Fund to Mission reaches 75% Open Access in 2023! | University of Michigan Press

“Since Fall 2020, the University of Michigan Press has been collaborating with our parent library and LYRASIS to implement our Fund to Mission open access monograph model. This program facilitates the conversion of an increasing percentage of the Press’s frontlist to open access without requiring inequitable author payments. Thanks to the financial support from the provost, nearly 200 library supporters, author-side funders, and sales of frontlist titles, the program continues to grow and offer top quality scholarship to readers worldwide. This International Open Access Week, we are excited to share that 2023 is the first year we have been able to publish 75% of our monographs Open Access!

These open access monographs are offered as part of the UMP Ebook Collection (UMP EBC), a comprehensive collection of over 1,800 of the University of Michigan Press’s scholarly ebooks for sale to libraries. In 2023 we will publish more than 80 scholarly monographs, 75% of which immediately became open access through our Fund to Mission program. This brings our full Open Access (OA) list to over 375 monographs that are free-to-read online! The full OA title list for 2023 can be found below.”

University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection

“Working with Lyrasis, the University of Michigan Press has been taking steps to develop a publishing program that aligns with its mission and commitment to equity, justice, inclusion, and accessibility. Based on these principles, the Press is now transitioning to an open access monograph model called “Fund to Mission.”

The Press aims to convert at least 75% of its monographs to open access by the end of 2023, without any author ever having to pay. The Press is working to build a sustainable model by achieving stable funding for this monograph program from three sources: $250,000 in annual funding from the library community, $400,000 in additional recurring funds from U-M, and $300,000 in other funder payments.

By committing to purchase one of the UMP EBC packages, libraries:

Support the conversion to 75% (~60) of University of Michigan Press scholarly monographs in 2023;
Receive perpetual access to the remaining restricted frontlist titles and term access to the backlist (~2,000 titles), which will otherwise remain closed to non-purchasers;
Support authors’ ability to publish innovative, digital scholarship leveraging the next-generation, open-source Fulcrum platform….”

Visualizing the Impact of the University of Michigan Press Fund to Mission Initiative

“In the humanities, the monograph often acts as the lab where scholars experiment and engage with other thinkers. Despite the valuable ideas emerging from these fields, the academic community has struggled to find sustainable ways to make humanities monographs open access. Grant money and other funding is often less available to these scholars than to their counterparts in the sciences. As a result, the academic and publishing communities have had to explore new ways to make the turn to open. Fund-to-Mission from the University of Michigan Press is one such project to open the humanities….”

Chefs de Cuisine: Perspectives from Publishing’s Top Table – Charles Watkinson – The Scholarly Kitchen

“In developing services, our philosophy is “first of a kind, not one of a kind.” A good example is the Fulcrum publishing platform, developed with support from the Mellon Foundation and now self-sustaining. Fulcrum shares an open-source backend with the Deep Blue data repository. That means every type of output is a first-class publication: A Fulcrum-hosted monograph with integrated multimedia gets the same stewardship commitment that Deep Blue applies to health sciences research data. And the creator of a research dataset gets the same rich metrics (e.g., citations, altmetrics, downloads) that we would deliver to a monograph author….

I think we’re at the “so now what” stage of open access (OA). With a critical mass of freely-available, reusable literature and data, what tangible benefits can publishers offer society? And how should publishers format and distribute the outputs of open scholarship to turn free access into valuable access? With this question in mind, we’re doing several things at Michigan: expanding discovery networks (e.g., creating best practices for research data through the Data Curation Network, delivering OA books to public libraries via the Palace project, highlighting quality certification via the DOAB PRISM service), making sure our platforms and content are accessible (staying current with Benetech Certified Global Accessible audits, making monographs available as audiobooks through the Google Text-to-Speech program) and scoping open source integrations with partners that complement Fulcrum’s functionality (working with Mellon and the Big Collection initiative to integrate Fulcrum, Manifold, and Humanities Commons, and integrating Fulcrum repository functionality into the Janeway journals platform). 

We’re also focused on how to measure and communicate the greater reach and engagement OA enables. We’re working with Curtin University to refine a publicly-accessible Books Analytics Dashboard and partnering with Jisc and Lyrasis to expand US participation in IRUS repository statistics. The IP Registry is developing a product with us to identify the institutional use of OA books, and we’re supporting the OAeBU project to build a trusted framework for publishers to exchange OA usage metrics. We recorded at least 12 million Total Item Requests in 2022 for Michigan Publishing publications. But that’s a meaningless number unless put in context.

 

Authors should never be required to pay to publish open works. Let’s try and avoid perpetuating or creating a new inequity of access. The Fund to Mission program, supported by our parent institution and more than 100 libraries, enables this for U-M Press. We also partner with a consortium of over 50 liberal arts colleges to run Lever Press as a truly diamond open-access book publisher. The capacity to do such work is building. I particularly credit Lyrasis Open Programs, the BTAA Big Collection academy-led publishing program, the American Council of Learned Societies Publishing Initiatives, the S2O community of practice, and the Open Access Books Network….

I worry that larger publishers with better resources to handle complexities like transformative agreements are sucking away the resources to support open-access books and journals. Small, independent publishers (barely for-profit, if commercial) face similar challenges to university presses. We must ensure that funder and library policies don’t accidentally erase the bibliodiversity that independent and institutional presses have brought to their regions and disciplines for decades. I am particularly excited by the potential that Path to Open (JSTOR) and the 

University of Michigan Press Hits 2022 Open Access Books Target; Ready to Expand Open Access in 2023

“The 2023 Michigan Ebook Collection marks the third year of University of Michigan of Press’s renewed commitment to open access through its Fund to Mission program. This OA monograph model has allowed UMP to better align with our mission of sustainably distributing scholarship to the broadest possible audience, reflecting our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. 

Fund to Mission has received resounding support from over 100 libraries, many individual funders, and our provost. With their help, we plan to make at least 75% of our frontlist monographs open access in the 2023 Michigan Ebook Collection. This builds on our success in 2022 where we made 50% of our monographs open access….”

Guest Post – The Monograph and the Mission: University of Michigan Pledges $1.2 Million to Fund Open Access Book Publishing – The Scholarly Kitchen

“This week the University of Michigan Press announced through our partner LYRASIS that we have reached our target of converting 50% of our 2022 monograph program to open access, without ever requiring any author to pay to publish. We will increase this percentage to 75% in 2023 and anticipate being able to sustain a majority open access monograph program that produces at least 60 new books a year. These open-access titles are now available on our open-source publishing platform, Fulcrum, and through multiple other distribution channels.

To sustain our output, we have developed a financial model, Fund to Mission, that matches investments in our ebook collection from over 100 libraries with subventions for individual titles, and support from our parent institution. In July, the Press was honored to receive a multiyear, $1.2 million investment from the University of Michigan Provost’s Office and an invitation to apply for continuing funding within the next three years. 

While we acknowledge the privilege of being at a leading and well-resourced US public university, we hope that the commitment Michigan’s academic leadership is making to open access for humanities books will be duplicated by Provosts at other North American institutions. As the name of our initiative suggests, such support allows university presses to pursue their core mission; to maximize global access to humanistic knowledge at a time when the need for rigorously vetted, boldly-expressed, high-quality information has never been greater. We also hope that even more libraries will be attracted to partner in achieving our shared mission….”

Thank You! Over 100 Libraries Now Support Open Access with Michigan Fund to Mission

“In spring 2021, University of Michigan of Press began to adjust our publishing program to better align with our mission of sustainably distributing scholarship to the broadest possible audience, reflecting our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. This project resulted in the development of the open access monograph model that we call Fund to Mission.

 
Over the past year and a half, Fund to Mission has received resounding support from the library community, individual funders, and our provost. Through them, we have been able to make over 50% of our frontlist monographs open access for 2022 and are well on our way to making at least 75% of our frontlist monographs open access by the end of 2023 without any author ever having to pay.

Our success has been a community effort with over 100 libraries signing on to Fund to Mission. This engagement highlights how much scholars and libraries value open access, and as a result, our Provost has renewed their commitment to provide another three years of financial support for the Fund to Mission program….”

Thank You! Over 100 Libraries Now Support Open Access with Michigan Fund to Mission

“In spring 2021, University of Michigan of Press began to adjust our publishing program to better align with our mission of sustainably distributing scholarship to the broadest possible audience, reflecting our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. This project resulted in the development of the open access monograph model that we call Fund to Mission.

 
Over the past year and a half, Fund to Mission has received resounding support from the library community, individual funders, and our provost. Through them, we have been able to make over 50% of our frontlist monographs open access for 2022 and are well on our way to making at least 75% of our frontlist monographs open access by the end of 2023 without any author ever having to pay.

Our success has been a community effort with over 100 libraries signing on to Fund to Mission. This engagement highlights how much scholars and libraries value open access, and as a result, our Provost has renewed their commitment to provide another three years of financial support for the Fund to Mission program….”

Affordable Learning with Fund to Mission, University of Michigan Presss Open Access Monograph Model

“Launched in 2021, Fund to Mission–the University of Michigan Press’s open access monograph model–aims to support teaching and learning. Join us next Thursday, April 14th, from 1:00 – 2:00 pm ET to learn more about how open access U-M Press content–made possible by Fund to Mission–is aiding in libraries’ efforts to expand affordable learning initiatives. Attendees will hear from a UMP author and staff on how they are using both OA content and the Fulcrum platform in their classrooms. Folks will also learn more about the model and progress, as well investment options.

 

Fund to Mission is an inclusive, values-based model that seeks to encourage and enable participation for all institutions regardless of their size. We want to ensure that everyone has a chance to be a part of building an open future.”

Fund to Mission Progress Report (Winter 2022) | University of Michigan Press

Since fall 2020, the University of Michigan Press has collaborated with with itsparent library and LYRASIS to implement the Fund to Mission monograph model, which facilitates the conversion of an increasing percentage of the U-MPress’s 80-monograph-a-year frontlist output to open access without requiringinequitable author-side payments.

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