The Importance of Relationship between Open Access Publishing and the Digital Humanities
Open Access Publishing is the opportunity to publish work free of costs, publisher, or restrictions. This tool is for anyone to access the work published, easily. Digital Humanists use the digital tool of open access publishing to promote their research and studies for the most important audience: the humans that look for and need these resources. Open Access Publishing serves as a beneficial technological tool not only for the Digital Humanists who work to get their works published but also for the human audience who seek to learn from these free, open source findings, online.
In Peter Suber’s writings of “Open Access,” he delves into the purpose served using Open Access Publishing as well as clarifying some misconceptions. Open Access Publishing is not for the profit of the writer but rather for the benefit of the audience. The author of the piece has their copyrights of their products until they extend them over to a publisher, which then the writer would receive earnings. Some misconceptions clarified about Open Public Access are that there a copyright laws protecting the Open Public Access piece publishing, this is not an alternative to avoid peer review of a paper, as well as there is no money making agenda with Open Public Access, it was all free.
Johanna Drucker adds some thoughts in her piece, “Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovations in Scholarly Publishing.” After sharing some skepticism on the romanticism of the Open Public Access reputation, she writes, “But humanities are not a luxury, and to show that they have a substantive contribution to make to the world we live in, we need to demonstrate their relevance to policy, politics, daily life, and business, not just rehash the same old bromides about critical thinking and imaginative life. The vitality of humanities is the lifeblood of culture, its resounding connection to all that is human makes us who and what we are. The preservation of cultural ecologies is akin to preserving ecologies in the natural world, it is, in fact, the human part of them. The humanities are us. Their survival is our survival,” (Drucker.) This powerful and thought-provoking conclusion here shows the importance of utilizing Open Public Access, to share with the public valuable, free-range research that will connect communities together, for the benefit of humanity. At no cost.
