Practicing and sustaining the revolution

Leonie de GoeiAad Blok

‘ Happily the best interest of scholarly society publishers is the best interest of the scholars themselves, namely as rapid a transition to open access as possible. So scholarly societies should be doing what they can to speed that transition…’

Stuart Shieber January 2013

Why and how did we manage to be so advanced?

Who are we?

Royal Netherlands Historical Society

1. Why did we opt for a transition to open access?

2. How did we manage to actually make the transition to a full-blown OA journal?

3. Are there lessons to be learnt from our case for other journals?

4. Where do we stand now, after almost two years of OA, and where are we heading?

Why did we opt for a transition to open access?

1. pragmatics

2. ideology

How did we manage to actually make the transition to a full blown OA journal?

1. favorable financial position

2. full support of key figures

3. society owns the journal

4. partnership with Igitur

Are there lessons to be learnt from our case for other journals?1. Ideology AND financial incentives are needed

2. Someone who ignites the fire AND genuine support of key figures

3. Not being dependent on revenues from membership fees only helps a lot

4. So does ownership, freedom of action and feeling of shared responsibility among all involved

5. A partnership with an academic library service is sensible and preferable because their core business is ongoing access and long-term archiving, and they share the same public purpose as a not-for-profit society

Where do we stand now, and where are we heading?

Facts and figures 2012-2014

Period Visitors website BMGN

July 2012 - July 2013

July 2013 - July 2014

23.150

32.156

An increase of 42% compared to the preceeding period

Two thirds are new, one third recurring visitors

IndexingIndexing 2012 Indexing 2014

Arts and Humanities Citation IndexCurrent Contents/Arts and HumanitiesSocial Sciences Citation IndexCurrent Contents /Social and Behavioral SciencesHistorical Abstracts (until 2010)Scopus

Arts and Humanities Citation IndexCurrent Contents/Arts and HumanitiesSocial Sciences Citation IndexCurrent Contents/Social and Behavioral SciencesHistorical Abstracts with full textScopusBASE search, Bielefeld Academic Search EngineDirectory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS)Google ScholarH-Soz-u-Kult JournalTOCs OAisterEbsco Host Electronic Journals serviceUlrich's Periodicals DirectoryWorldcat (free access in your library)

Google H5 Index