Sponsored content: Bloomsbury case study
Bloomsbury’s commitment to expanding open access for scholarly books
Ros Pyne, Global Director, Research and Open Access at Bloomsbury, expands upon the company’s continued dedication to OA publishing
Here at Bloomsbury, we have long championed open access for scholarly books. We’ve offered open access (OA) options for books since we first launched as an academic publisher back in 2008, and we’re proud to have published hundreds of open access books since then.
Opening up academic books helps the important scholarship we publish in the arts, humanities, and social sciences to find its broadest possible readership. It enables anyone around the world with an internet connection to read, respond to, and build upon a work and helps raise the profile of authors and their research. It means students, independent scholars, researchers in low-income countries, and anyone with a passion for their subject can access a work without needing to pay.
It’s challenging, though, to flip established models and ways of working. Current models mean open access is only an option
www.researchinformation.info | @researchinfo
for a small number of authors. In order to change the academic publishing landscape, and make open access a reality for more scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, we need collaboration and support from all those involved scholarly communications. That’s why we’re delighted that both UKRI and cOAlition S have recently expressed strong support for OA books.
UKRI’s new policy will require
OA for books and chapters that acknowledge UKRI funding and are published from 1 January 2024, and UKRI has indicated it will provide ring-fenced funding to enable this. Similarly, cOAlition S has recommended that funders
“We remain committed to exploring innovative ways of expanding open access for books”
require immediate OA for books and that they provide financial support. These announcements build on the important work done by other funders in this area, and on the engagement with open access for books from Bloomsbury and many other publishers throughout the last decade. OA for books has been slow
to develop, but we are now reaching a critical point where we have the opportunity to make OA possible for many more authors. Of course, publishers, too, will need to be active and flexible collaborators if we are to succeed in making immediate OA the predominant mode of publication for scholarly books. Bloomsbury has a history of
creative approaches to OA, from our original early experiments with freemium, to case-by-case flexibility for individual projects, and a generous green OA policy for chapters. We are now entering a new landscape. What we do know is that it’s
important to us as a company that OA book publication is, in future, an option for all our monograph authors, not just those associated with wealthy institutions and funders, and this will inform our thinking and future approaches. We remain committed to exploring innovative ways of expanding open access for books, and are keen to hear from those who want to work with us. If you’d like to follow up with
me directly, you can reach me at
Ros.Pyne@
bloomsbury.com Meanwhile, you can visit our
website to find out more about Bloomsbury’s open access publishing options and self- archiving policies for books:
Bloomsbury.com/openaccess. We also encourage authors who are considering publishing their book open access, or who want to learn more about open access publication, to reach out to our subject editors directly to discuss their requirements:
Bloomsbury.com/contacts-for- authors.
December 2021/January 2022 Research Information 17
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