Publishing

How to become an open access book publisher

Admin

Key features of open access book publishing

Types of open access
Financial policy and funding
Open access mandates
Intellectual property rights and licenses
Making OA monographs and metadata accessible
Important information on OA monographs on the publisher’s website
Publishers of OA monographs: examples
Other recommended projects, institutions, resources

Types of open access

Open access to monographs can be provided through gold, green or diamond/platinum route:

Image-open-access-diamond-gold-green

Financial policy and funding

The funding system for OA scientific monographs is continually developing.

Funders face various challenges in setting standards for funding OA monographs. For example, it is not easy to calculate costs (What should be financed and what should not? How to achieve transparency?).

As a result, most OA book publishers use some hybrid funding model to cover their publishing costs, which provides free access to the OA edition (online or as pdf) and offers other editions for sale.

Types of funding models:

  • Hybrid models
  • Institutional support
  • Book processing charges(publication fees (BPCs)
  • Model for libraries (Library membership/Library consortium/Subscribe to open etc.)
  • Crowdfunding

For more information on funding models, go to:

Penier, Izabella, Eve, Martin Paul, & Grady, Tom. (2020). COPIM – Revenue Models for Open Access Monographs 2020 (2.0). Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4011835.

Erich van Rijn, 17. november 2022. „Finding Paths to Open Access Book Publishing.“

Gerakopoulou, Elli, Penier, Izabella, & Deville, Joe. (2021). The promise of collaboration: collective funding models and the integration of Open Access books into libraries (1.0). Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4501511.

Ferwerda, Eelco. 2014. “Open Access Monograph Business Models”. Insights 27: 35–38. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.46

OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit – Planning and Funding

Open access mandates

OA mandates are policies adopted by research institutions, universities or funders that require researchers to provide mandatory open access to their published research if it was publicly funded (mandatory policy).

In Slovakia, for example, it is a mandatory policy to publish research results funded by the Horizon Europe programme in open access (since 2021). The policy applies to articles, monographs, conference proceedings, book chapters etc..

For more information, go to:

Intellectual property rights (copyright, licences)

Intellectual property rights and licenses protects authors’ rights and defines the reader’s rights. A license determines what a reader is entitled to do with published texts. In open access, the open (public) licences used most often are Creative Commons licenses as they are most clear and internationally understood licenses.

It is an author or copyright holder who assigns an (open) license to their work. However, the publisher has to make it publically clear what type of licences they accept from authors. 

Graphical representations/images of accepted licences have to be published on the journal`s website for authors to know what type of licences the journal accepts and for readers to learn how they can use the texts published in the journal.

For more information on intellectual property rights, go to WIPO.

Making OA monographs and metadata accessible

Metadata 

Data that provide information about other data. 

Toth – a tool to manage and disseminate OA books metadata.

For more information on metadata, got to: OAPEN Metadata.

Repositories, discovery services, platforms

DOAB – (Directory of Open Access Books): a discovery service
OAPEN Library (Open Access Publishing Network): a central repository to host and disseminate OA books
OpenEdition Books:  an online platform for books in all languages in humanities and social sciences platform

Important information on OA monographs on the publisher`s website

  • Open access offering–a description of the publishers’ publishing programme or service for OA monographs;
  • Author charges–information if author fees are charged or not should be clearly displayed; clearly displayed;
  • Peer review–provide clear information on a peer review process;
  • Availability–how monographs are available to readers, as print and electronic versions;
  • Open access–OA monographs must be freely available to readers without the requirement for registration of any kind;
  • Licensing–clearly stated and visible on the website and on all published material; it is recommended to use Creative Commons licenses;
  • Author information and OA policy–clear and detailed information for authors is present and easily located on the homepage;
  • Preservation–information about long-term access and preservation if a publisher ceases its activities.

Source: Jisc & OAPEN Publisher information on open access monographs updated Feb 2016  Short title: Jisc & OAPEN Publisher Information. In: Resources | Toolkit for Small & Scholar-Led OA Publishers