theological Information had earlier approached ATLA about taking on this title as its official publication. ATLA turned down this option because the association wanted to retain more editorial control and ownership than was envisioned by the publisher. Stewart reflected how going with a publisher using a traditional subscription-based model would have sent ATLA in a different direction—away from open access.

I asked Stewart what he and the other members of the editorial team have learned along the way, now that Theological Librarianship is in its fifth year of publication.

Opportunism is at least as important as expertise. Good infrastructure matters. The value of a proofreader. We now know first hand that in many ways it is not that complicated or expensive (at least on Open Journal Systems) to launch a journal. We have also learned something about our community—how many of them want to write for the journal!

It is fair to say that the “ideological” benefits of open access have become more clear as the journal has gotten up and running. The recent event in Durham [see my "Into the Open: Transitions in Journal Publishing" (moderated discussion at Duke University)] was something of an eye-opener. There is a growing disenchantment with traditional publishing. We are part of a much bigger shift in publishing, and (somewhat to our surprise) some who are considering the open access option view us as a “model” of what the process looks like—and are asking for our advice. We sense that we are part of something bigger.

A conversation with Ehud Ben Zvi, founder and editor of the open access Journal of Hebrew Scriptures

Worldwide, completely free, and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed journal literature is a social and academic good. It is important for the creation and dissemination of knowledge, and as such to the academic guild and to society in general. It is important for individual researchers, students, libraries, and the general educated public.

This is how Ehud Ben Zvi, Professor in the Department of History and Classics at University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) opened a paper at the joint meeting of the European Association of Biblical Studies and the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature held at the University of Vienna, July 2007. Ehud Ben Zvi is founder and editor of the open access Journal of Hebrew Scriptures (ISSN 1203-1542).

What is remarkable about the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures is that it was started as an open access online journal in 1996—making it a fairly early online-only journal, and one of the earliest open access journals in religion—well before the term “open access” had entered into common parlance, and even before many scholars had fully acclimated themselves to academic life on the Web. When I sat down with Ehud Ben Zvi for a conversation over Skype in December, I learned that his early appreciation for the potential of this thing called the “World Wide Web” for disseminating knowledge was a natural out-growth of a passion to integrate technology and scholarship.

Omega Alpha (OA): The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures (JHS) was started in 1996. Wow! That was pretty early-on in the history of the World Wide Web. I first got online in 1994, and I considered myself to be something of an early adopter. I cannot now recall how I first found out about JHS. Perhaps it was on the B-Hebrew email listserv early in 1997. I do recall my excitement at being able to freely access scholarly articles in Biblical Studies online. How did you get the idea to start an online journal?

Ben Zvi: I started using email in 1989. Early-on I also started using what we called at that time “computerized enhanced teaching,” or something like that. I worked together with a guy in our faculty, Terry Butler. The two of us were all the time thinking about what we can do to use these new technologies to enhance research and teaching.

In 1995, I started thinking about the journal. At that time my idea was—I was of course a bit naive, but not completely naive, as looking back now I’d say we were on target for the most part—that we could do most of the things print journals can do electronically, and do it even better. In what sense better? We felt there would be a wide readership that is not restricted by income, or location—where a person lived. There are many countries where libraries cannot afford to buy our journals. Also, it would be available to any scholar 24/7. They would not have to go to the library to check it out. We also felt this would bring prompt, faster publication. I was convinced, and I am still convinced that knowledge emerges out of conversation. So, the more scholars who can read each other’s work, and the faster we publish, the more we advance knowledge through discussion and conversation.

We also thought that an electronic journal is different from a printed one in that there is no “quarter to fill.” We don’t have to say, “We have to publish 200 pages.” We can publish as many articles as are worthy of being published. Or vice-versa, we can have as few as are worthy of being published with no problem. The ability to be free in this way is a great advantage. Also, there is no necessary requirement on article length. The article can be as long or as short as it should be.

Now, there were a few things that I was not completely aware of in 1995, like the importance of a style guide, and the importance of the issues associated with article curating and archiving, which we are very well aware of now, and have taken very good care. We also felt that we wanted to try to accommodate everyone. So we started publishing in PDF, Microsoft Works, WordPerfect, and HTML for every single thing. Of course now it sounds ridiculous. Why would you do that?! But at that time we didn’t know which platforms would win the day. You couldn’t be sure whether it would be Microsoft Office or WordPerfect. People will become comfortable with PDF, or something else will emerge very quickly. There was the idea that some people don’t like PDF, they like HTML and the immediacy this format gives to a document. We played a little bit with that. But already at the beginning it was also true that we decided our “official” version will always be the PDF. All the other versions were a kind of “enhancement,” or a “walking towards the reader.” Eventually we stopped “walking towards the reader” and published just the PDF version.

So, this basically was our way of thinking as we led up to starting the journal. I talked with several people, and received responses from many of my colleagues, and we agreed that, yes, the time was right. We can do it. The Department of History and Classics was very supportive. University of Alberta agreed to host the journal site and provide technical support.

OA: That’s interesting. So you were sort of acting from an intuition about what the Web could provide as a platform, and you took advantage of that. Now, looking back, we call this “open access.” But that terminology wasn’t common, if at all, in 1995-96.

Ben Zvi: Yes, we called it “freely available on the Net.”

OA: You mentioned that you weren’t constrained by a pre-determined format. I noticed early-on that JHS appeared as individually published articles. This is not how we are accustomed to thinking about a journal, particularly in print. Most journals appear as published issues of collected articles. This is required of print because you have to have a minimum number of articles in order to fill a worthwhile and reasonable-sized “container”—you mentioned 200 pages before. How did you arrive at the idea of publishing articles for your journal instead of gathering articles into issues?

Ben Zvi: Yes, you have to have issues in print journals. But for an electronic journal there is no academic reason why you must have issues, unless you have a series of thematic articles, in which case, of course, you would want to publish them together. It is, however, a good idea to have volumes because people have to have a way to find the journal. So although we got rid of the idea of the issue we didn’t get rid of the idea of the volume.

OA: I noticed some of your earlier volumes encompassed a number of years. But recently, it appears that a volume is one year, regardless of the number of articles.

Ben Zvi: We started with a volume being two years, and then we moved to a volume per year, especially as we got more articles.

OA: Yes, the increase in the number of articles seems to reflect the growth of the journal. Can you speak to how that “critical mass” developed? How did scholars begin to discover and then become interested in publishing with JHS? Indeed, now, as you say, the volume seems to take care of itself.

Ben Zvi: Initially, for many scholars the idea of publishing articles in an electronic journal was a difficult concept to grasp. For others, the idea was easy enough to grasp, but they said, “If I publish there I will not get tenure, or promoted, or whatever.” I think that by the early 2000′s we finished that debate. But we were proactive in the mid-90s. What we did first was create a very good editorial board. This was crucial. We had a good system of referees with very good people. We asked some top scholars to publish in the journal, and they were willing to do this in the early stages. And then people started reading articles, and the journal became more and more respected.

We, like any traditional journal have a quite high number of rejected articles. Of course, the point isn’t to say we reject you more than the other. This is not the issue. We also try, particularly with younger scholars, to offer helpful comments. So even if we don’t publish your submission, at least we will give you some comments that may help you publish with us later, or elsewhere. I see this as the formative part of the process, particularly with younger colleagues. We have a blind peer review process. It’s basically exactly the same as any journal like JBL or JSOT. From the very beginning we wanted to have something exactly like the other journals.

OA: Do you feel you are providing an opportunity for younger scholars to get published?

Ben Zvi: Yes, we want to publish younger scholars. We want to publish people from around the world. We want, of course, to publish senior scholars, too. The idea is to have a general conversation on the key issues. We want to hear from well-established voices and new voices. Of course, what is most important is the quality of the articles.

OA: Can you speak more about the issue of discoverability? How do scholars find their way to JHS?

Ben Zvi: It’s not a problem. We’re in all the major indices. By the way, we also exist in a print version. All the stuff that appears in the electronic version also appears in print with the delay of a year. Some people go to the print version if this is what they want. But the electronic version is the version that is permanent.

OA: It’s almost like you are working in reverse of the traditional model.

Ben Zvi: Yes, we work in reverse in that sense. The print version is really nice, and we’d like libraries to have it. But it’s secondary to the main journal.

OA: Do you have any other open access projects underway?

Ben Zvi: I have two projects going. I’m the head of the Society of Biblical Literature’s International Cooperation Initiative (ICI). We have a huge depository of electronic books from a number of publishers that is growing by the month. These books are open access, freely available on the Net for people in ICI qualifying countries, which are countries whose GDP is substantially lower than the average GDP of the United States and the European Union. In addition, with a colleague of mine, I’m the co-general editor of a new monograph series, also at SBL, that is open access. It is called the Ancient Near East Monograph Series. These volumes are available electronically open access, or people can buy the volumes in a print version. So you get the best of both worlds. The text is exactly the same in both versions.

Also, in JHS we have been developing a system of hyper-texting. [Note: The paper by Ehud Ben Zvi referenced above addresses this hypertext project.] What we have done, with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is create hypertexts for our articles. This is something that takes a lot of time and effort. But it allows things that the published text cannot do, like clicking on a verse reference to get the scripture text in Hebrew or different translations, or clicking on the name of an author to see what this author has written. It’s quite good, and provides basic information for the scholar working from his desktop. We have contacted people and institutions who have significant open access databases, and we are beginning to create a network. It’s a work in progress. It takes a lot of work, but I think it’s worthwhile. It’s going beyond the “Gutenbergian model” of the printed page. The basic PDF is just the “Gutenbergian model” with some search capability. The hypertext version, based on XML, expands that. We are trying to remain in the forefront of trying new things. But again, this is in addition to the PDF version of our journal, which is still the official version.

OA: Do you have any thoughts regarding societies, associations, or university or college institutions that have, for whatever reason, turned their publishing operation over to a commercial publisher?

Ben Zvi: I have nothing whatsoever against commercial publishing. In fact, I think that no one will gain anything if the SBL publishing house is broke, or if de Gruyter is broke, or Brill is broke. This will not be good for any field of research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. I really wish them well, and I will try to help them as much as possible. Good academic publishers are a part of the academic world, and we need them. Now at the same time, we have other social responsibilities, like our electronic journal, or the ICI e-book depository, or the open access monograph series at SBL. We have an obligation to make at least some of our research available in open access. It’s not that we come to replace commercial publishers. We work together. The scholarly “ecosystem” includes both commercial publishers and open access journal and monograph initiatives.

OA: Do you have any other recommendations to share with scholars or institutions who might be interested in getting an open access journal going? I’m also thinking here about funding for and the sustainability of such an effort.

Ben Zvi: You must have a long-term commitment from your university, or department, or both. If your institution does not support you it’s not sustainable. There are also granting agencies that might be able to assist. The other thing to keep in mind is that these [open access] journals are basically a work of love. You have to have a group of people who feel this is important and are willing to work for that—colleagues who are really willing to work for that and volunteer the necessary time. Anything that depends on only one person is, by definition, not sustainable. You can’t do this alone. In the past I’ve had very good colleagues working with me. And now Christophe Nihan [University of Lausanne] is my Associate General Editor, and we work very well together. We have a very large Advisory Board. We have review editors in different parts of the world. Everyone is doing their job. It’s a team effort.

OA: Professor Ben Zvi, I’ve really appreciated our time together. Thank you for sharing about the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

New OA journal in religion: Religion and Gender

As a regular feature of the site I would like to present profiles of new and existing open access journals in religion and theology. Coupled with these profiles I would like, whenever possible, to include interviews of or comments from the journal editor (or a member of the editorial team), a contributing author/scholar, and a scholar or librarian who knows of or has used the journal (through an article citation, link on a library website, etc.).

My interest here is to keep open access meaningfully rooted in the real world of active and on-going scholarship, and lend encouragement to scholarly content creators and users toward–as a colleague of mine has wonderfully phrased it–”the task of building an open access culture” in religion and theology. Hearing from folk who are already actively engaged in open access will enable/empower others to consider and better navigate the waters of open access, whether the issue is funding and sustainability, publishing platforms, attracting authors, the submission process, peer review, copyright and licensing, journal/article discoverability, or supporting libraries that are trying to serve the information resource needs of students and faculty.

Introducing Religion and Gender

I take it as serendipitous that I learned almost coincident to the launch of my site that a new open access journal in religion was being launched. The new journal called Religion and Gender (ISSN: 1878-5417) has released its first issue, thematically focusing on Critical Issues in the Study of Religion and Gender. It seems fitting that I begin my profile feature with this journal.

The journal is based in the Department of Religious Studies and Theology at University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. It is published by Igitur Publications, an open access journal publishing service of Utrecht University Library utilizing Open Journal Systems, an open source journal management platform developed by the Public Knowledge Project at Simon Fraser University, Canada.

The governance structure of Religion and Gender consists of three Executive Editors, three Assistant Editors, an International Editorial Board consisting of twenty four members, and an Academic Advisory Board of fourteen.

The journal’s website includes clear Online Submissions and Author Guidelines. Articles, concise papers and literature surveys submitted to Religion and Gender go through a “double blind” peer-review process involving “at least two scholars with relevant expertise.” The journal will be published twice a year. “Each year a first issue will appear in March and a second in October. All articles of one issue will be published simultaneously.” Articles in Religion and Gender are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (3.0).

Focus and Scope (from the website):

Religion and Gender is the first refereed online international journal for the systematic study of gender and religion in an interdisciplinary perspective. The journal explores the relation, confrontation and intersection of gender and religion, taking into account the multiple and changing manifestations of religion in diverse social and cultural contexts. It analyses and reflects critically on gender in its interpretative and imaginative dimensions and as a fundamental principle of social ordering. It seeks to investigate gender at the intersection of feminist, sexuality, queer, masculinity and diversity studies.

Open Access fits the scholarly mission of Religion and Gender

The introductory editorial in the inaugural issue by Anne-Marie Korte, “Openings: A Genealogical Introduction to Religion and Gender” (PDF) addressed many of the questions I had regarding both the birth of the journal, and the decision of the journal founders to publish open access.

[A]t the very beginning we embraced the idea of ‘direct publishing’ and ‘free entrance’ that online and open access publishing brings about. ‘Open access’ – the magic word of this whole project, a real ‘Open, Sesame’! – represents and materializes our stance on the accessibility and the social relevance of this journal, its visibility, its intermediary role in current and emerging debates, and its function in warranting the author’s ownership of intellectual work as much as possible.

In addition to common benefits of open access for scholars, including closing the distance and reducing the time that often stands between authors and the publishing process (and readers on the other side of that process), promoting a progressive intellectual property perspective, removing the artificial notion of knowledge scarcity, and opening opportunities (especially) for new/young scholars to get in and engage the scholarly conversation/debate, Korte contends that open access fits well for other reasons.

Open access publication, in our opinion, does not only refer to the scope, pace, and amount of exchange it brings forth, but also to the transparency and the quality of conversation that it can enable. Research into religion and gender is always ‘entangled work’, as it means engaging in conversations, both scholarly and otherwise, that are often already formed by deeply ingrained and lived notions (words, gestures, images) of what ‘religion’ is and is not, of what it does and can(not) do, and of what it should be or not be. We do not only speak about religion but religion also speaks by, for and against us. And, intriguing as it is complicating, the same could be said about gender. For this reason, contemporary and interdisciplinary research into religion and gender conducted by scholars who are often simultaneously witnesses to and participants in the subject they study, demands vigorous, well-informed, critical and self-critical debate. Open access publication can deliver important contributions to this debate by staging these conversations and opening them up for both insiders and outsiders.

And secondly, open access publication also addresses other and related epistemological and moral aspects of scholarship in both religion and gender studies, in particular the dynamics of distance and personal engagement that binds researchers to the topics, persons and communities they investigate. Open access publication, moreover, with its technologically organized promise of direct publishing and free entrance, intensifies the questions about locality and loyalty, privilege and marginalization, and objectivity and embodiment that gender studies has raised and put on the academic agenda. Open access publication has the paradoxical quality of recalling ‘old’ ideals of activist, engaged and grassroots scholarship, epitomized by the idea of immediate exchange between the researchers and the persons or groups they commit themselves to in their research. And at the same time it has the quality of meeting ‘new’ academic requirements of presenting our research results and demonstrating its relevance, not only to academic peers and funding instances but also as ‘open’ to wider audiences as contemporary media make feasible. (emphases added)

Although it might be possible to study religion and gender from an objectivist/’scientific’, or at least, a disinterested perspective (research as an ‘academic exercise’), I take from Professor Korte’s comments that Religion and Gender doesn’t intend and would not be satisfied with this approach. The Editorial Team (and supporting Editorial Board and Advisors) is seeking submissions from scholars who are engaged as both witnesses of and participants in the relationships and communities that inform their research. But more, they want this research to echo relevance back into those relationships and communities. In order to successfully fulfill this mission, the communication platform for such a research agenda needs to be open and accessible to all. Open access would seem able to support this mission most effectively.

Funding and Sustainability

Religion and Gender’s commitment to open access is informed by its mission of engaged and “socially relevant” scholarship. But how is this commitment funded and sustained? I thought Professor Korte was about to answer this question when at the end of the paragraph above she raised the issue of the economics of access:

As an upcoming ordering principle of academic publicity and communication, however, open access publication also raises firm questions about its organization and economic costs: who can be held responsible for granting – and paying – ‘free entrance’ and reaching ‘the widest possible audience’? What if the authors whose work actually gets published are saddled with all the costs?

Korte never returned to answer these questions in the editorial. In the Acknowledgements at the end of the editorial, however, I was able to glean that in addition to significant volunteerism in terms of time and expertise from a variety of sources, a major source of funding for Religion and Gender has come through an Incentive Fund Open Access Journals in the Humanities grant from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Additional financial support is coming from the Christine de Pisan Foundation and the Interuniversity Theology Network of Women.

Happily, Adriaan van Klinken, a member of the Editorial Team at Religion and Gender responded to my inquiry for additional information. Dr. van Klinken notes that although there is still much hesitancy and resistance, there has been “a noticeable turn towards open access publishing” in The Netherlands. The NWO (the national funding body for academic research) and the major universities (including Utrecht University where Religion and Gender is based, and Igitur, the open access publisher at the Library of Utrecht University that publishes Religion and Gender) has significantly enhanced support for open access in the country. Religion and Gender received three years of support from the NWO through a special grant for open access journals in the Humanities. NWO also offers the opportunity for authors to apply for funding to publish their work open access. (Recently, Professor Korte successfully applied for a research and networking grant, which included funding for three special issues of Religion and Gender.)

So, it appears that grant funding combined with a strong network of editorial and technical expertise, and dedicated volunteers will help Religion and Gender get off to a good start. That being said, Dr. van Klinken acknowledges much work remains to be done. “Our task is to develop a long-term business plan to run the journal. Clearly, this is a major challenge and sometimes we are concerned about it, because we do not have an example of an established OA-journal with a successful business model running over a longer period of time.” They are looking at two avenues to create sustainable funding: the introduction of a system of author fees, and the establishment of an international scholarly association, whose membership fees could help support the on-going publication of Religion and Gender.

“We are fully aware that launching an OA journal is a challenging adventure. The world of OA-publishing is very dynamic and unpredictable. However, we are convinced that OA is the future. Therefore we trust that we will find ways to develop a solid financial model to publish our journal. Our top priority right now is to establish Religion and Gender as a high quality academic journal, because in the end the quality and relevance of the scholarship published in the journal will build its reputation.”