Humanities Commons

What Humanities Commons does

Humanities Commons, also operating as Knowledge Commons (KC), is a non-profit, open-access scholarly network hosted by Michigan State University. It serves individual scholars, researchers, practitioners, teachers, and students across the humanities and adjacent disciplines, along with scholarly societies and educational institutions that participate as network sponsors. The platform was launched in November 2016 as an umbrella network extending MLA Commons (founded 2013), and it operates community-owned infrastructure designed to resist the commercialization of academic work.

The platform is built on WordPress using the Commons In A Box (CBOX) open-source framework with BuddyPress for social networking features. Core products include KCWorks/CORE, a library-quality open-access repository holding 39,000+ scholarly works with DOI minting and metadata indexing by Google Scholar, CORE (UK), and SHARE; the main Knowledge Commons social network with 75,000+ members and 1,500+ groups; WordPress-based site and blog creation tools; group collaboration features including collaborative Docs; private messaging; and an official Mastodon/Fediverse instance at hcommons.social. Authentication supports Google, ORCID, Twitter, and InCommon/eduGAIN institutional identity providers, and the platform is GDPR, COPPA, and CCPA compliant.

The business model is non-commercial and free to individual users. Revenue is generated through institutional membership fees from a coalition of Participating Organizations (MLA, ARLIS/NA, AUPresses, HASTAC, SAH, STEMEd+, and MSU), individual donations via the KC Champions program, general contributions, and funded project contributions. The go-to-market motion is community-led, relying on partner societies to onboard their members and on organic content, newsletter, and conference presence to attract new individual scholars.

Name

Humanities Commons

Legal name

Michigan State University

Website

https://hcommons.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

251–500 employees

Short description

Humanities Commons is a non-profit, open-access scholarly network hosted by Michigan State University, serving 75,000+ researchers, educators, and students across the humanities and adjacent disciplines through a WordPress-based platform offering open repositories, group collaboration, and professional networking.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Scholarly Communication Platform

NAICS

Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192), Libraries and Archives (51921), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519)

SIC

Services-Educational Services (8200), Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721), Books: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2731)

akta.pro primary industry

Open Access Scholarly Journals & Monographs (EDAGAFAJ)

akta.pro secondary industries

Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAI), Digital Archives, Libraries & Institutional Access Platforms (MPAJAMAJ)

Keywords

• Academic social network
• Open access repository
• Scholarly communication platform
• Open source publishing
• Digital scholarship infrastructure

Headquarters

HQ city

Lansing

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Institutional Membership: Scholarly societies and institutions pay to participate in the Knowledge Commons network. Financial contributions grant organizations the ability to host networks for their communities and governance participation.
2. KC Champions Program: Individual user donations and contributions through the KC Champions program. Monthly newsletter highlights champion supporters.
3. Donations and Contributions: General donations from individuals and organizations to support the community-owned platform. CrowdPower campaign for Knowledge Commons.
4. Funded Project Contributions: Contributions from projects that receive external funding and use the Commons infrastructure.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Humanities Commons (also known as Knowledge Commons) operates an open-access, open-source scholarly network hosted by Michigan State University that provides a Commons Open Repository Exchange (KCWorks/CORE) for depositing and discovering scholarship with DOI minting, WordPress-based personal and group websites, member directories and discussion forums, group collaboration spaces, and a Fediverse (Mastodon) instance. The platform is free for individual scholars and is sustained through institutional memberships from scholarly societies and donations.

Product overview

Humanities Commons (also called Knowledge Commons) is an open-access, open-source scholarly network hosted by Michigan State University. The platform provides a suite of interconnected products: (1) KCWorks/CORE (Commons Open Repository Exchange) as the central open-access repository for depositing and discovering scholarly works; (2) Community features including member directories, groups, and discussion forums for scholarly collaboration; (3) WordPress-based site/blog creation tools for individual and group websites; and (4) private messaging and collaboration tools. The platform is built on Commons In A Box and serves as an umbrella network with participating organizations hosting their own specialized commons spaces.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• MSU Commons: Institution-based node providing space for Michigan State University faculty, staff, and students to build a digital presence; serves as MSU's institutional repository.
• MLA Commons
• HASTAC
• ARLIS/NA Commons
• UP Commons
• SAH Commons
• STEMEd+ Commons

Products and services

• KCWorks (Commons Open Repository Exchange / CORE) Library-quality open-access repository enabling scholars to deposit, share, discover, and archive scholarly outputs including articles, syllabi, datasets, and multimedia. Mints DOIs and provides permanent, citable metadata indexed with Google Scholar and CORE.
• Knowledge Commons Network Central social networking platform providing member directories, group creation and management, activity feeds, and discussion forums for scholarly collaboration across disciplines; serves 75,000+ members.
• WordPress Sites and Blogs WordPress-based website and blog creation tools allowing users to build personal or group sites with customizable themes, plugins, and privacy settings for classes, conferences, and professional portfolios.
• hcommons.social (Fediverse Mastodon Instance) Standalone Mastodon server instance enabling Knowledge Commons members to engage on the Fediverse decentralized social network while maintaining an academic identity aligned with the Commons.
• Participating Organization Commons Spaces Branded commons nodes hosted within the network for participating scholarly organizations (MLA, ARLIS/NA, SAH, HASTAC, AUPresses, MSU, STEMEd+), each providing a tailored scholarly community for their members.

Quantifiable outcome

• 39,000+ works in open repository growing daily
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers7 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration11 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• MLA (Modern Language Association)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMLA Commons provides an online collaborative workspace for MLA members, the leading advocate for language and literature scholarship. MLA publishes humanities research and serves as a clearinghouse for professional resources. MLA is a founding member organization hosting its dedicated network node.
• ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerARLIS/NA Commons provides a scholarly network for members of the Art Libraries Society of North America, founded in 1972. The society is devoted to fostering excellence in art and design librarianship and image management, serving a broad audience for education, scholarship, and artistic practice.
• HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerOne of the world's first and oldest academic networks with over 18,000 members from 400+ affiliate organizations. Formed in 2002-03, HASTAC hosts Digital Fridays (Commons Fridays), collaborative reading groups, book reviews, and skills training opportunities in a mutually-supportive environment.
• MSU (Michigan State University)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMSU Commons is the first institution-based node on the Commons network, providing space for MSU faculty, staff, and students to build a digital presence and share work. MSU hosts the entire Knowledge Commons network and serves as the institutional sponsor.
• SAH (Society of Architectural Historians)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerSAH Commons is the scholarly network for members of the Society of Architectural Historians, serving a network of local, national, and international institutions and individuals who focus on the history of the built environment.
• AUPresses (Association of University Presses)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerUP Commons provides a space for connection and collaboration among members connected with the Association of University Presses. AUPresses advances the essential role of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge.
• STEMEd+coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerSTEMEd+ Commons brings together STEM+ education communities to collectively build metadata standards, normative practices, and processes to ensure STEM+ education research has innovative impacts for all people in all communities.
• Commons In A BoxcoreTechnology or IntegrationOpen-source software platform (CBOX) that powers Knowledge Commons. Built on WordPress with BuddyPress for social networking features.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• ORCID: ORCID is a non-profit persistent identifier registry for researchers that Humanities Commons integrates with for authentication and profile linking. It is broadly comparable as non-profit, infrastructure-layer academic identity service, but specialized in identifiers rather than full publishing/networking.
• JSTOR: JSTOR is a large-scale digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources operated by ITHAKA. Overlaps with Humanities Commons on providing discovery and access to scholarly humanities content, though JSTOR focuses on licensed/closed-access digitization rather than open scholarly networks.

Direct peers

• arXiv: arXiv is a community-governed open-access preprint repository operated by Cornell University, structurally identical in model to Humanities Commons (institutional hosting, open access, governed by participating communities). It serves as the STEM analog that HC consciously mirrors for humanities disciplines.
• Academia.edu: Academia.edu is the largest venture-backed academic social network, sharing with Humanities Commons the same core proposition: scholars upload papers, build profiles, and form communities. It is the most direct competitor in humanities and adjacent disciplines where Humanities Commons also operates.
• ResearchGate: ResearchGate is a venture-backed academic social network and repository serving researchers globally, overlapping with Humanities Commons on profile creation, paper hosting, and group functionality. Both target individual scholars seeking open-sharing alternatives to traditional paywalled journals.
• Center for Open Science (OSF): The Open Science Framework (OSF) is a non-profit open-source project management and collaboration platform for researchers across disciplines. It is directly comparable to Humanities Commons as a community-built alternative to commercial research platforms, with overlapping open-repository, preprint, and collaboration features.
• SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH NETWORK (SSRN): SSRN is an open-access preprint and working paper repository for social sciences and humanities, operating as Humanities Commons' closest analog in the open-access scholarly repository space. Now owned by Elsevier, SSRN shares with HC the open repository and DOI-minting model.

Emerging players

• OpenReview: OpenReview is an open peer-review and publishing platform used by major ML/AI conferences and increasingly humanities-adjacent venues. It shares with Humanities Commons the open-access scholarly publishing mission and CC-licensed defaults, though focused on conference review workflows.
• Zotero: Zotero is a non-profit, open-source reference management tool built by an academic community and a Roy Rosenzweig Center initiative. Shares with Humanities Commons the non-profit, community-owned, open-source academic infrastructure ethos, though focused on citation management.
• CORE (UK): CORE is a global aggregator service that harvests and indexes open-access research outputs from repositories worldwide, including metadata from Humanities Commons. It is comparable as an open-access discovery layer for scholarly works, though operates as an aggregator rather than a social/publishing platform.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/humcommons
• GitHubgithub.com/MESH-Research
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/acroarte
• Facebookfacebook.com/humanitiescommons

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Humanities Commons