More on OA in the humanities

Malcolm Heath, An author is an animal with two ends, an expanded version of a presentation at the JISC Open Access conference (Oxford, September 27-28, 2006).  Excerpt:

...I would rather have Open Access to raw content than added value that renders the content inaccessible.  Thesis 3: Inaccessible content has no value....

Thesis 4: Sell added value. The content has been paid for....

[I]n the Arts and Humanities, postprint archiving provides a more immediately practicable route to Open Access [than paying author-side fees]. It is already technologically feasible; it does not depend on the development of new business models, or on a radical reform of research funding, or on the availability of additional resources to meet transitional costs; and it achieves the most fundamental goal of ensuring that raw content --the ultimately indispensable component of research publications-- is accessible to researchers without impediment. This may not be a perfect solution, but it is possible, which is much more important; and any achievable improvement on what we have now is good enough --at least, as a starting-point....