"I Don't Tend That Part of My Garden": The Self-Archiving Practices of Arts and Humanities Scholars

In this session, we will report on interviews conducted with scholars in the arts and humanities that explored participants’ approaches to open access publishing, self-archiving, and dissemination of research and creative work, focusing on their engagement with institutional repositories (IRs). While depositing activities ranged considerably among participants, most expressed confusion about copyright and had little motivation for navigating “clunky” IR systems. We will share scholars’ considerations, frustrations, and misconceptions about self-archiving their work in IRs, how it compares to their dissemination practices in disciplinary repositories and academic social networks, and what librarians can take away from their experiences to better support these scholars.