Category Archives: oa.oabn
Deciding on an Open Access Book Publishing Platform: Ubiquity and the Start of Open Access Book Publishing at the University of Westminster Press – Open Access Books Network
Welcome to a series of blog posts by publishers, talking about the platforms they use to publish their open access books. In these posts, a range of different presses tell us what platform they use, why they chose it, and how it fits (or occasionally doesn’t quite fit) their work.
The second post in the series is by Andrew Lockett, who was Press Manager at the University of Westminster Press from February 2015 to August 2021. He is a freelance publishing consultant and editor working across trade and academic sectors including via Reedsy, for non-fiction and fiction book titles. Most recently he guest edited a special issue of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture on ‘Publishing the Internet and the Commons’ and has written several journal articles on publishing and media topics.
Using Fulcrum at Amherst College Press | Open Access Books Network
Welcome to a series of blog posts by publishers, talking about the platforms they use to publish their open access books. In these posts, a range of different presses tell us what platform they use, why they chose it, and how it fits (or occasionally doesn’t quite fit) their work.
The fourth post in the series is by Beth M. Bouloukos, director of Amherst College Press. Beth reflects on the Press’s experiences of using Fulcrum to publish open access books at Amherst College Press.
Webinar #2 on collective funding models for open access books, 19 July 2023, 2pm (BST) | Jisc
This is the second event in the series where library colleagues will discuss how their libraries are adapting policies and practices to meet the challenges of supporting open monographs.
In August 2021, UKRI launched a new open access policy, which for the first time includes a provision for long-form scholarly works including monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024. In preparation for policy implementation, Jisc and the Open Access Books Network have come together to hold a series of online events which will focus on different publishing models for Open Access books. This online event is the second in the series, and in it, three library colleagues working in scholarly communications and open research will speak about how their libraries are at various stages of success in adapting policies and practices to meet the challenges of supporting open monographs.
Setting up an Institutional Open Press: First steps | Open Access Books Network
Welcome to a series of blog posts by publishers, talking about the platforms they use to publish their open access books. In these posts, a range of different presses tell us what platform they use, why they chose it, and how it fits (or occasionally doesn’t quite fit) their work.
The second post in the series is by Suzanne Tatham, Associate Director, University of Sussex Library, and Dr Catrina Hey, Open Publishing Supervisor, University of Sussex Library. The University of Sussex is coming to the end of a pilot project to create an open textbook, a step on the road to developing an open university press. Suzanne and Catrina discuss using Pressbooks to support this pilot.
OABN: Towards Meaningful Engagement with Indigenous Knowledge: Authorship, Ownership, and Other Challenges
Event registration form with no other information.
OPERAS on Twitter: “#PALOMERA project: Publishers & Librarians, share your thoughts on #OpenAccess book funder policies.”
Organised by the Open Access Books Network, the PALOMERA series next 2 online events call all publishers and libraries to share their concerns and challenges with OA book funder policies. Sign up for the event that works best for you:
Tuesday 16 May, 3pm BST / 4pm CEST / 10am EDT: a 90-minute PALOMERA Series engagement session with Publishers. Sign up here https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsdeuurj4oHtGSlWk-YCxcq9go37C84LQ4#/registration
Wednesday 17 May, 3pm BST / 4pm CEST / 10am EDT: a 90-minute PALOMERA Series engagement session with Librarians. Sign up here https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZctceyhrDgtGNd3yn-IkLsiQp9YO8Q8gkrl#/registration
Open Chat Series: How to Advocate for Innovative Open Access Book Publishing? 29 March 2023 from 11:30-12:30 CEST | OPERAS
How-to-Advocacy
An Open Chat Series by the OPERAS Special Interest Group (SIG) “Advocacy”
Do the humanities and social sciences need (more) advocacy?
Why is advocacy crucial for forging open scholarly communication?
What can you do for more openness in the humanities and social sciences?
OPERAS Advocacy Special Interest Group opens up Open Chat Series. With experts in advocacy and communications, researchers, publishers and other members of the social sciences and humanities community we will:
discuss current trends in open scholarly communication,
look for innovative solutions and tools for publishers, researchers and scholarly institutions,
share best practices in open digital scholarly publications.
On 29 March 2023 from 11:30-12:30 CEST we will continue our Open Chat Series “How-to-Advocacy” and start a chat with Lucy Barnes from the Open Access Books Network. Together with our guest speaker and the audience, we will discuss the advocacy goals and challenges for the social sciences and humanities community – and how to advocate for innovative Open Access book publishing. The discussion will be moderated by the OPERAS Special Interest Group “Advocacy”.
OABN: Meet the Open Book Collective (OBC)
Registration page for an upcoming event. No further detail on the page.
OPERAS on Twitter: “Engage with PALOMERA on the 28th of March during a panel discussion organised by @oabooksnetwork! Info: https://t.co/wXOc5dJsdQ.”
Join this panel discussion with Q&A to find out more about the recently launched PALOMERA project funded by Horizon Europe as part of their call: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System. The project seeks to understand why so few open access funder policies include books, and to provide actionable recommendations to change this.
PALOMERA & The OABN
Registration page for an event. No description.
Engage with PALOMERA via the OABN! Launch event March 28, 2023, 4pm (CEST) | Open Access Books Network
The Open Access Books Network (OABN) is working with the PALOMERA project, a two-year initiative funded by HORIZON Europe that seeks to investigate why so few Open Access (OA) funder policies include OA books, and to provide actionable recommendations to change this.
We will be hosting a PALOMERA Series of events that will provide a forum for anyone interested in open access book publishing to:
engage with PALOMERA via the OABN,
contribute your knowledge and expertise as the project progresses,
offer feedback to help shape PALOMERA’s outputs and recommendations.
We want to gather a broad group of representatives from different stakeholders in open access book publishing, as we did for our Voices from the OA Book Community workshop series in 2021, and enable you to contribute to the PALOMERA project via the PALOMERA Series.
Launch event
We will host a launch event on Tuesday 28 March at 3pm BST / 4pm CEST where you will hear from some of the project’s leaders, including Niels Stern (OAPEN/DOAB) and Ursula Rabar (OPERAS/OAeBU). You will have the opportunity to ask questions about the project and to let us know the best ways for you to engage with PALOMERA. The event will also be recorded.
Sign up for the launch event: it’s free and everyone is welcome!
Please also share the link with anyone who might be interested.
Video: Open Access Usage Data: Present Knowledge, Future Developments | Open Access Book Network @ Youtube
Christina Drummond (Executive Director of the OA eBook Usage Data Trust) and Lucy Montgomery (Professor of Knowledge Innovation at Curtin University and co-lead of the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative) discuss the OAeBU Usage Data Trust project and the new developments its work will take over the coming years.
Lucy Montgomery’s slides are available here: https://zenodo.org/record/7309149
‘Lessons from Project Gutenberg: OG OA’ | Open Access Books Network
Eric will be speaking on Thursday 17th November at 3pm GMT about his work with Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders, and how these experiences have informed his perspectives on the early days of open access and more recent developments in OA books. Sign up here!
You’ve probably heard of “Green” OA (Open Access), “Gold” OA, maybe something new-fangled like “Diamond” or “Quartz” OA. But you probably haven’t heard of “OG OA, and I’m hear to tell you about it. New-fangled it’s definitely not! OG is short for “Original Gangster”, not “Old Guy”, athough…
“Original Gangster” in modern slang refers to someone who is “Old School”. An OG was cool before cool even existed, and has overcome hurdles the young kids wouldn’t ever understand. The OG has such original style that who even cares about fashion or trends?
The OG of Open Access is Project Gutenberg. Before the Kindle, before the web, before the PC, Michael Hart started typing in “texts” and making them available online. For free, though you had to pay for the phone time. The original ebook was never meant to be the clunky reader gadgets that corporations were trying to sell, it was bits you could get online. Project Gutenberg invented the ebook as we know it.
Fifty one years later, Project Gutenberg is going stronger than ever. This month, it will post its 70,000th publication, most of them public domain, and all of them free. Every year, readers download 50 million ebooks from Project Gutenberg, making it second only to Amazon in terms of ebooks delivered. More than one billion-dollar company has gotten its start by doing interesting things with text from Project Gutenberg.
News from the Open Access Books Network: forthcoming events, a new look for the website and more | Open Access Books Network
September is over, the leaves are turning and the OABN coordinators can no longer pretend that it’s still summer – so we write with updates and announcements for the autumn! These include forthcoming events on OA usage data, the Gutenberg Project, and OA books on climate change, as well as a refreshed website to better showcase the resources that the OABN has to offer, and plans for a forthcoming blog post series on the platforms publishers use to share their OA books.
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