Increasing access to open access books: SPARC Europe joins Open Book Futures (OBF) project | STM Publishing News

Posted on May 10, 2023 by OATP primary

We are pleased to announce our participation in the recently launched Open Book Futures (OBF) project, funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund.

Open Access (OA) publishing has transformed how scholars and the wider public access academic content. However, despite the many benefits of OA, the number of OA books published each year is still relatively low compared to OA journal articles. In response to this challenge, the OBF project was launched with the intention of significantly increasing and improving the quantity, discoverability, and accessibility of academic content, ensuring it is freely and easily available to not only scholars but also the general public. The intention is to build on the pioneering work conducted within the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project.

SPARC Europe’s role in OBF

SPARC Europe will contribute to the OBF project in various ways:

We bring our experience establishing and running The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) and our connections to Invest in Open Infrastructure to advise the project. The Open Book Collective Development Fund’s grant allocation work will address a gap in the funding landscape by offering financial support to smaller and newer OA book initiatives, and we look forward to supporting this effort.
We will contribute directly to the outreach work being conducted by Work Package 2, on behalf of the Open Book Collective, and Work Package 3, on behalf of the Opening the Future revenue model.
Specifically, we will raise awareness of this important initiative and explore new opportunities for OA books to build a more sustainable infrastructure for OA books.

We are excited about the challenges that lie ahead for OBF. Our contribution will help initiate a step change in the ambition, scope, and impact of community-led OA book publishing. Together, we will improve the quantity, discoverability, and accessibility of long-form publications ensuring they are freely and easily available to scholars and the wider public.

You can read more about the project here and stay informed by regularly checking our news page.

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

Posted on May 10, 2023 by OATP primary

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 Open Book Collective Welcomes Amherst College Libraries | OBC Information Hub

Posted on April 25, 2023 by OATP primary

The Open Book Collective is delighted to welcome Amherst College Libraries as a supporting library member!

COPIM and community-led infrastructures for open access books: where are we now and what’s next? | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

Posted on April 13, 2023 by OATP primary

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?

£5.8 million funding to significantly expand and accelerate COPIM open access infrastructures | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

Posted on March 30, 2023 by OATP primary

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.

[…]

£5.8 million project to deliver a more sustainable future for Open Access books | Lancaster University

Posted on March 30, 2023 by OATP primary

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.

[…]

Register now! COPIM “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books” conference, April 20 & 21, 2023 @ online | Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

Posted on March 24, 2023 by OATP primary

Save the date & register now! The Community-Led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is happy to announce its Final Conference,“Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”, to take place online on April 20, 3.30-8.15pm (BST), and April 21, 3-7pm (BST).

Full programme online at: https://scalingsmall.pubpub.org/programme-overview

The Scaling Small philosophy (see e.g. Adema & Moore, 2021) that COPIM has been following is explicitly and intentionally an alternative to large-scale, commercial approaches to academic publishing. This principle has guided COPIM’s main outcomes and objectives, and has supported us in building various models, systems, and platforms as part of our work to start removing the hurdles preventing new and existing open access book initiatives from adopting open access workflows. In addition to creating the community-led governance structures, archiving and preservation best practices, and experimental book pilots and resources to support this, Scaling Small comes to the fore very clearly in three of COPIM’s main outputs: the Open Book Collective (OBC), a UK charity governed by its members that brings together open access publishers, libraries, and publishing service providers to enable sustainable collective funding for open access books without charging authors; ‘Opening the Future’ (OtF), a revenue model which enables the transition of legacy publishers to OA by offering their closed access backlist to libraries via a subscription scheme, and using the revenue to fund new OA books; and Thoth, an open dissemination system that enables publishers to share their open access books much more widely, by easily creating high quality open metadata in a wide variety of formats.

As COPIM concludes, we hope to discuss and extend the organisational principle of Scaling Small in several ways, and with a variety of collaborators, while also thinking ahead about what our next steps will be in the future.

Event: COPIM End-of-project conference “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”, April 20 & 21, 2023 @ online. Full programme now live! | Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs

Posted on March 14, 2023 by OATP primary

The Community-Led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is happy to announce its Final Conference,

“Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”,

which will take place online on April 20, 3.30-8.15pm (BST), and April 21, 3-7pm (BST).

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

Posted on March 6, 2023 by OATP primary

“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

Posted on March 2, 2023 by OATP primary

“…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….”

Save the date: COPIM final conference “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”, April 20 & 21, 2023 @ online | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

Posted on February 13, 2023 by OATP primary

The Community-Led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is happy to announce its Final Conference,

“Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”,

which will take place online on April 20, 3.30-8.15pm (BST), and April 21, 3-7pm (BST). Save the date!

As COPIM concludes, we hope to discuss and extend the organisational principle of Scaling Small in several ways, and with a variety of collaborators, while also thinking ahead about our next steps.

Open Book Collective now live!

Posted on December 9, 2022 by OATP primary

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

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

Posted on December 5, 2022 by OATP primary

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 .

[…]

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

Posted on September 13, 2022 by OATP primary

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)

Posted on June 25, 2022 by peter.suber's bookmarks

“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….”

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