Eleanor Masterman. « ‘Communists of Knowledge’? A case for the implementation of ‘radical open access’ in the humanities and social sciences »[thesis]
« Open access (OA) has widely been touted as a ‘radical’ alternative to the traditional scholarly publishing system, which has faced heavy criticism in the last twenty years for its oligopolistic market and high profit margins. Yet, this dissertation argues that – especially in scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing – OA under the ‘author-pays’ model has largely become part of that system, as another revenue stream for the largest commercial publishers. My study contributes to a growing body of literature that seeks instead to re-politicise OA for the humanities and social sciences (HSS), a sector where the topic is still marked by discussion and debate, by critiquing its subordinance to market logic. Adopting an explicitly political definition of ‘radical’, this study attempts to answer the question ‘Could open access facilitate a radical approach to academic publishing in the humanities and social sciences?’. (…) »
