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CADEMIC libraries are facing what often seems like an impossible task – to support open access (OA) in
principle, whilst at the same time undergoing significant financial pressures and responding to growing dissatisfaction with the sustainability and cost of commercial publishing models.
A greater part of this focus on publishing has centred on journals and transforma- tive agreements – understandable in the face of Research Excellence Framework (REF) mandates. However, because of its relative lack of attention, long-form schol- arship risks quietly becoming one of the most structurally vulnerable parts of the scholarly communications ecosystem.
The problem
OA book publishing differs from jour- nal publishing in several ways. Books generally involve higher up-front costs, longer production timelines, and are often produced in more diverse formats and languages. They are more commonly seen in some disciplines than others – the arts, humanities and social sciences, for example – and may carry disproportion- ate weight in promotion, progression, and research assessment in these fields, in comparison to journal articles. Book Processing Charge (BPC)-based models for books are increasingly seen by authors and libraries as both ineq- uitable and unsustainable. Charges of £8,000–£12,000 per mono graph are common, which can restrict OA publica- tion to authors from wealthier institutions or those with funder support. Meanwhile, libraries find themselves in the awkward position of being asked to fund both ac-
Instead of ‘buying’ content in the traditional sense, libraries are investing in the wider OA ecosystem and sustaining the conditions that make OA book publishing possible at all.
Putting open access books back on the table
With all the focus on journals, Caroline Ball the Community Engagement Lead for the Open Book Collective, discusses how the charity is working toward a sustainable future for open access books.
quisitions and publication, without clear means or processes for doing so equitably or at scale.
While OA books are still only a small proportion of scholarly monograph out- put globally, the growth rate is increasing. Data from sources such as Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and Open Access Publishing in European Net- works (OAPEN) suggests that OA books may account for roughly 15-20 per cent of published titles overall, with higher figures in particular disciplines and some European contexts with national OA mandates. Indeed, much of this growth is being driven by policy developments, such as the UKRI open access requirements for monographs, chapters and edited col- lections, and is likely to accelerate when a similar REF mandate comes into force after the 2029 REF.
At the same time, library budgets are tightening, increasing the demand for funder-compliant, non-BPC routes. This combination makes models based on high, per-book charges ever more unsustainable, potentially allowing for a more favourable environment for shared, collective approaches that distribute cost and risk across institutions.
Collective funding
Change in the OA book landscape is more likely to be incremental than revolution- ary, a way of reshaping existing systems over time, rather than wholesale replace- ment. One such approach has been the development of collective funding models for OA books. In place of book processing charges (BPCs) for authors or institutions, funding is effectively crowd-sourced, dis- tributed across multiple libraries, allowing publishers to make books openly available without the needs for author-facing fees.
Caroline Ball.
Collective funding models aim to tackle these problems by shifting funding away from individual books or authors, towards shared infrastructure and publish- ing capacity made possible by pooled resources. In practice, this generally means libraries committing to modest, predictable annual contributions to sup- port OA publishers or service providers, often via tiered pricing.
The key characteristics of these models include:
l No author-facing charges for OA publication;
l shared risk across many institutions;
l support for capacity, not just individual titles;
l long-term sustainability, rather than one-off transactions.
Instead of ‘buying’ content in the tradi- tional sense, libraries are investing in the wider OA ecosystem and sustaining the conditions that make OA book publishing possible at all.
The Open Book Collective (OBC) is one example of this approach. Established as
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