One to watch is the new initiative Open Handbooks in Linguistics. From their blurb: “We consider the open access publishing model to be especially important for handbooks for the following reasons:
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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.
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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.
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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.”
oaling 