Making Open Access Book Funding Work Fairly: The Emergence of Library Membership Funding Models for OA Monographs
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Location
Online
Start Date
29-10-2021 12:30 PM
End Date
29-10-2021 12:40 PM
Description
In late 2020, COPIM, an Arcadia and Research England funded project, announced an innovative revenue model to sustainably fund open access (OA) monographs: Opening the Future. Since it launched, it’s seen some success: two respected publishers on board, funding for 4 or 5 books already accrued, and a nomination for an ALPSP ‘Innovation in Publishing’ Award. And in that time we’ve also seen several other collective library funding models emerge from MIT, Michigan, and Cambridge University Press, among others. The landscape is changing rapidly and the project has now begun to turn its focus to the problem of scaling up.
But herein lies a tension. OA monograph publishing needs to be sustainable not just for publishers, but also for libraries. Opening the Future was designed to be low-cost and simple, slotting easily into acquisitions budgets and existing library purchasing workflows. As we bring the program to more university presses and libraries, how do we ensure we are not just adding another circle to the OA labyrinth that libraries are attempting to navigate? How might Opening the Future scale without increasing the administrative and decision-making burden on collections and scholarly communications teams, who are already picking through a tangle of transformative agreements, pay-to-publish deals, author affiliations, and legacy subscriptions?
In this session, we will engage the audience through these questions, as well as discuss the role of the program in the wider policy landscape and how it is positioned alongside other emerging OA collective funding initiatives.
Making Open Access Book Funding Work Fairly: The Emergence of Library Membership Funding Models for OA Monographs
Online
In late 2020, COPIM, an Arcadia and Research England funded project, announced an innovative revenue model to sustainably fund open access (OA) monographs: Opening the Future. Since it launched, it’s seen some success: two respected publishers on board, funding for 4 or 5 books already accrued, and a nomination for an ALPSP ‘Innovation in Publishing’ Award. And in that time we’ve also seen several other collective library funding models emerge from MIT, Michigan, and Cambridge University Press, among others. The landscape is changing rapidly and the project has now begun to turn its focus to the problem of scaling up.
But herein lies a tension. OA monograph publishing needs to be sustainable not just for publishers, but also for libraries. Opening the Future was designed to be low-cost and simple, slotting easily into acquisitions budgets and existing library purchasing workflows. As we bring the program to more university presses and libraries, how do we ensure we are not just adding another circle to the OA labyrinth that libraries are attempting to navigate? How might Opening the Future scale without increasing the administrative and decision-making burden on collections and scholarly communications teams, who are already picking through a tangle of transformative agreements, pay-to-publish deals, author affiliations, and legacy subscriptions?
In this session, we will engage the audience through these questions, as well as discuss the role of the program in the wider policy landscape and how it is positioned alongside other emerging OA collective funding initiatives.
