Series Contract Signed!!

Greetings everyone!


Long time no hear, I know, but the wheels of open access have been grinding on, albeit extremely slowly. And I am extremely pleased to announce that we now have a series contract in hand with MIT Press! Open Handbooks in Linguistics is officially a Thing!

The first volume in the series, edited by Andrea Berez-Kroeker, Bradley McDonnell and Eve Okura Koller, will be "The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management and Archiving." It looks like it is going to be *awesome*.

We will be establishing a process for identifying the next volumes to be pursued for publication in the next month or two, and we'll make announcements accordingly, so please watch out for them!

Each volume in the series will require a financial subvention to support Open Access publication, approximately $13,000 per volume. We will apply to various public and private sources of funding to support the series, but it will also be possible for individuals to make contributions in support of specific projects that they especially believe in.

EXTREMELY excited to finally be able to make this announcement,

your open access handbooks advocate,

Heidi Harley   

Open access in the press

Some things coming across my newsfeed that could be of interest:

There's a new Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden; this NY Review of Books article suggests that open access in academic publishing (particularly of federally-funded research) should be a number one priority of the new administration and the new librarian.

And MIT has instituted a 'Task force on the future of libraries' that seems to point towards an institutional model for broadening access as much as possible, including a cool logo involving the MIT Dome, hat tip Kai von Fintel.

Open Handbooks in Linguistics Editorial Board

Following our announcement and invitation last week, our editorial board is now more comprehensive. We will continue to identify and fill gaps in coverage strategically in future. Editorial board members who were not on the original list are highlighted in bold. Welcome all! Our next step: Identify the right platinum open access venue to make good use of all this editorial firepower.

Open Handbooks in Linguistics Editorial Board:

David Adger, Queen Mary University

Tor A Åfarli, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Artemis Alexiadou, Humboldt University Berlin

Stephen Anderson, Yale University

Diana Archangeli, University of Arizona

Peter Austin, SOAS University of London

Gulsat Aygen, Northern Illinois University

Tista Bagchi, University of Delhi

Eric Bakovic, University of California San Diego

Joan Beal, University of Sheffield

Balthasar Bickel, University of Zurich

Jennifer Cole, Northwestern University

Roberta D'Alessandro, Leiden University

Mary Dalrymple, University of Oxford

David Deterding, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

Molly Diesing, Cornell University

Michael Dunn, Uppsala University

Miriam Ernestus, Radboud University Nijmegen

Hana Filip, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf

Kai von Fintel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Howard Giles, University of California, Santa Barbara

Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus

Michael Hammond, University of Arizona

Heidi Harley, University of Arizona

Martin Haspelmath, Max Planck Institute-SSH Jena and Leipzig University

Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh

Claudio Iacobini, Università di Salerno

Laura Kallmeyer, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Simin Karimi, University of Arizona

Jeffrey Lidz, University of Maryland

Diane Lillo-Martin, University of Connecticut

Mark Liberman, University of Pennsylvania

Terje Lohndal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology/UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Diane Massam, University of Toronto

Jason Merchant, University of Chicago

Marianne Mithun, University of California, Santa Barbara

Shigeru Miyagawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/University of Tokyo

Annabelle Mooney, University of Roehampton

Stefan Müller, Freie Universität Berlin

Lea Nash, Université de Vincennes, Paris 8

Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Universität zu Koln

Steven Pinker, Harvard University

Kathryn Remlinger, Grand Valley State University 

Keren Rice, University of Toronto

Norvin Richards, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Johan Rooryck, Leiden University

Joseph Salmons, University of Wisconsin Madison
Andrea Schalley, Karlstad University

Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan

Marc van Oostendorp, Meertens Institute/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

James A Walker, York University

Natasha Warner, University of Arizona

Jean-Jacques Weber, University of Luxembourg

Judith Kaplan Weinger, Northeastern Illinois University

Tony Woodbury, University of Texas at Austin
Alan Yu, University of Chicago

Hedde Zeijlstra, Göttingen University

Open Handbooks in Linguistics Initiative

An Open Access Initiative for Linguistics Handbooks

October 4, 2016

We are extremely pleased to announce the formation of an editorial board for the new series Open Handbooks in Linguistics. We are committed to creating a high-quality venue for the publication of linguistics handbooks that is completely open access. We consider the open access publishing model to be especially important for handbooks for the following reasons:

• Handbooks can represent a significant benefit to scholars around the world with limited or no access to commercial publishers' book products, since they summarize current research in a compact and organized fashion.
• Commercial publishers in our field are producing many more handbooks than in the past, since they represent a significant profit opportunity. Many linguist-hours are being poured into these volumes, but their focus and direction is being at least partly driven by publishers' goals, rather than by the field's needs.
• Open exchange of ideas is essential to the advancement of science, and open access to our research products is therefore a key priority for our field, as for all scientific work.

This initiative developed from a dramatic outpouring of responses to a casual Facebook post. We intend to capitalize on this grass-roots enthusiasm by creating this series in a yet-to-be-determined publication venue. We will curate handbooks which provide insightful review and analysis of current trends in our field, authored by leading scholars from all corners of the discipline.

The volumes will be accessible to anyone with an internet connection.  

Membership in the editorial board is currently limited to professors at the 'full' rank. Colleagues at that rank who are interested in supporting this initiative, particularly from institutions and subfields that are underrepresented in this initial list, are invited to contact Heidi Harley, hharley@email.arizona.edu.  

Note: Our initial group consists of volunteers we reached initially on social media, which is very limited in its reach. Interested colleagues who are learning of this initiative for the first time via this announcement are MORE than welcome to write to me to volunteer. The only constraint is that volunteers should have the rank of Professor, at this initial stage of development.

Editorial board members to date:

David Adger, Queen Mary University

Artemis Alexiadou, Humboldt University Berlin

Tor A Åfarli, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Diana Archangeli, University of Arizona

Peter Austin, SOAS University of London

Tista Bagchi, University of Delhi

Eric Bakovic, University of California San Diego

Balthasar Bickel, University of Zurich

Roberta D'Alessandro, Leiden University

Hana Filip, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf

Kai von Fintel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus

Michael Hammond, University of Arizona

Heidi Harley, University of Arizona

Martin Haspelmath, Max Planck Institute-SSH Jena and Leipzig University

Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh

Laura Kallmeyer, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Simin Karimi, University of Arizona

Jeffrey Lidz, University of Maryland

Diane Lillo-Martin, University of Connecticut

Mark Liberman, University of Pennsylvania

Terje Lohndal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology/UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Diane Massam, University of Toronto

Jason Merchant, University of Chicago

Marianne Mithun, University of California, Santa Barbara

Shigeru Miyagawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/University of Tokyo

Stefan Müller, Freie Universität Berlin

Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Universität zu Koln

Steven Pinker, Harvard University

Norvin Richards, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Johan Rooryck, Leiden University

Joseph Salmons, University of Wisconsin Madison
Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan

Marc van Oostendorp, Meertens Institute/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Natasha Warner, University of Arizona

Tony Woodbury, University of Texas at Austin
Alan Yu, University of Chicago