“Europe has seen a significant growth in activity to establish and advance open access (OA) policies over the last decade. However, copyright has been the thorn in the side of many authors, funders, and their institutions who wish to publish OA, since many publisher policies and processes are no longer fit for purpose.
Today, we require the rights to publish, share, adapt, and reuse material for research, educational, or multilingual needs….”
“This report investigates the current landscape of non-legislative policy practices affecting researchers and authors in the authors’ rights and licensing domain. It is an outcome of research conducted by Project Retain led by SPARC Europe, as part of the Knowledge Rights 21 programme. The report concludes with a set of recommendations for institutional policymakers, funders and legislators, and publishers.
It is accompanied by the study dataset.
This project was funded by Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.”
“Open Book Futures (OBF) is a new project working to increase access to valuable research through developing and supporting organisations, tools and practices that will enable both academics and the wider public to make more and better use of books published on an Open Access basis. In particular, the project aims to achieve a step change in how community-owned Open Access book publishing is delivered.
Funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund, the project marks a shift in the ambition, scope and impact of community-owned Open Access book publishing. It will significantly increase and improve the quantity, discoverability, preservation and accessibility of academic content freely and easily available to all.
This will be done by building the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources that are needed to deliver a future for Open Access books, led not by large commercial operations but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries.
This includes expanding the work of the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to Open Access publishing initiatives, as well as the Thoth metadata management platform; the Opening the Future revenue model, piloted with Central European University Press and Liverpool University Press; and the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium….”
“Project TARA is supported by a generous three-year grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. It will help DORA identify, understand, and make visible the criteria and standards universities use to make hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. This information will be used to create resources and practical guidance on research assessment reform for academic and scholarly institutions.”
“The MIT Press today announced that it has received a $10 million gift from Arcadia—a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge—to establish the Arcadia Open Access Fund. The new fund will support the MIT Press’s ground-breaking efforts to publish open access books and journals in fields ranging from science and technology to the social sciences, arts, and humanities. It will also help the MIT Press continue to develop tools, models, and resources that make scholarship more accessible to researchers and other readers around the world. “We are incredibly grateful to Arcadia for this generous gift,” said Amy Brand, Director and Publisher of the MIT Press. “The new endowment makes it possible for the MIT Press to build on and sustain its influential publishing programs. With this enduring support for open books and journals, we can use our power as an academic publisher to expand public understanding of scholarship and science and to democratize participation in research.” Arcadia is providing an outright endowment gift of $5 million, as well as a $5 million “challenge” gift to incentivize other funders by matching their support of MIT’s open publishing activities….”
“ACLS) today announced its inaugural ACLS Open Access Book Prize for authors and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award for publishers at the organization’s Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. ACLS is launching these prizes to expand free and open access to scholarly books in the humanities – removing obstacles to ensure that students, instructors, librarians, and anyone in the world can access important research and information on literature, history, music, art, and other related fields. The awards are made possible by a generous grant from Arcadia.
Expanding access to high-quality academic research books that focus on the human experience – past, present, and future – can help democratize and improve education. Open access publishing brings scholarly material to all people regardless of race, gender, or class, including teachers and students who cannot afford to purchase books and do not have access to major research libraries. This is especially important as the rising costs of education and expansion of student debt has caused society to lose faith in higher education….”
by Lucy Barnes
This is a mirror of a post originally published on the OASPA blog: Lucy Barnes, ‘Guest post – COPIM and community-led infrastructures for open access books: where are we now and what’s next?’, OASPA blog, 11 April 2023
Since November 2019, the COPIM project has been building community-led systems and infrastructures to support and develop open access (OA) book publishing. We’ve focused particularly on how to enable smaller and medium-sized presses to thrive in an open access world, following the principle of ‘Scaling Small’: that publishing communities can grow their capacity to publish open access books through intentional collaboration and mutual support, fostering resilience and bibliodiversity through cooperation and knowledge-sharing rather than individual initiatives seeking to grow larger at the expense of ‘competitors’.
Our initial period of funding, generously given by the Research England Development Fund and Arcadia, is now coming to an end, so we wanted to share: what have we built, how can publishers use it, and what comes next?
“Open Book Publishers (OBP) is delighted to announce that we are part of a diverse international team leading a new open infrastructure initiative, Open Book Futures (OBF), to significantly advance the systems that support community-owned Open Access (OA) book publishing.
Funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund and led by Lancaster University, Open Book Futures will build on the pioneering work of the COPIM project, in which OBP has been a key partner. This will involve a significant expansion of key COPIM infrastructures built by OBP developers Javier Arias and Ross Higman: the Thoth metadata management platform and the forthcoming Thoth Archiving Network. It will also include the development of technical protocols and infrastructure to enable presses to better integrate accessibility requirements into their workflows….”
The Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is delighted that Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund are supporting a new initiative that will build on the pioneering work of the COPIM project.
The Open Book Futures project (OBF), led by Lancaster University, will significantly expand key infrastructures created by COPIM to achieve a step change in how community-owned Open Access (OA) book publishing is delivered.
Open Book Futures will follow the principles of ‘Scaling Small’ that guided the work of the COPIM project, further developing the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources that are needed to deliver a future for Open Access books led not by large commercial operations, but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries.
Among its activities, OBF will deepen and accelerate the work of:
the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to small- and medium-sized OA publishing initiatives;
the Thoth metadata management and dissemination platform;
the Opening the Future revenue model;
the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium;
the forthcoming Thoth Archiving Network.
Open Book Futures, which will run from 1 May 2023 to 30 April 2026, will increase COPIM’s long-term impact and ensure that a wide range of voices have the opportunity to shape the future of open access book publishing. In order to amplify bibliodiverse and equitable community-led approaches to OA book publishing, OBF aims not just to strengthen existing networks in the UK and North America, but also to engage further with publishers, universities, and infrastructure providers in a diverse set of national and linguistic contexts, including Africa, Australasia, Continental Europe, and Latin America.
With that in mind, OBF will reunite many of the COPIM project partners, including Birkbeck, University of London, Coventry University, Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), Jisc, Loughborough University, Open Book Collective (OBC), Open Book Publishers (OBP), punctum books, Thoth, and Trinity College, Cambridge University, and they will also be joined by a wide range of new partners including Continental Platform/University of Cape Town, the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), the Digital Preservation Coalition, the Educopia Institute, Knowledge Futures, Lyrasis, OPERAS, Public Knowledge Project (PKP), Research Libraries UK (RLUK), SciELO Books, Scottish Universities Press/SCURL, and SPARC Europe. The project is also supported by Lancaster University Library.
[…]
A new project that works to increase access to valuable research is to receive more than £5.8 million in funding.
Led by Lancaster University, the Open Book Futures (OBF) project will develop and support organisations, tools and practices that enable both academics and the wider public to make more and better use of books published on an Open Access basis. Open Access books can be accessed and used online free of charge.
In particular, the project, which is also supported by Lancaster University Library, aims to achieve a step change in how community-owned Open Access book publishing is delivered.
Funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund, the project marks a shift in the ambition, scope and impact of community-owned Open Access book publishing.
It will significantly increase and improve the quantity, discoverability, preservation and accessibility of academic content freely and easily available to all.
This will be done by building the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources that are needed to deliver a future for Open Access books led not by large commercial operations but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries.
This includes expanding the work of the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to Open Access publishing initiatives, as well as the Thoth metadata management platform, the Opening the Future revenue model and the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium.
Open Book Futures, due to start on May 1st, builds on the pioneering work of the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. COPIM, a strategic international partnership led by Coventry University, began the work of establishing the key open, community-led solutions required to address the barriers to the wider impact of Open Access books.
[…]
We are thrilled to announce the launch today of the Open Book Collective! Visit our site to see our members such as Open Book Publishers, the Directory of Open Acccess Books (DOAB), OAPEN, punctum books, mediastudies.press, meson press, Mattering Press, African Minds, and Thoth.
Librarians can see Open Access initiatives, presses & open infrastructure projects, that can be supported via annual memberships that will help these groups to thrive & also contribute to a fund to assist these groups in further developing & bettering their operations.
Supporting members of the OBC contribute to a more durable ecosystem for the long-term sustainability of OA publishers & open infrastructure developers so critical to Bibliodiversity.
Open Book Collective has been developed by the COPIM project and ScholarLed, generously funded by the Research England Development Fund and Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin (grant number 4192).
Visit our website here: http://openbookcollective.org and send any questions or comments to us at: info@openbookcollective.org
“Open Syllabus is pleased to announce the receipt of a $1,750,000, 2-year grant from the Arcadia Fund.
The Arcadia grant will enable Open Syllabus to continue to expand the boundaries of open education by developing new ways to understand and navigate the curriculum in higher education. The grant will support work on course transfer and learning outcomes, as well as a range of new tools designed to make OS data a more powerful resource for students, faculty, and lifelong learners….”
“COMMUNIA has been awarded an eight-year grant of three million euros by Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. This opens a new chapter in the history of the organisation, which was founded in 2011 as an EU thematic network and has been one of the most active civil society organisations on European copyright reform in recent years.
Arcadia’s open access programme supports work that improves access to human knowledge and helps make information free for anyone. With Arcadia’s generous support, COMMUNIA will expand its policy work for copyright reform and initiate strategic litigation, aiming to establish itself as the principal advocacy organisation for the Public Domain in Europe….”
“The Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM) awarded $3.6 Million grant from Arcadia – a charitable of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin – for Redalyc and AmeliCA. The project’s purpose is to reinforce, expand and strengthen the current efforts of this initiatives so to advance diamond Open Access within a framework of science as a global public good through the consolidation of an Open Infrastructure for capacity building, visibility, discoverability, quality assurance, technological development and sustainability of diamond OA publishing that yields more equitable and inclusive participation in the communication of science.”
“The programme Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) is focused on bringing about changes in legislation and practice across Europe that will strengthen the right of all to knowledge. It is built on a conviction that knowledge is essential for education, innovation and cultural participation, and that everyone should have the possibility – in particular through libraries, archives and digitally – to access and use it….