Berghahn Open Anthropology
Apologies for cross-posting
You may have heard the good news that starting with all their 2020 volumes Berghahn will be making its anthropology collection (13 titles) open access: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/page/boa/press-release
This is a historic flip. No other discipline has ever had such a collection of top journals turned open access in one go. Moreover, the model Berghahn has developed (called Subscribe-to-Open) does not involve APCs or read-and-publish thresholds: it is universal, sustainable, and inclusive.
The flip has been made possible thanks to over 250 libraries subscribing to the model worldwide. However, only 25 libraries have subscribed to the whole collection; the rest have renewed their invoices for selected titles only.
I am writing in the hope that you would be kind enough to ask your librarians to subscribe to the whole Berghahn Open Anthro portfolio (even if this may only be possible for your library to do in the next round of invoicing). The flip to OA is not indefinite. It requires a minimum number of libraries to support the initiative on an annual basis (such as it is now). However, there is a risk that come the next round of invoicing some libraries will opt out from subscribing now that the collection is open access (i.e. a risk of free riding).
Unlike the transformational agreements that big publishers are signing with university consortia around the globe—where only paying universities have reading and publishing rights to open access—Berghahn’s model is universal, inclusive, and sustainable. In scale and scope it is a model driven by anthropologists’ commitment to researcher-led, publicly available scholarship.
I hope you find the news of Berghahn’s flip as exciting as I do and trust you will get a chance to share it with your librarians.
With warmest wishes
Alberto
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Alberto Corsín Jiménez
Department of Social Anthropology
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
home: http://alberto-corsin-jimenez.org
Libraria: http://libraria.cc/
@acorsin
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