Tate Papers was established during a period of rapid acceleration and experimentation in museums and digital publishing in the United Kingdom. Between 1997 and 2007 the Labour government doubled funding for the arts and introduced free admission to public museums. The opening of Tate Modern in 2000 was symbolic of a broader shift in cultural policy towards access, globalism and multiculturalism, with the then Prime Minister Tony Blair declaring the UK as ‘the world’s creative hub’.1 Alongside its physical expansion, Tate invested heavily in digital technology, with the launch of Tate Online.2 Meanwhile, the open access movement was catching on in publishing. Tate Papers was launched in June 2004, and one month later the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee advocated for publicly funded research to be widely available, and free at the point of access.3 Digitisation of academic publications, already well established in the sciences, would be the solution.
In the early 2000s online journals and zines emerged as key players in the ‘democratisation of knowledge’ championed by open data movements and museums: they are cheaper to produce than print editions and do not rely on established logistical networks. Initially, however, authors were wary of publishing online, and for good reason. The 2004 House of Commons committee heard concerns that, due to the open nature of the internet, ‘availability may take precedence over quality’, so that the proliferation of information would be a ‘watering down’ rather than an expansion of knowledge. Two years earlier, the writer Binyavanga Wainana was refused the Caine Prize for African Writing on the basis that the short story he submitted had been published online.4 Wainana’s response to the judges highlights how hierarchical distinctions between print and digital reinforced structural barriers to access: ‘If in the last twelve months, not a single [printed] collection of writing has been published in Africa, where do you think you’re going to get submissions from?’ The format of the prize was overturned and Wainana went on to win, affirming for many the internet as a place of possibility for those working with limited resources. Rather than ‘watering down’ our knowledge ecology, this new means of production promised to open networks and challenge established hierarchies.
Open access publication has been a requirement for publicly funded research in the UK since 2013, transforming the ways knowledge is produced and circulated.5 One of the key concerns in 2004 was over who would pay for open access. At first roundly rejected by open data advocates, the ‘pay-to-publish’ model, whereby authors (or their universities) pay fees to publishers to make their articles available for free, is now widespread.6 Of the £3.5 bn sales in UK academic publishing in 2022, £2.6 bn came from digital channels, and £2.4 bn from academic journals alone.7 With profits for some of the largest publishers as high as 40% and authors facing rising fees, there is growing concern over barriers to researchers, siphoning of public funding to private companies, as well as the rise of ‘junk journals’ or ‘predatory publishers’ who charge authors to publish their work on disreputable websites.8 Meanwhile the spread of AI-generated content and misinformation online means peer-reviewed research is increasingly valuable. Over the last eighteen months, academic publishers have signed multi-million-pound deals licensing their content to train generative AI models, without requiring permission from their authors.9 Twenty years on from launching Tate Papers, we are returning to discussions of a turning point in knowledge production.
Tate Papers is what is termed a ‘Diamond Open Access’ journal: one that does not charge fees to either authors or readers. These journals are not-for-profit and tend to be produced by experts and practitioners themselves – in our case, artists, academics and art workers – over commercial publishers. More closely aligned with the ideals of the open data movement in the early 2000s, of access, equity and diversity in thought, the Diamond model also reflects Tate’s role as a public institution. An Independent Research Organisation (IRO) since 2006, Tate is eligible to receive public funding to conduct research for the public benefit. And while Tate Papers contributes to the institution’s statutory mission ‘to promote the public’s enjoyment and understanding of British art’, it is first a civic space for analysis, debate and critical reflection.10 Although many of our articles explore Tate’s collection, they also cover subjects far beyond it, and are independently written and reviewed, nurturing the wider knowledge ecology that sustains museums and galleries.
The journal’s founding purpose was ‘to reflect the breadth and diversity of research undertaken at, and in association with, Tate’.11 For twenty years this has been most visible in the journal’s emphasis on practice – the making and doing of art and museum work.12 And it has made the inner workings of the museum transparent, including visitor feedback on exhibitions and internal strategy documents.13 The current issue of Tate Papers builds upon this broad mission, but marks a shift in approach. With it, we are moving towards a model of expanded publishing, referring both to the ways we make things public, as we welcome video, sound and artworks alongside traditional academic articles; and to the range of contributors, as we develop ways to support researchers working outside museum or academic structures.
Reflecting on the journal’s life so far, we have redrawn our editorial policies and addressed how funding and communications impact access to the research we share. Returning to a regular biannual model, we are introducing themed special issues, because engaging with topics, knowledge and expertise that have been marginalised from the museum requires targeted support and care as well as intention. Our first call for papers seeks contributions around matrilineage, exploring embodied and ancestral knowledge primarily passed on through women.
The articles in the current issue explore how histories are built and how they are sustained, questioned or overlooked by institutions. Two groupings of articles emerge from recent research projects. The Archive is a Gathering Place (2024) brings together videos and artist commissions to consider the future of archives that are collectively owned or created. The second group includes art historical case studies and artist interviews from Transforming Collections (2021–4), a project exploring how museum data and interpretation contributes to structural inequalities and biases in national collections. In her introduction to the series, the project’s lead, susan pui san lok, sets out the ‘detailed research needed to inform institutional change, and the careful human-driven development essential to any attempt to mobilise machine learning in museums’.
Alongside these projects, the Tate gallery guide Janet Couloute shares essays, audio recordings and interviews with a make-up artist that explore how tropes of whiteness are constructed in early modern portraits. Finally, Jon King presents new archival research on Ethel Walker’s self-fashioning in the male-dominated art world of early twentieth-century London.
For Tate, establishing Tate Papers in 2004 was at once forward thinking and a cornerstone in its public mission. As we look back on the ways open access publishing has transformed our research landscape, the articles in this issue impress upon us the need for critical reflection and continued debate. In her video for this issue, the author and campaigner for marginalised voices on the internet Anasuya Sengupta reminds us that technology ‘is not the great disruptor. It’s in fact a clear and linear path from colonialism to capital to tech capital. And to imagine it’s the innovator without challenging the power inherent in it is deeply problematic.’ Deep research and critical analysis of the kind shared by contributors to this issue is essential to a museum’s role in civic life: to build relationships with the past and expand what’s possible in the present through critical thinking, creativity and making public.