Snyder & Fathallah (2023) Sustainable Futures for OA Books: The Open Book Collective | The Journal of Electronic Publishing

Snyder, L. O. & Fathallah, J., (2023) “Sustainable Futures for OA Books: The Open Book Collective”, The Journal of Electronic Publishing 26(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3372

Abstract:

This article describes and explains the need for the work of the Open Book Collective (OBC). The OBC is a major output of the COPIM project (Community-Led Infrastructures for Open Access Monographs). The collective will bring together diverse small-to-medium open access (OA) publishers, open publishing service providers, libraries, and other research institutions to create a new, mutually supportive, and interdependent community space and platform designed to sustainthe future of OA book publishing. The OBC is founded upon equitable, community-led governance and helping publishers move beyond Book Processing Charges (BPCs). Central to the functioning of the Open Book Collective is an online platform that will make it far quicker and easier for libraries and other potential subscribers to compare, evaluate, and subscribe to different OA publishers and open service providers via membership packages. The OBC supports small-to-medium OA publishers by way of the COPIM (Community-Led Publication Infrastructures for Open Access Books) philosophy of “scaling small.” This allows publishers and other members to operate sustainably and collaboratively whilst retaining their diverse and singular editorial missions, rather than operating from philosophies centered on economic growth, competition, and monopoly.

 

The OBC Welcomes University of Manchester Library | 6 March 2023 | Open Book Collective

“As a member of the UK’s prestigious Russell Group, Manchester University is recognised as a world-leading research institution. You can read more about the University’s commitment to Open Access (OA) at their website here. Thanks to Manchester University’s support, the flourishing of a more bibliodiverse landscape for scholarly books is better assured. By becoming a member of the Open Book Collective, libraries have the opportunity to evaluate, compare, and support a bespoke range of small-to-medium Open Access book publishers and groups that are building important technical infrastructure for the creation and curation of OA books, and are also able to combine initiatives in any way they see fit, as well as support the OBC as a whole, thereby enabling libraries to support OA books in ways that allow them to demonstrate that their investments in OA books have broad impact in multiple sectors of the landscape of scholarly communications. The OBC, and the librarians who support it, are committed to a more equitable landscape for OA books and moving away from author-facing Book Processing Charges, our members are committed to collaborative, horizontal modes of working together on opening access to scholarly books for readers globally, without monetary, technical, or other barriers….”

Open Book Publishers Joins the Open Book Collective | Feb 24, 2023

“…We are joining the OBC because we believe that the best future for academic book publishing lies in collectively funded, equitable open access for books. We believe in the value of non-profit, community-owned open infrastructures to underpin this shift, and we support collaborative ways of working to achieve our goals. The OBC reflects all these values. The Collective realises the strength of collaboration and mutual effort in two ways: firstly, because it brings together a range of OA book initiatives that share core values and are seeking collective funding, forming a powerful collection of books and initiatives and making it easier for libraries to find, assess and support the OA books that these initiatives have to offer; secondly, because a proportion of the revenue a press receives from libraries via the OBC will go into a development fund to which any open access press or initiative can apply in order to strengthen their work….”

Publizieren in der Medienwissenschaft — Andreas Kirchner über Open Access als Standard | Open Media Studies

by Andreas Kirchner

englisch version via gTranslate:

I recently noticed that the editors of the journal MEDIENwissenschaft: Reviews | Reviews has started to specifically mark Open Access publications that are subject to review – a clear indication of a change in media studies publication practice. In book list 4/22, 64 out of 186 titles, a third of all publications listed there, bear the new “OA” abbreviation. This is not a bad rate, especially considering that the open access transformation of books has only picked up speed in recent years. The spectrum of the 19 publishers that published the books is enormous: imprints from the multinational publishing groups SpringerNature and Taylor & Francis are represented as well as various university presses or small scientific and non-fiction publishers such as Büchner or Frank & Timme. The Bielefelder transcript-Verlag occupies a special position, which in recent years has been particularly committed to establishing Open Access in German-language media studies: 17 OA books on the “Book List” have been published there alone. In this illustrious circle, the name of a publishing house can be found – and that at least four times -meson press .

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From Mattering Press to the Open Book Collective: Interview with Joe Deville | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

Corazza, F., & Fathallah, J. (2022). From Mattering Press to the Open Book Collective: Interview with Joe Deville. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.ffebd406

As well as being the Chair of the Open Book Collective, due to launch soon, Joe Deville is one of the founders of Mattering Press, a small Open Access book publisher. We sat down with Joe to speak to him about how he became involved in Open Access publishing, some of the challenges that small publishers can face when starting up, and how his work with Mattering Press led to his involvement in the Open Book Collective.

 

U.S. Library Outreach Workshop · Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

“As a community-led organization, the Open Book Collective regularly solicits advice and counsel for its development from the communities it seeks to serve. As university librarians are critical to the financial and other forms of support for open access and open source initiatives (such as publishers and infrastructure providers), they have been involved from the beginning of the OBC, from initial brainstorming to the processes of forming the collective — its values and principles, membership, governance, business model, web platform, and so on. Now that we are nearing the launch of the OBC, we are conducting a new series of workshops with librarians in order to get some further assessments from them regarding what we have built. It should be noted, first, that not only will the OBC always be seeking guidance from libraries as it launches and moves forward, but that librarians will have a major role to play in the governance of the collective as well, meaning, librarians are not just our consultants; they are building the collective with us….

On May 4, 2022, OBC representatives met with librarians from UK university libraries, and the outcomes are summarized in our blog post, UK Libraries Outreach Workshop. More recently, on June 3, 2022, OBC representatives met with librarians from research university libraries across the US. Some of these librarians participated in the early workshops led by members of the COPIM project (Community-led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs) in 2020 and others were learning about the OBC for the first time. The variety of perspectives we gained in the US-focused workshop has helped us to reflect in meaningful and practical ways about the further development of the OBC, and we summarize below some of the highlights of this recent discussion….”