Notes on Opening Access to German Studies

Abstract

When at the 2010 Congress in Montreal Harvard Library Director Robert Darnton spoke in support of rapidly changing digital publishing models, the most recent global financial collapse was going into its third year and the words crisis and humanities were firmly linked in the academic imaginary (4Humanities). In his talk, Darnton outlined the hard numbers with which libraries must contend in this economic climate, highlighting in particular the increasing fees for journal subscriptions, even as journals and other publishing venues continue to multiply. Open access publishing is one manner in which academic libraries may enact cost-saving measures, and this is perhaps why discussions surrounding open access seem to always begin, and often end, with the libraries. The week beginning 22 October 2012 was Open Access Week around the world, and fittingly it was celebrated on the campus of the University of Alberta by library-sponsored events related to publishing and research archiving. But the open movement more broadly, and open access specifically, also offers us a mode of thinking about the perpetual crisis of the humanities beyond numbers and dollar value. I was introduced to this mode of thinking through practice. While I became an open access practitioner by chance, through my continued contact with its models for publishing and knowledge circulation, I have come to think very deliberately about the potential disciplinary considerations that the open movement brings with it. Further, I come to it as a junior scholar who is deeply concerned about how the rhetoric of the crisis of the humanities and the scepticism surrounding digital cultures, even as, or perhaps because, digital humanities is on the rise, is impacting academic culture in a way that perpetuates disciplinary navel-gazing. In publications, talks, and responses since the 2010 Congress, Darnton has outlined how open access and digitization offer not only a way of saving university libraries but also – as the title of a talk published on falling-walls.com contests – the democratization of culture (Darnton). Humanities disciplines can be positively transformed through direct engagement with the open movement and just such a democratization of culture, beginning with but not limited to open access and non-standard modes of knowledge dissemination. I use the term discipline transformation here to mean not simply greater circulation of knowledge or cost-saving measures for economically strapped departments and libraries,