[ecrea] Launch of Open Humanities Press

>Brussels, Belgium - On May 12, 2008, the Open 
>Humanities Press (OHP) will launch with 7 of the 
>leading Open Access journals in critical and 
>cultural theory. A non-profit, international 
>grass-roots initiative, OHP marks a watershed in 
>the growing embrace of Open Access in the humanities.
>
>"OHP is a bold and timely venture" said J. 
>Hillis Miller, Distinguished Professor of 
>English at the University of California, Irvine, 
>a long-time supporter of the Open Access 
>movement and OHP board member. "It is designed 
>to make peer-reviewed scholarly and critical 
>works in a number of humanistic disciplines and 
>cross-disciplines available free online. 
>Initially primarily concerned with journals, OHP 
>may ultimately also include book-length 
>writings. This project is an admirable response 
>to the current crisis in scholarly publishing 
>and to the rapid shift from print media to 
>electronic media. This shift, and OHP's response 
>to it, are facets of what has been called 'critical climate change.'"
>
>"The future of scholarly publishing lies in Open 
>Access" agreed Jonathan Culler, Class of 1916 
>Professor of English and Comparative Literature 
>at Cornell University and fellow member of OHP's 
>editorial advisory board. "Scholars in the 
>future should give careful consideration to the 
>where they publish, since their goal should be 
>to make the products of their research as widely 
>available as possible, to people throughout the 
>world. Open Humanities Press is a most welcome 
>initiative that will help us move in this direction."
>
>OHP will give new confidence to humanities 
>academics who wish to make their work freely 
>accessible but have concerns about the academic 
>standards of online publishing. In addition to 
>being peer-reviewed, all OHP journals undergo 
>rigorous vetting by an editorial board of leading humanities scholars.
>
>OHP's board includes Alain Badiou, Chair of 
>Philosophy at the Ã0cole Normale Supérieure, 
>Donna Haraway, Professor of the History of 
>Consciousness and Feminist Studies, UC Santa 
>Cruz, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Director of the 
>International Center for Writing and 
>Translation, UC Irvine, Gayatri Spivak, Avalon 
>Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia 
>University, Peter Suber, Open Access Project 
>Director for Public Knowledge and Professor of 
>Philosophy at Earlham College, and Stephen 
>Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the 
>Humanities, Harvard University, who has been 
>leading the public debate on the crisis of 
>academic publishing in the humanities.
>
>"Open-access publishing in serious, 
>peer-reviewed online scholarly journals is one 
>of the keys to solving a financial crisis that 
>has afflicted university libraries everywhere 
>and has had a chilling effect on virtually every 
>academic discipline" said Greenblatt."Making 
>scholarly work available without charge on the 
>internet has offered hope for the natural 
>sciences and now offers hope in the humanities."
>
>With initial offerings in continental 
>philosophy, cultural studies, new media, film 
>and literary criticism, OHP serves researchers 
>and students as the Open Access gateway for 
>editorially-vetted scholarly literature in the 
>humanities. The first journals to become part of 
>OHP are Cosmos and History, Culture Machine, 
>Fibreculture, Film-Philosophy, International 
>Journal of Zizek Studies, Parrhesia and Vectors.
>
>"But it's not simply a matter of what Open 
>Access can do for the humanities" added Gary 
>Hall, Professor of Media and Performing Arts at 
>Coventry University, co-editor of Culture 
>Machine and one of the co-founders of OHP. "It 
>is also a case of what can the humanities do for 
>Open Access. Researchers, editors and publishers 
>in the humanities have developed very different 
>professional cultures and intellectual practices 
>to the STMs who have dominated the discussion 
>around Open Access to date. OHP is ideally 
>positioned to explore some of the exciting new 
>challenges and perspectives in scholarly 
>communication that are being opened up for Open 
>Access as it is increasingly adopted within the humanities."
>
>##
>
>Open Humanities Press is an international Open 
>Access publishing collective specializing in 
>critical and cultural theory. OHP was formed by 
>academics to overcome the current crisis in 
>scholarly publishing that threatens intellectual 
>freedom and academic rigor worldwide. OHP 
>journals are academically certified by OHP's 
>independent board of international scholars. All 
>OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published 
>under open access licenses, and freely and 
>immediately available online at 
><http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/>www.openhumanitiespress.org .

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17 - B-1081 Brussel - Belgium
&
Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis
Boulevard du Jardin Botanique 43  - B-1000 Brussel - Belgium
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Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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ECREA's Second European Communication Conference
Barcelona, 25-28 November 2008
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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