Category Archives: oa.scurl

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

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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.

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

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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.

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The Open Book Collective and Beyond: Community-Led Infrastructures for Open Access Books | Zenodo

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Eve, Martin Paul, Deville, Joe, Gatti, Rupert, & Barnes, Miranda. (2022, June 15). The Open Book Collective and Beyond: Community-Led Infrastructures for Open Access Books. SCURL Annual Conference 2022 (SCURLconf22), online. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6644949

With this session, the COPIM project will present ongoing work centring on the Open Book Collective, which we hope will be an exciting and useful collective for libraries to participate in – a collective that not only aims to support OA Book publishers and infrastructures, but to create a community that works together to develop and support non-profit OA book publishing.

Presentations will introduce the Open Book Collective Platform – the platform under development in COPIM’s Work Package 2 that will facilitate collective library funding for OA book publishers and infrastructure providers, while also acting as an information hub around all things OA book publishing.

We will also be presenting on the various collective funding models being adopted – including
a. Opening the Future (COPIM Work Package 3), and
b.  Pure OA models (eg OBP, punctum & ScholarLed)
which may be of interest for libraries considering funding such initiatives, but also for new initiatives that may wish to join the OBC and seek collective funding.

The third presentation will focus more closely on Thoth, the metadata manager and dissemination service being developed in COPIM’s Work Package 5. Designed specifically for small publishers that wish to effectively disseminate their metadata and content – including for the creation of online websites and catalogues for publishers. This may be attractive to libraries looking to establish new publishing initiatives with the university, with the Scottish University Press and Edinburgh Diamond being two good examples. It would also be interesting to address how libraries may wish to access the database for ingesting OA book metadata into their own systems.

This will be followed by a presentation on the Archiving and Preservation network currently being conceived under the remit of COPIM’s Work Package 7. Working alongside Thoth, the aim is to create processes and a network of university repositories to effectively archive and preserve more complex OA books created by small non-profit initiatives.

 

Scottish Universities Open Access Press | Research and Resources @ University of Dundee

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Dominique Walker, the Publishing Officer for the Scottish Universities Open Access Press (SUOAP), introduces the work undertaken to establish and sustain an open access publishing platform that is owned and managed by the 18 participating HEIs. The Scottish Universities Open Access Press (SUOAP) aims to provide a clear and cost-effective route for researchers to make their work freely available to a global audience, meeting the requirements of funders and realising the ambition to extend the impact of research across society.