2025/11/24 by Judith Fathallah · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Artistic and Creative Research #Digital Humanities and Scholarship #Publishing and Scholarly Communication
paper · doi:10.3998/jep.7812
openalex publication_date 2025/11/24 · openalex created_date 2025/11/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
In dialogue with Knöchelmann’s (2019) call for a discourse of openness for the humanities, this article employs an autoethnographic narrative informed by cultural and sociological theory to explore my experience of publishing my first OA book. Utilizing both classic cultural theory and more modern strands of thought from new feminist materialism, I reflect on the structures that have constituted me materially and relationally as a scholar, and have shaped my first OA book as an intervention in the field. I agree with Knöchelmann that to import the predefined discourse of open science has limited utility for humanities researchers, but disagree that practice and experimentation should not be considered part of a new discourse of openness for the humanities. On the contrary, I follow Adema (2021) in arguing for the book and the practices that bring it into existence as discursive statements and interventions in practice. I argue that, as one such intervention, arts and humanities researchers must turn away from outdated notions of academic prestige, and actively and deliberately participate in a transformation of academic publishing in which OA will become the norm, to ensure that old forms of exclusion and inequity are not simply replaced with new ones. l argue that the legacy publishing strategies that served previous academic cohorts no longer reward ECRs, and that the visibility and reach of OA in combination with the ability to work with a scholar-director are more beneficial to academics than the 'prestige' of traditional publishers. Academics cannot be asked to bear all of the risk of what I now believe is a necessary transition to an ethical, sustainable open access landscape for books – but, as we stand to benefit from this transition as readers, authors and human beings in the humanities, I contend that we must bear some.