Opening the Unexpected: enabling experimentation through open access and open source

Description

Openness is often considered a cornerstone of contemporary research and publishing practices. However openness is often underappreciated as a means of facilitating experimentation. Experimental research work cannot happen in a closed ecosystem where other's research cannot be accessed, data cannot be shared, and the serendipity of discovery cannot be produced. Open research practices allows for experimental research and publishing by making the software tools and information free and accessible to all even those outside wealthy institutions and creates the space for mediation outside the immediacy of neoliberal academia's fast-paced, commercial publish-or-perish systems.

In this paper, we discuss how open research enables experimentation with a focus on Humanities and Social Sciences. Through our work in Copim's Open Book Futures project (Experimental Publishing Group, Open Book Collective) and the Radical Librarians Collective (RLC), we have seen first-hand various ways that open research has led to innovative experimentation in infrastructures, in research, and in open access publishing. RLC's autonomous, nascent experimentation and DIY explorations with open infrastructures for political organising and community in ways that opened the space for more, inclusive, secure, experimental research and open access publications around radical librarianship. These experiences have proved foundational to more organised and stable development and implementations of such approaches to openness that have been nurtured across the Copim community.

From the development and delivery of radical collective funding models supporting open access publishing to experimental book publishing pilot projects, we highlight some of the ways in which open access publishing and open source software facilitate experimental research. Copim's Experimental Publishing Compendium provides a guide to software tools and open access experimental books that help other researchers to experiment with their work and research. Through exploring these open research initiatives, we will explore the ways that open research produces the conditions for experimentation in Humanities and Social Sciences and how an under-appreciated benefit of open access and open source is opening up the space in which the unexpected can take place.

Period	4 Sept 2025
Event title	Sheffield Open Fest 2025: Open Research and EEDI
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	International