Analysis and news


Take-off for OA books While open access for books is faced with some challenges, it is one of few segments in publishing that shows healthy growth rates, writes Sven Fund


Publishers have been experimenting with open access (OA) books for almost a decade now. While the overall impact in terms of title output may have been limited so far, smaller publishers of very different provenience have gained significant experience in applying the new business model, and a tipping point might be close. However, the space is confronted with a number of challenges – be it usage, acquisition and payment structures, or the role of intermediaries. Different initiatives are aiming to address these issues. The Directory of Open Access Books


(DOAB), the central database which has screened the space for some years now, counts more than 5,600 titles published in open access. Some 44 per cent of the titles registered have been published in the English language, and the predominant Creative Commons license is CC-BY-NC- ND, with 30 per cent of all titles published under it.


The distribution of publication dates


shows the rise in OA book publishing: 900 titles were published in the copyright year 2016 alone, an increase of 65 per cent compared to 2015. It was not until 2006 that the number of titles published per year even reached more than 100. However, given the annual global output of monographs in the humanities and social sciences (HSS), where the vast majority of all OA books is being published, the market share of open access is still in the low single digits.


The distribution of titles across publishers mirrors the (traditional) structure of the book industry – with one interesting twist. Not surprisingly, the landscape of publishers recorded in DOAB is highly fragmented – the service registers 161 publishers. What is surprising, though, is the small share of titles that is provided by publishers leading the industry in revenue. While John Wiley – the largest publisher


in HSS based on Outsell analysis from 2015 – is not covered by the DOAB, other powerhouses like Routledge (eight titles), Oxford (28), Cambridge (seven),


12 Research Information February/March 2017


and Springer (145) show exceptionally low numbers of OA book titles. Midsized companies like Brill (186), Boehlau (188) and Bloomsbury (138) contribute more significantly, lead by the German publisher De Gruyter with 279 titles. And traditionally smaller presses like the University of Michigan Press with its 60 titles by now produce a relatively high share of their publication program in open access. OA for books is less attractive for those


players with high ‘traditional’ distribution power, while it seems an economically viable model for smaller presses. Particularly in countries (many of them in continental Europe) or market segments (like university presses) with a strong tradition in production funding through subsidies, the push of funders is high to move from traditional to open access book publishing. A good example of this


“OA for books is less attractive for those players with high ‘traditional’ distribution power”


is Austria, where the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) had already adopted one of the most advanced OA models in 2006. Consequently, publishers like Boehlau (the largest academic press in Austria) adapted their funding model alongside this policy and shifted a significant number of titles to open access. Another contributor supporting smaller


players in the move to OA is Knowledge Unlatched (KU). Launched by Frances Pinter in 2012, KU has positioned itself as a middle man between publishers and libraries. It combines open access for monographs in HSS with a crowd-funding mechanism, in which libraries from around the world pledge together for a list of titles submitted by publishers and selected by a group of librarians. So far, the initiative has unlatched around 100 titles, and it is in the final stage of its third pledging round, comprising 343 titles.


The benefits for publishers are clear: while their traditional products are confronted with a highly competitive and consolidated market environment in which their large competitors with many sales people on the ground consume the lion share of the budget, they can get a foot in the door of new market developments by collaborative action and spreading the risk of the new model. In working to develop the KU model, a number of challenges surfaced over the past four years that are significant for the OA books space. Most prominent among them are probably the following three: double-dipping, usage, and the role of intermediaries. While double-dipping and how to avoid it has been a controversial issue since the inception of the OA debate for all product formats, it is particularly tricky to deal with for books. Unlike journals, the book supply chain between publishers and libraries is much more fragmented and diffused, with substantial regional differences around the world.


One should assume that this creates a


natural barrier for open access, and it does to the extent that librarians expect from their vendors/partners a de-duplication of formats. While this is understandable within the same business model, ie the acquisition of content in print or electronic format, it poses almost unsolvable issues to players that have to permeate both format (print/electronic) and business model (purchase/open access). Knowledge Unlatched has solved this by committing its publisher partners to grant KU libraries a discount on print purchases placed by libraries with publishers directly. While this model is far from being perfect, it seems to be the only feasible way in terms of time and effort. Another interesting aspect at the


watershed from traditional collection building to supporting and organising open access ebook collections is the measuring and documentation of usage. Over the past decade or so, librarians and their administrators within universities and research institutions grew used to usage being a central parameter in their decision-making when purchasing content


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