Keeping the Humanities Visible in Scholarly Publishing

In academic publishing, many developments of recent decades have been driven by STM disciplines: from journal digitization and new business models to metadata standards, peer review best practices, and research funding principles. Humanities publishers have both benefited from and been constrained by this evolution. While STM innovations have proven valuable, many requirements suited to STM have been imposed on humanities publishing and funding despite being a poor fit. This has created the misperception that humanities publishing is slow and not innovative—a view that, combined with beliefs about STM’s superior economic impact, has increased funding pressure on the humanities. This session challenges these perceptions as not only unfair but fundamentally wrong. The humanities’ distinct pace reflects the specificities of these disciplines, which differ fundamentally from STM: focus on culture (language-sensitive) rather than global scope (with English as lingua franca); long discourses with extended lifecycles (where monographs excel) rather than short-lived discoveries (suited to journal articles); and emphasis on individual scholarship rather than collaborative research teams. These differences must be recognized when evaluating and developing publishing and funding models for the humanities. Beyond raising awareness of the humanities’ distinct value and publication ecosystem, this session aims to develop practical solutions to these challenges.