We have recently set up a new demonstration workspace where we wish to explore how to leverage our relations with libraries and funders to help small OA operations develop sustainable cooperative long-term publishing strategies.

We are particularly interested in designing experimental cooperative frameworks for existing open access, trans-national STS publications which, for reasons of scale, resources, and the lack of reliable services/partnerships from publishers, find it particularly difficult to get a foothold in our prevalent culture of metrics.

Not infrequently, these publishing venues are the place where the most vibrant, interesting, and creative scholarship is happening–a scholarship that is also often pushing the boundaries of feminist and oppositional work, and therefore facing kinds of pressure that extend and redefine the limits of openness.

In our Cooperate for Open demonstration workshop we are therefore committed to explore collective solutions to the financial challenges faced by these fragile already open venues.

We first drafted a vision for such a cooperative framework here:

  1. Let’s Do This Together: a Cooperative Vision for Open Access, https://anthrodendum.org/2018/06/27/lets-do-this-together-a-cooperative-vision-for-open-access/