As the open access movement arose at the beginning of the 2000s in response to the serials crisis in the 1990s, it is hardly surprising that many measures in the context of open access strategies still focus on scholarly journals. However, this is quite problematic for a humanities discipline such as media studies, which in the context of its own publication culture still has a great affinity for (print) books. In light of this fact, and reflecting on the obstacles to a more comprehensive open access transformation of media studies, I would like in the present post to address the topic of open access and media studies in two steps. First, I will outline the status quo of the publication culture in the field of media studies; then, I will mention several selected obstacles to the open access transformation of the discipline. These obstacles stem from the actions of research funders and science policymakers, which do not take adequate account of the particularities of the media studies publication culture. When mentioning the obstacles, I will also look at possible solutions.

Over 20 years after the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda declarations, open access in media studies is still not where it could actually be expected to be considering the amount of time that has passed as well as the will of science policymakers and their corresponding efforts. Many publications are still not accessible free of restrictions and free of charge, and the large publishing houses, which were actually supposed to have been weakened, seem to be stronger than ever. They are expanding their product portfolios in an alarming way (on data tracking in science, see this article by Gerhard Lauer), and are thereby threatening to pervert the original idea of open science and open access, as the public sector is financing private sector profits with public funds. This also damages the diverse publishing ecosystem, which in Germany includes many medium and small publishers. Up to now, developments such as these have affected media studies to a lesser extent because print books continue to play a key role in the reputational mechanisms of the discipline's publication culture – and the publication cultures of the other humanities disciplines – and, as an analogous carrier medium, books fall between the cracks of business practices that benefit most from the digital transformation of science. Hence, many open science practices have not yet infiltrated that deeply into the work practices in media studies, so that for companies such as the RELX Group it has not appeared worthwhile up to now to shift the entire research process in media studies to commercial tools. However, to therefore consider the publication culture in media studies to be an "analogous", hermetically sealed "island of the blessed", would not only set the wrong scientific-cultural ideals but would also fail to recognise important developments in the discipline.

For example, the number of open access books published in media studies is steadily increasing, and the first consortial funding models for this purpose already exist, for example Open Library Media Studies and KOALA. In addition, the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft – the main publication medium of the German Media Studies Association (Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft) – is now an open access journal. And NECSUS, the journal of NECS–European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, is even a scholar-led journal with no publisher involvement. Furthermore, each association has a working group – the AG Open Media Studies and the NECS Open Scholarship Committee, respectively – that deals with open science and open access in the discipline. Moreover, as a discussion platform, the Open Media Studies Blog is dedicated primarily to professional exchange on the topic. However, with the research portal adlr.link, the disciplinary repository media/rep/, and the digital archive MediArXiv, progress has also been made on the level of research infrastructures. Furthermore, to actively shape the open access transformation, representatives of the discipline are involved in initiatives such as ENABLE! or in open-access.network's digital focus groups. In media studies, a book-oriented, rather "traditional" publication culture is accompanied by an open access publication culture. However, the two are not opposed, but rather they merge into one another, as researchers often use both publication strategies – albeit usually with a different focus.

Thus, in the media studies publication culture, printed monographs (mainly dissertations) and edited volumes on the one hand continue to play an important role as publication venues of high renown, whereas, on the other hand, journals are becoming more and more widespread and are increasingly not just open access but also scholar led. Thus, in terms of open access, the media studies publication culture is characterised by a "contemporaneousness of the non-contemporaneous", while the open access transformation of the discipline is steadily progressing.

Mentioning obstacles should by no means be understood as a criticism of the open access transformation per se, but rather of its implementation, which largely ignores the specifics of the media studies publication culture and thus ultimately leads to a situation where research in media studies cannot develop its full potential. Four aspects are especially relevant in this regard:

1. With a few exceptions, no article processing charges (APCs) are levied in media studies, so primarily focusing publication funding on these charges ignores the discipline and its publication needs.
2. At the same time, this focus on APCs means that book processing charges (BPCs) are not adequately funded, which is to the detriment of the media studies publication culture (on Points 1 and 2, see the report on the receipt of proposals and decisions in the year 2021 for the DFG funding programme Open Access Publication Funding).
3. Projekt DEAL's transformative agreements address publishers that are largely irrelevant for media studies (except for Springer's book division). This in turn ties up funds, which leads in turn to disadvantages for the media studies publication culture because of the reallocation of budget funds at university libraries.
4. The aforementioned three points are accompanied by the fact that there are no – or hardly any – adequate funding opportunities for open access in media studies. Therefore, it must be noted that the existing funding instruments of the open access transformation fail to recognise the particularities of the media studies publication culture, as they are geared primarily towards the SMT disciplines (as is open science in general). This is particularly regrettable because – as implied below – a great impact on the open access transformation of media studies can sometimes be achieved with comparatively small sums of money.

For these reasons, a readjustment of the current open access funding strategies is urgently needed. It is not just a matter of organising the relationship between APCs and BPCs in a more balanced way and of questioning the spirit and purpose of the DEAL agreements, which ultimately benefit publishing oligopolies. It is also a matter of creating new funding instruments. There is now an active and by no means small scholar-led community in media studies, which mainly operates diamond open access journals. Although this is in line with the ideals expressed in the policies of research funders and science policymakers, there are no funding instruments that support these researchers in an appropriate way. To give one example: Student assistants often play a major role in the editorial management of these journals, but there are no sustainable and reliable funding possibilities that would enable the long-term operation of such journals. Three-year grants are not long-term and reliable, and periodicals that disappear again because long-term funding is lacking are not sustainable. This is even more bewildering when one compares the amount of funding that such projects need with the amount spent on APCs. Nonetheless, it is still easier to get thousands of euros in APCs for a single article than to get the same amount for a student assistant who plays a decisive role in the editorial management of a diamond open access journal.

This is just one example, which is intended to illustrate how new funding instruments can not only be better tailored to the needs of disciplines but also more efficient (and as a rule also more cost-effective). Furthermore, readjustments could include an evaluation of existing new approaches. For example, consortial funding possibilities can be a very promising way of supporting scholar-led open access publishing projects; or exemplary initiatives, such as COPIM, that are trying to rethink community- or scholar-led publishing can be brought into focus. In any case, a diverse, fair, sustainable, and needs-based publishing system is in all our interests and is thus a goal that we should all work together to achieve – within and across disciplines.

Matuszkiewicz, K. (2024). Medienwissenschaft und Open Access – eine Beziehung mit Hindernissen. open-access.network. doi.org/10.64395/6m5qe-7ph47.