Page:Open access and the humanities - contexts, controversies and the future.pdf/85

 Perhaps, then, this represents the compromise point for open access in terms of its political split: on the one hand, open access has the potential to eradicate the inability of academics to read the work of their peers. Conversely, all forms of OA under the BBB deﬁnitions allow a broader societal use-value (and that includes extending this to corporate entities).45 While there are ways in which it would be possible to mitigate aspects of re-enclosure, if so desired – most notably through the addition of a clause to the license that means that any reuser must also make their derivatives available to the community under the same terms, covered below – these are harder to implement in political terms because of their anti-market connotations. What is clear, though, is that, under open access, the points of use- and exchange-value are decentred and deferred from the producer and even from the producer’s employer (the university), rather than removed. Open access does not change this relationship to the commodity form of research. In other words: it is simply that the form of exchange-value appears differently under open access because there is no price. It is likewise clear that these topics require a more rigorous interrogation than might appear from a surface reading and also that the politics of OA must continue to be monitored for its potential dangers against its possible social good.

In light of the need to compensate publisher labour, one of the most important components in Peter Suber’s list of ‘what open access is not’ is that ‘OA is not an attempt to deny the reality of costs’.46 While some volunteer efforts have managed to operate on almost non-existent budgets, this does not seem a prudent idea when scaled to cover all research in the humanities. This then leads to the question of how it can be possible for the humanities to afford open access. Who, at the end of the day, pays?

The answers to these questions are multifaceted but the absolutely crucial point that should be made upfront is that no major reconﬁguration of the current economic model is necessary with green open access. Under this system, where a subscription mechanism for journals co-exists with deposit in an institutional or subject