Birkbeck plays leading role in project set to increase access of valuable research to the general public — Birkbeck, University of London

“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….”

Opening the Future at CEU Press: an update on progress

“A brief look at our progress so far, since launching our OA funding programme in 2021

Central European University (CEU) Press, in partnership with the COPIM project, are proud to share the first insights into the global reach of open access (OA) titles funded by their Opening the Future (OtF) initiative. This collective subscription model gives libraries access to a selection of the Press’ backlist and uses the membership fees to publish new OA titles to increase readership. A forthcoming report, based on Project MUSE usage data, looks in detail at the usage of these OA books – below we outline a few highlights from the report.

WHAT did we achieve so far?

The model, launched in 2021, has grown its membership continuously and we already have the funding for more than 35 OA titles over the next few years.

HOW did OA book usage grow?

Looking at usage data on the Project MUSE platform between December 2021 and December 2022, we compared the ten OtF-funded OA books to ten similar closed titles. Similar titles were chosen on the basis of close publication dates and subject scope.

Project MUSE host the gated backlist packages as well as the new frontlist OA titles and we can see that the readership of our books has risen substantially with the introduction of OA, which is no surprise. Since 2021 our OA books funded by Opening the Future have been downloaded 36 times more frequently than similar gated titles. 

In fact, for the same time period, the overall download numbers for all CEU Press books on Project MUSE also show not only significant increase in usage across all titles, but more specifically a strong growth in the usage of OA books….”

University of Washington becomes new Opening the Future member at CEU Press and Liverpool University Press

“CEU Press and Liverpool University Press (LUP) are pleased to announce that the library at the University of Washington is a new member of the Opening the Future (OtF) programmes at both publishers. 

The U of Washington library has chosen to sign up to: 

 

At CEU Press: the Library Selection Package, which contains 50 eBooks selected by an independent panel of librarians on the history of the Central and Eastern European region, culture, communism, politics, and transitions to democracy. This package contains a cross-section of books and represents those CEU Press titles that might be of interest to any library across a number of disciplines.

At LUP: the Modern Languages Package which contains 37 eBooks on ‘Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures’ and ‘Liverpool Latin American Studies’, including titles on languages, politics, popular culture, and business.

 

The library will retain access to all of these books with both presses in perpetuity after three years of membership….”

University of Washington becomes new Opening the Future member at CEU Press and Liverpool University Press

“CEU Press and Liverpool University Press (LUP) are pleased to announce that the library at the University of Washington is a new member of the Opening the Future (OtF) programmes at both publishers. 

The U of Washington library has chosen to sign up to: 

 

At CEU Press: the Library Selection Package, which contains 50 eBooks selected by an independent panel of librarians on the history of the Central and Eastern European region, culture, communism, politics, and transitions to democracy. This package contains a cross-section of books and represents those CEU Press titles that might be of interest to any library across a number of disciplines.

At LUP: the Modern Languages Package which contains 37 eBooks on ‘Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures’ and ‘Liverpool Latin American Studies’, including titles on languages, politics, popular culture, and business.

 

The library will retain access to all of these books with both presses in perpetuity after three years of membership….”

How can I persuade my institution to support collective funding for open access books? (Part Two) · Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

“As Sharla Lair at LYRASIS says “The transformation of scholarly publishing happens one investment at a time. You can’t do everything, but you can do something.” In the UK, several libraries (including the Universities of St Andrews, Manchester, Sussex, and Salford, among others) are all implementing innovative strategies to enable ethically-aligned support for OA that mesh with budget constraints. The university KU Leuven has an approach worth studying (more on this below), as does that of Utrecht, Iowa State University, the University of Kansas, Guelph, Temple University, University of California and MIT Library. But even libraries that are not in a position to make strategic overhauls can still agree criteria by which they can start to assess deals. 

Practical approaches – a case study from the library at KU Leuven…

COPIM’s toolkit for running an Opening the Future programme at an academic press · Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

“In spring 2020, COPIM Work Package 3 started work on devising a new revenue model for university presses and open access books. Through a series of fact-finding meetings, workshops and reports the team gathered lots of information on the business models of scholarly presses with the aim of creating a sustainable revenue stream that would allow presses to publish their books openly, without using unaffordable book processing charges.

That research led to us devising and launching an innovative revenue model called Opening the Future in October 2020 with our first partner publisher Central European University (CEU) Press. In essence, it is a library subscription membership programme whereby the press provides term access to portions of their (closed) backlist books at a special price, and then uses the revenue from members’ subscriptions to allow the frontlist to be OA from the date of publication. This model presents a potential route for the mass and sustainable transition to OA of many small-to-mid sized university presses. Liverpool University Press (LUP), joined as our second project partner with their own Opening the Future initiative in June 2021. The programme is proving to be a success and, to date, the two presses have together accrued enough library funding to produce 10+ new OA monographs. Opening the Future continues to grow with both publishers. …”

University of Texas at Austin becomes new Opening the Future subscriber member with CEU Press

“Central European University (CEU) Press are pleased to announce that the library at the University of Texas at Austin is a new subscribing member of their Opening the Future collective OA funding programme. 

The University Library has chosen to sign up to the Library Selection Package containing 50 books selected by an independent panel of librarians. This selection is a cross-section of the other three backlist packages and represents those titles that might be of interest to researchers across a number of disciplines. CEU Press is a leading publisher in the history of communism and transitions to democracy; it is widely recognised as the foremost English-language university press dedicated to research on Central and Eastern Europe and the former communist countries….”

University of Texas at Austin becomes new Opening the Future subscriber member with CEU Press

“Central European University (CEU) Press are pleased to announce that the library at the University of Texas at Austin is a new subscribing member of their Opening the Future collective OA funding programme. 

The University Library has chosen to sign up to the Library Selection Package containing 50 books selected by an independent panel of librarians. This selection is a cross-section of the other three backlist packages and represents those titles that might be of interest to researchers across a number of disciplines. CEU Press is a leading publisher in the history of communism and transitions to democracy; it is widely recognised as the foremost English-language university press dedicated to research on Central and Eastern Europe and the former communist countries….”

Opening the Future: How to Implement an Equitable Revenue Model for Open Access Monographs | Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

Eve, Martin Paul, Pinter, Frances, Poznanski, Emily, & Grady, Tom. (2022). Opening the Future: How to Implement an Equitable Revenue Model for Open Access Monographs (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6907707

Abstract:

COVID-19 has thrown many aspects of university research culture into acute relief. As the reality of the virus dawned and campuses worldwide went into lockdown, publishers scrambled to unpaywall their research. Publishers made topical works and more general material openly available, through their own sites and platforms such as Project Muse and JSTOR. Physical collections became inaccessible and demand for openly accessible research skyrocketed. It is unclear that it is desirable to return to the previous systems of scholarly communication in the book publishing world, in which physical copies may remain affordable, even while e-licensing agreements for libraries are not.

This has been recognised in several recent global policy announcements including the cOAlition S/Plan S guidelines, and the recent UKRI consultation on OA. The latter’s proposed measures include the possibility of zero-embargo green OA, more liberal open licensing, and the long- vaunted requirement for funded monographs to be in scope. This last element built on a longstanding policy history in the UK foreshadowing a mandate for OA monographs.

That said, the path to OA monographs is not free of obstacles. Among the many issues, the most frequently raised is the business model of Book Processing Charges (BPCs) and their apparent unaffordability, mostly due to distributional allocation of library resources. Happily, several recent reports have detailed non-BPC OA revenue and business models that presses could use to transition to OA – one of the most recent being COPIM’s Revenue models for Open Access monographs 2020.

That report describes a variation on the journal ‘Subscribe to Open’ model whereby members ‘subscribe to a backlist, with the revenue then used to make the frontlist openly accessible’. This constitutes a new business model for OA monographs that had not previously been implemented. We implemented this model, dubbed ‘Opening the Future,’ in a partnership between the COPIM project, the Central European University Press (CEUP), and Liverpool University Press (LUP). This model presents a potential route for the mass and sustainable transition to OA of many small-to-mid sized university presses.

This document sets out how we implemented this model, including the documentation of challenges, resources, timetables, and activities. It is intended as a roadmap for other presses that wish to implement an ‘Opening the Future’-esque model. Of course, this document is unlikely to cover everything, but the authors are happy to respond to individual queries where this will prove helpful.