Self-Publishing

Self Publishing is an Open Access solution you might want to consider when the existing platforms do not suffice. Perhaps an OA journal is lacking in a specific field, or the APC’s asked are considered disproportionate.

An example of Self-Publishing is founding a new journal with a group of peers. Prof. dr. Ronald Leenes and dr. Aaron Martin of Tilburg University decided that is was necessary to establish a brand new OA journal for the field of Law & Technology. You can learn of their experience

Video: How to deploy an Open Access Journal: prospects and difficulties

Prof. dr. Ronald Leenes on Technology and Regulation (techreg.org), the diamond open access journal he deployed with his postdoc Aaron Martin and Open Journal Systems (OJS). Interviewer: Richard Engelfriet.

Open Books

Another problem encountered especially in fields such as Humanities or Law is not articles but books are the core type of scholarly output. What if you want to publish an Open Book? Book Processing Charges (BPC’s) asked by publishers are quite high, partly because production costs are high. Some specialized OA publishers (Amsterdam University Press, Helsinki University Press) have low or sometimes even no BPC, others though can ask a fee between 10.000 and 20.000 euro.

A further option is also to self-publish books. Prof. dr. Jan Blommaert and dr. Ico Maly of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences wrote a book together and decided to publish is themselves. It will be the first in a series of Open Books on culture and society.