Each year, Open Access Week celebrates the work of authors and publishers who make their works available for free and open circulation. From its origins, The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota has worked to encourage open access publishing across its entire catalogue and seek out collaboration with likeminded authors and publishers.

For Open Access Week 2017, we are very pleased to announce our collaboration with Epoiesen: A Journal for Creative Engagement in History and Archaeology founded and edited by Shawn Graham at Carleton University in Ottawa. Epoiesen urges its contributors to apply a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license to their works, but also recognizes that each author has the right to set the terms for their contributions.

The journal seeks “to document and valorize the scholarly creativity that underpins our representations of the past. Epoiesen is therefore a kind of witness to the implied knowledge of archaeologists, historians, and other professionals, academics and artists as it intersects with the sources about the past. It encourages engagement with the past that reaches beyond our traditional audience (ourselves).”

Recent work in Epoiesen has included video games that explore academic publishing and the destruction of the past, thoughtful, experimental critiques of a weaponized social media, and transmedia engagement with archaeological knowledge making. 

The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota will publish an Epoiesen annual as a downloadable document and in a print-on-demand format for readers and institutions who prefer paper and to make the journal more portable and open to standard citation practices. 

Graham remarks, “The excitement and interest in Epoiesen has been gratifying. Clearly, there’s an appetite for engaging with history and archaeology that traditional venues are able to fill! I’m grateful to the Digital Press for this tremendous vote of confidence and look forward to working with them as Epoiesen continues to grow.”

William Caraher, the founder and publisher of The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, adds, “Working with someone like Shawn, the remarkably diverse content of his journal, and the outstanding editorial board and authors is a great opportunity to expand what the Digital Press does and to learn from a truly innovative project and team. Epoiesen is a great fit for The Digital Press in that it brings together open, academic publishing with new ways of thinking about archaeology, materiality, and the past.”