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 below in Chapter 5, I consider this type of thinking about academic publishing to be an instantiation of the history of critique; that is, a crucial part of a systematic examination of our practices, the aim of which is a more complete knowledge of the forces that deﬁne and shape our thinking and research production. Such critique does not have to conclude that ‘open access’ is the logical answer but it is certainly worth introducing the publishing and dissemination process into discussions of research practice in the humanities.

Open access: scientiﬁc origins

When the origin of the Free Culture movement within technological disciplines is coupled with the exponentially more challenging economic situation for scientiﬁc journals, a history of open access emerges that is ﬁrmly situated within the sciences. This is sometimes taken by sceptics to mean that the humanities should be excluded from funder requirements for open access because there are fundamental differences between these disciplines and the natural sciences. Disciplinary differences cannot be elided but, at the same time, there are ways in which open access could beneﬁt, or at least alter, research practice for the humanities. To investigate this further, I want now to look at the differences a little more in terms of origins and policies to ascertain the exact points of tension.

It is true that a substantial degree of the development of open access has taken shape in the sciences. In fact, high-energy physics seems to be one of the strongest disciplines for OA. It is also wise to be cautious of the fact that the motivation of many governments pursuing open access is to allow industry to take the fruits of (often public) scientiﬁc research and to re-enclose it for commercial beneﬁt. Depending upon your degree of market-orientation, this may or may not be a negative phenomenon. One’s appraisal may also depend upon the type of enterprise appropriating the work; some would be happy with charities, for instance, using their work but not large corporations. Truly libre open access does not discriminate, however, on the type of activity undertaken by the reuser. This is a topic that will be explored in more detail in Chapter 3.

Despite the seemingly science-centric history of OA, however, open access also has both formal and impromptu roles and histories