JMU Joins the Humanities Commons 

Posted April 8, 2024 in JMU Libraries News

We have great news for faculty who work in the humanities and humanistic social sciences! JMU recently joined the Humanities Commons, where you can find open-access scholarship and teaching materials, make interdisciplinary connections, and share your work with an international audience.  

By joining the Humanities Commons, JMU Libraries is helping ensure the sustainability of this scholarly network and providing you with access to its valuable resources. We especially encourage you to explore the Commons Open Repository Exchange (CORE), a digital repository for syllabi, conference papers, data sets, published articles, and other scholarly communications. 

What is the Humanities Commons? The Humanities Commons (HCommons) is an open-access, open-source, nonprofit scholarly network and repository for the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Its purpose is to cultivate open spaces for diverse communities to connect, create, share, and experiment, in the service of transforming global knowledge systems together. It started as a pilot project at the Modern Language Association. HCommons launched in 2016, and JMU joined as a sustaining member in 2024, thanks to the leadership and work of the JMU Libraries’ Collection Administration and Scholarly Communications Strategies departments. 

Why did JMU join? Yasmeen Shorish, JMU Libraries’ Director of Scholarly Communications Strategies, explains, “Investing in academy-operated infrastructure aligns with our values and mission: providing open, inclusive, and equitable access — and opportunities for creation — to all creators and their audience. Membership with HCommons will ensure representation of institutions like JMU in community-building and governance activities that are crucial to sustainable and vibrant scholarly communications.”