How open access can support Humanities book authors: Interview with Zoe Hope Bulaitis
Dr Zoe Hope Bulaitis is author of the open access monograph Value and the Humanities: The Neoliberal University and Our Victorian Inheritance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). In this interview, she talks about how open access has supported her goals as a book author, and she provides tips for other authors on how to find open access funding and how to promote their own book.
Why did you choose to make your book available on an open access basis?
My open access book, Value and the Humanities, engages with ongoing social and political debates concerning the role of the university in the twenty-first century. The book explores interdisciplinary and inter-institutional relationships that collectively articulate the value of the humanities. Therefore, I knew that the potential audience for my book would lie beyond my disciplinary subject area (English) and also be of relevance to those working in museums, cultural policy organisations, and secondary / further education. Open access allowed me to share my research freely without the limitations of digital paywalls or asking people to buy an (let’s face it, expensive) academic book.
How was the open access fee (book processing charge) funded?
The funding came from the University of Exeter’s open access (OA) fund. The research for this particular book project arose out of my doctoral work conducted at that same institution, which was part of the reason that they supported OA funding. The cost of the BPC would have been completely prohibitive to me as an individual to shoulder, so I was very grateful to be able to apply for funds and receive institutional support to make this possible. I am very aware that the funding landscape for OA is continually changing, so
I would recommend opening up a dialogue with the team involved in open research or OA at your university to see what options are available to you.
Tell us about the relationship with your funder(s) – do they have a strong open access policy? How did you start working with them?
I reached out to the OA team at my institution once I had secured positive peer-review and was at the contract stage. For me, it was a case of knowing that the book was ready to be published, the interest of the publisher confirmed, and then reaching out to the local OA team. Exeter offered, and I believe continues to offer, a wide range of support around OA, and the library team were able to guide me through all the options around OA (green, gold, platinum etc.).
That said, I believe that many publishers now offer the chance to revise contracts for OA should this funding become available later down the line to allow for flexibility in seeking funding support.
I would encourage anyone interested in exploring this option to have this conversation with their editor during the proposal process.
Why did you choose to publish this book with Palgrave Macmillan?
Three main reasons:
- I was inspired to see Palgrave leading advocacy for interdisciplinary reflections on the value of the humanities with their "Campaign for the Humanities". I recognised their sincere attempt to create interdisciplinary overlaps and conversations across the humanities; this is a rare thing to find!
- Palgrave is a leader in publishing research that explores the interconnection between literature, culture, and economics. In particular, I wanted to be part of the series exploring responses to the ‘economic humanities’ edited by Professors Nicky Marsh, Paul Crosthwaite, and Peter Knight. I was delighted that my OA book could fit within this series.
- On a more personal note, in advance of approaching a publisher, colleagues shared how they had experienced both open communication and efficient decision-making in publishing with Palgrave. I knew my topic and research was timely, therefore, these qualities were both really important in choosing a home for Value and the Humanities. Having been through the entire process, I am happy to share and pass on my positive experience. Humanities books being published OA was then, and is still, a relatively new practice and the editorial team I worked with at Palgrave helped make the process easy to understand at every stage.
What were you hoping to achieve with your book?
I wanted my book to offer a productive response to the challenges that scholars are facing in the UK, and indeed elsewhere in the world, around the value of the humanities. For me, so much of the public debate concerning universities’ purpose is principally focused on the market-value or economic return-on-investment. I wanted to explore what parts of the value of the humanities are connected with that, but also what kinds of alternative articulations of knowledge-production were being overlooked.
How were you hoping that open access would help with achieving your goals?
As I said above, I was hoping that OA funding would make my book accessible to researchers in a wide range of fields and people beyond academia. As of May 2021, Value and the Humanities has been downloaded over 6.8k times and I have seen formal academic citations in music studies, sociology, and critical university studies. It’s been less than a year, but I already feel that it is ‘mission accomplished’!
What benefits or impact have you seen from publishing this book open access? Do you think publishing OA helped?
The main benefits have been twofold. First; I am an advocate for free access to education, across the board, and OA research is an important part of that picture. Second,
I have gained much from a wider readership and the ability to direct interested parties, future collaborators and external partners to my research via the Internet.
How did you promote the book?
I promoted the book in a variety of ways. Given the wide relevance of my topic, and how OA meant people could access it, shortly after publication I was invited to share my research in a series of academic seminar, including Southampton Centre for Nineteenth Century Research and Northumbria University’s Power and Politics in Language and Literature group. It’s been good to talk about the research in both historical and modern contexts and to interdisciplinary audiences. In terms of external partner engagement, I took part in Palgrave’s panel on Ethical Futures for a New World as part of the 2020 Being Human Festival. We made a film as part of this which you can view here.
Also, I celebrated the news of the OA publication on social media. I found that Twitter was particularly effective, as I was able to 'pin' the Tweet with a link to my book on my own profile and over 18,000 users have seen that. I also received retweets from publishing accounts at Palgrave (@PalgraveHums, @PalgraveLit) and the Springer Nature Open Access Books account @SN_OAbooks which really helped spread the news in relevant online networks.
Do you have any advice to others considering publishing their next book or chapter open access?
I’d recommend it if you can find funding to support it or pursue routes to open access that removes individual BPCs altogether. Things are evolving all the time and I hope that the future will mean OA becomes a standard. Of course, the idea of anyone reading your research can be a bit daunting, but I’ve found that sharing has been really productive.
Would you publish open access again?
Yes. I’d like all my research to be openly available to whoever would be interested in reading it. However, as I said above, current demands on individual arrangements per title remain prohibitive for many. I’d like to see publishers, libraries, universities, the government, and academics working to commit to more equitable and accessible forms of support for open access in the future.
This interview was published as part of the Open Access Books in the Humanities campaign.
If you would like to learn more about how to publish an open access book, Springer Nature offers options across disciplines for a variety of book types.
Other blogs you might find interesting:
- How open access can support Humanities book authors: Interview with Andreas Hepp and Uwe Hasebrink
- How open access can support Humanities book authors: Interview with Manuel Peréz García
- How open access can support Humanities book authors: Interview with Drue Barrett
Dr Zoe Hope Bulaitis is an educator and researcher who is motivated by better articulating the value of the humanities in the twenty-first century. She is currently a Teaching Fellow (incoming Lecturer, September 2021) at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her open access monograph, Value and the Humanities: The Neoliberal University and Our Victorian Inheritance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), explores the relationship between nineteenth- and twenty-first-century economics, literature, and higher education. Zoe is currently also co-editor of C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings and a member of the Executive Committee for the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS). Tweet her @zoebulaitis.
