NEH Sponsors Berlin 9 Conference on Open Access

I'm very proud to announce that the NEH has just awarded a small grant to the Association of Research Libraries, the local sponsors of the 2011 Berlin 9 Conference on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The grant will support humanities sessions at the conference.

In its ninth year, this is the first time that the landmark Berlin Open Access conference has taken place in North America. During those nine years, the open access landscape has changed immensely, with more scholarly and scientific works being published in an open format where they can be read by a wide audience. This year's conference takes place in Washington, DC and will involve many of our nation's leading research funders.

The open access discussion involves a lot of different actors, including scholars, scientists, librarians, archivists, funders, and publishers. Some of the issues to be solved -- often revolving around business models and long-term sustainability -- are thorny and resist simple answers. My hope is that we can engage the humanities community in these discussions and work towards publishing paradigms that allow peer-reviewed scholarly works to reach a broad public audience.