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Computers gung ho? Responding to the OAPEN Library and DOAB’s response time 

The catchphrase ‘computer says no‘ is something most of us are familiar with; it’s frustrating when an digital system is not behaving the way we want. Lately, at OAPEN and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) we are experiencing something else that might be described as ‘computers gung ho’.  

What was the problem? 

The OAPEN Library and DOAB received so many requests from automated systems that they drowned out genuine users. On Tuesday 25 March, the problem reached a tipping point for the OAPEN Library when we saw this happening for several hours. From 8:30 up until 12:00 the number of sessions on the OAPEN Library exploded from 15 per second to 1,500 per second. As a result, the average response time of the OAPEN Library dropped from 0.2 seconds to 1.2 minutes, rendering the service unusable. Thanks to the support of our hosting partner CERN, the system did not crash. 

A graph showing the averag number of session oand the average response time of OAPEn and DOAB

Image: A graph showing activity in the OAPEN Library (green line) and DOAB (yellow line) on Tuesday 25 March. Credit: Grafana Dashboard, provided by CERN. 

If you look closely at the graph, you can see that these peaks in sessions were not confined to one morning only. We now see this happening several times per day, but only for short periods. 

Why is this happening? 

The reason for these bursts is that AI systems are hoovering up the content in the OAPEN Library and DOAB. OAPEN and DOAB are not the only websites that need to deal with these type of visitors. Eric Hellman describes in his blog “AI bots are destroying Open Access” how this has become a problem for many providers of open access content. When your mission is to make knowledge as widely available as possible, blocking AI bots should not be a necessity. This leads to unintended consequences, for example, the Internet Archive can no longer save snapshots of MIT Press because of Cloudflare blocking. The problem is not confined to open access providers, but also those who work on open source software see the same thing happening

What can be done about it? 

Our goal is to continue providing unfettered access to a quality curated collection of open access books. There is no simple solution: the requests come from different addresses and mostly do not identify as bots. This makes it hard for us – and all others dealing with this issue – to distinguish between genuine users and AI tools ‘gung ho’.  

Together with our colleagues at CERN we are working on the resilience of our systems, to make sure they keep functioning. We are also investigating if there is a way to deal with the peaks in downloads in such a way that it will allow human readers to keep using the OAPEN Library and DOAB without interruptions.  

While we keep working on a solution, we thank you for your continued patience when our services are temporarily slower than usual. 

Guest post: SCOAP3 for Books Program 2025

This is a guest post written by the SCOAP3 Team, mirrored on the SCOAP3 website.

The SCOAP3 for books program aims to support the open access (OA) publishing of new  (“born-OA”) scientific monographs and textbooks that are relevant to the discipline of high energy physics (i.e. in the field of Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, Instrumentation or Computer Science as related to the high-energy physics community). 

Supported by contributions from members of the SCOAP3 Consortium, the program has funded the Open Access publishing of almost 100 books to date (see the SCOAP3 Collection in the OAPEN Library)

SCOAP3 now launches the 2025 program and invites all interested scholarly publishers to participate. 

If you wish to participate in this program in 2025, we invite you to submit proposals for Open Access funding for books relevant to high energy physics that are planned to be published in the years 2025 and 2026, via the online form linked here.

Please fill one form per book, before May 15th, 2025. All the submitted books should already have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication within the next 18 months, and should be accompanied with a significant amount of sample text (at least one chapter). 

In addition, it is mandatory that the prior consent of authors for OA publishing be obtained for each proposed title (using either CC-BY or CC-BY-NC license), together with their acknowledgement of the publication timelines required by the program (Publication should happen at the latest by December, 31st, 2026). 

Proposals will be subject to an evaluation by a panel of scientists in the field, who will make the final selection.. 

We aim to complete the selection process and inform publishers of the titles that have been successfully selected for funding by October 1st 2025. (Please note that books published before this date will not be eligible for SCOAP3 funding).In case of questions, or problems when filling the form, please contact us: scoap3@cern.ch.

About SCOAP3

SCOAP3 (The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics: Enabling open dissemination of global research outputs in High-Energy Physics) is a global partnership—consisting of over three thousand libraries, key funding agencies and research centers from some 50 partnering countries and intergovernmental organisations—with a mission to enable barrier-free, equitable Open Access to research in High-Energy Physics.

OAPEN & SCOAP3

Since 2021, OAPEN has supported SCOAP³ for Books by providing services in the areas of hosting, dissemination, digital preservation, analytics as well as a branded collection. The SCOAP3 for Books collection consists of key textbooks and monographs in particle physics and neighboring fields which have been converted to Open Access through partnership with leading scientific publishers. SCOAP3 is funded through the generous support of members of over 200 members of the consortium. Learn more about SCOAP3 for Books.

Equitable and sustainable open access for scholarly books in East Africa: report from an online session

This is a guest post written by Malavika Legge, Program Manager at OASPA.

In October 2024, a collaborative online-session for publishers from East Africa was co-organised by the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and OAPEN, along with the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and French research institutes in Africa (LAM and IFRA) supported by the  National Centre for Scientific Research in France (CNRS).

The session covered approaches towards equitable and sustainable open access (OA) for scholarly books, and this online event, held on 24 October 2024, was delivered in two parts: Part 1 was a webinar-style series of presentations exploring impacts, experiences, revenue models and other topics pertaining to OA book publishing. Part 2 was a workshop-style discussion for all present.

The co-organisers of this 2-part event are pleased to share this detailed report as well as a freely available video recording of the four presentations, outlined below. 

Part 1: General Session – Moderator: Mary Felix, General Manager, OAPEN
Watch Mary’s introduction and opening remarks at the start of the recording.

  1. Findings and experiences about publishing Open access books in African Studies
  • Bastien Miraucourt (CNRS, France) 
  • Watch Bastien’s presentation from minute 7 onwards in the recording
  1. About some successful open access books funding models
  • Judith Fathallah (Coventry University, Lancaster University, Open Book Collective, United Kingdom) 
  • Watch Judith from 23 minutes 30 seconds onwards in the recording
  1. Integrating digital outputs and open access in the business development of an academic book publisher in Africa
  • Andrew Joseph (Wits University Press, South Africa)
  • Watch Andrew from 34 minutes 15 seconds onwards on the recording
  1. Early results of an African institutional publisher’s global transition to Open Access
  • Jill Claassen (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
  • Watch Jill’s presentation from minute 47 onwards on the recording

Part 2 – workshop discussion

This section of the event was not recorded, and it gave space for audience Q&A, discussion and interactions. All who were present, including East African book publishers in attendance, were welcomed to share experiences and participate. 
Part 2 of the event was moderated by our guest facilitator – Juma Joseph Musakali of Moi University, Kenya. Some headlines emerging from the discussion are distilled in the ‘connections and conversations’ section of our full report.

Migrating the OAPEN Library and DOAB to CERN

This week, we will be migrating the OAPEN Library and Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) servers from their current provider to CERN’s Data Center (as announced earlier this year). This move will improve the operational reliability and efficiency of services for the OAPEN Library and DOAB. 

At the same time, we are removing the EGI authentication for publishers from DOAB. As a result, participating publishers will need to request a new password when logging into DOAB.  

Timeline of events for the migration

  • On Tuesday 10 December, we will restrict updating access for publishers on DOAB, and we will pause adding new titles to the OAPEN Library. 
  • From Wednesday 11 December until Friday 13 December, we will be migrating the OAPEN Library and DOAB to the CERN Data Center. During this time, there might be a short disruption of availability to these services.  
    • We will copy the remaining data from the old to the new environment.
    • Once this operation has been completed, we will perform a final check.  
    • When the inspection proves to be successful, the web addresses https://library.oapen.org and https://directory.doabooks.org will be redirected to the new environments at the CERN Data Center. 
  • From Friday 13 December onwards, the OAPEN Library and DOAB will once again become available for updates. 

DOAB: removal of the EGI authentication 

Removing the EGI authentication service from DOAB will simplify our login process for participating publishers. Instead of the EGI authentication, publisher access to DOAB will be based on a combination of email address and password. A one-time update of the password will be required. This can be done by simply requesting a new password when logging into DOAB.

What does this mean for publishers hosting titles on OAPEN and/or participating in DOAB? 

If you are a publisher, you will not be able to add new titles or update existing titles to the OAPEN Library or DOAB between 11 December and 13 December. For those publishers participating in DOAB, they will need to request a new password when logging in as the EGI authentication will be removed.

For everyone else, you can continue to use the OAPEN Library and DOAB as usual but there may be some periods of time when the services are unavailable. We will try to keep these periods of unavailability as short as possible. 


We thank you for your continued patience with us while we navigate to our new service provider and look forward to completing migration. Please contact us with any questions.  

Strong Foundations for The Palace Project: A collaboration between OAPEN and Lyrasis

OAPEN and Lyrasis build greater access to digital content using the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) standard to create interoperability between content providers and reading applications.

The Hague, Netherlands, 9 December 2024 – OAPEN and Lyrasis are happy to announce the implementation and integration of the OAPEN Library collection with The Palace Project. Through this joint effort, more than 22,000 open access books have been made available through OAPEN’s Metadata Export Module for Open Access books (MEMO). This open source metadata management and integration tool by OAPEN invests in the principle of open and interoperable community owned infrastructure and is built on open standards and licensing of content. 

Ronald Snijder, CTO and Head of Research at OAPEN says, “I am very happy that our collection of peer-reviewed open access books is also available to The Palace Project users. We think it is important that our collection can be accessed through a platform like the Palace eReader App that is open and easy to use and that also reaches audiences beyond academia.”

Using OPDS, content providers have a simple and easy-to-implement tool to open discovery and access to other applications and reading systems. Because The Palace Project makes extensive use of OPDS with commercially licensed and openly licensed providers, OAPEN joins a growing global network of content providers invested in creating seamless access to content to readers, researchers, and scholars.   

“NYU Libraries is thrilled that OAPEN is now offering OPDS feeds through their MEMO service,” Nancy Lin, Senior Data Project Strategist at NYU Libraries tells us, “Using this open standard feed, Lyrasis was able to instantly integrate over 22,000 open access ebooks into NYU’s Palace eReader App.” 

James English, Director of Business Development at Lyrasis says, “We are excited to partner with OAPEN to expand access to their ebook collections and publisher content via the Palace App. We hope to broaden adoption and use of this valuable collection of knowledge and information in support of the open access publishing movement as The Palace Project and Lyrasis. I am particularly excited about OAPEN’s use of the OPDS standard in this integration as part of a growing movement toward creating an open and interoperable infrastructure for digital content in libraries.”

Libraries interested in learning more about this integration and how they can improve access to Open Access ebooks can reach out to info@thepalaceproject.org or info@oapen.org

Libraries interested in learning more about this integration and how they can improve access to Open Access ebooks can reach out to info@thepalaceproject.org or info@oapen.org

About Lyrasis

Lyrasis is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization whose mission is to support enduring access to the world’s shared academic, scientific and cultural heritage through leadership in open technologies, content services, digital solutions and collaboration with archives, libraries, museums and knowledge communities worldwide.The Palace Project is a program of Lyrasis working in strategic partnership with Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

About The Palace Project

The Palace Project is a suite of content, applications and services for the delivery of ebooks, audiobooks, and other digital media to benefit libraries and their patrons. The Palace Project operates out of the Ebooks and Community Engagement Division of Lyrasis.   

About OAPEN

The OAPEN Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to peer-reviewed open access books. OAPEN operates three platforms: the OAPEN Library, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB, in partnership with OpenEdition) and the OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit. OAPEN promotes and supports the global transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication.

An Interview with the University of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries

The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford recently became a premium OAPEN Library and DOAB supporter. Silke Davison, Community Manager, interviewed David Watson, the Bodleian’s open monograph project officer about their engagement with OA books and why they chose to become one of our supporters. Read on to find out what they had to say below!

You recently became a premium OAPEN Library and DOAB supporter, can you tell us your motivations behind this decision? 

Our decision to become a premium supporter of OAPEN Library and DOAB was driven by our commitment to the open access (OA) movement and our desire to ensure the widest possible sustainable access to research outputs including longform works. The Bodleian Libraries have a long history of supporting academic research, and we believe that open access is a vital component in the future of academic publishing. By partnering with OAPEN and DOAB, we hope to contribute to the growth and sustainability of open access publishing, particularly in the area of academic books. 

What are you looking forward to most about this collaboration? 

We are particularly excited about the opportunities this collaboration offers for enhancing the discoverability of OA books. Through our support, we hope to assist OAPEN and DOAB in expanding their platforms, making it easier for researchers and the public to access high-quality scholarly content. Additionally, we look forward to engaging with the broader OA community, sharing best practices, and contributing to the ongoing dialogue about the future of open access. This partnership also aligns with our goals of fostering innovation in research and ensuring that research is accessible to a global audience. 

How do you see this collaboration benefiting your institution? 

We see multiple benefits stemming from this collaboration. For the Bodleian Libraries, it strengthens our role in the open access movement, demonstrating our commitment to ensuring the widest possible access to research outputs. For our researchers and students, this partnership enhances access to a broader range of high-quality OA books, which is particularly valuable in an era where digital resources are increasingly vital for academic success. The OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit (https://www.oabooks-toolkit.org/) is an extremely helpful resource for authors looking at publishing their books OA – which is a task we know can be daunting and confusing. 

How have the Bodleian Libraries responded to the rise of open monograph publication?

The Bodleian has recognized the significant impact that the rise of open monograph publication will have on Oxford’s academics and researchers, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. It also acknowledges the financial implications that the libraries must address. In response, the Bodleian Libraries launched the Sustainable Open Monograph Project to explore how best to navigate these changes, especially in light of the UKRI’s longform policy. The project has examined Oxford’s publishing landscape for OA books, raised awareness among academics about relevant policies, created an Open Book Collection within the institutional repository – ORA (Oxford University Research Archive), and supported OA book schemes, publishers, and infrastructure, all with the goal of fostering sustainable open access and promoting bibliodiversity.

A key focus of our efforts has been improving the availability of information about OA books to our academic community, helping to dispel misconceptions and build confidence in OA publishing. We have published several case studies featuring Oxford authors who have successfully published OA books, each highlighting different aspects of the OA publishing experience. In addition, we developed an author checklist that outlines the OA publishing process, offering practical guidance to authors considering open access for their monographs.

How do you see OA books developing in the next five years? 

In the next five years, we anticipate significant growth in the adoption and production of OA books.  As academic institutions, funders, and publishers increasingly recognize the value of open access – and with an open access requirement for submission of longform outputs confirmed for the REF exercise after REF 2029, we expect to see a broader range of disciplines embracing OA book publishing, especially in the humanities. Sustainable OA infrastructure will likely play a key role in this evolution, with improved platforms and tools making it easier to publish, discover, and interact with OA books. We also expect greater collaboration between libraries, publishers, and OA initiatives, with yet more innovative funding models and schemes. Ultimately, we believe that OA books will become a standard part of the academic publishing landscape – though there will be many within academia who will need to be convinced that OA is an opportunity, and not simply a burden. 

About the Bodleian Libraries

The Bodleian Libraries is the library service supporting the University of Oxford.

The mission of the Bodleian Libraries is to provide an excellent service to support the learning, teaching and research objectives of the University of Oxford; and to develop and maintain access to Oxford’s unique collections for the benefit of scholarship and society.

Libraries in the Bodleian Libraries group include the principal University library – the Bodleian Library – which has been a library of legal deposit for 400 years; as well as 25 other libraries across Oxford, including major research libraries and faculty, department and institute libraries.

The Bodleian Libraries is now the largest academic library service in the UK and one of the largest library services in Europe. The Bodleian Libraries administer the University of Oxford’s institutional repository, ORA (Oxford University Research Archive), preserving and making accessible OA research produced by the members of Oxford University, including articles, research data, research theses, and longform works.

Together, the Libraries hold more than 13 million printed items, over 80,000 e-journals and outstanding special collections including rare books and manuscripts, classical papyri, maps, music, art and printed ephemera.

About OAPEN and DOAB

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a globally used, community-driven and open directory that indexes high quality peer-reviewed open access books. The primary mission of DOAB is to increase discoverability of open access books and increase trust in open access book publishing. All DOAB services are free of charge and all data is freely available.

The OAPEN Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to peer-reviewed open access books. OAPEN operates three platforms: the OAPEN Library, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB, in partnership with OpenEdition), and the OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit. OAPEN promotes and supports the global transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication.

Preserving Knowledge: The Power of Collaboration between OAPEN Foundation and CLOCKSS

by Gali Halevi, Collections Director for the CLOCKSS archive and Ronald Snijder, CTO and Head of Research at OAPEN

In the digital age, ensuring the long-term preservation and accessibility of academic and scholarly books is more crucial than ever. Partnership between CLOCKSS and the OAPEN Foundation is proving crucial.

The partnership began in 2022 when CLOCKSS, DOAB and the OAPEN Library commissioned research from Mikael Laakso[1]. Utilizing open bibliometric data sources, this study answered three questions: 1) How prevalent are OA books, 2) what web domains are responsible for offering full-text access to these OA books, and 3) to what degree can OA books be verified to be archived in trusted preservation services. Of 396 995 unique OA book records only 19% were found to be included in at least one preservation service. The results caused alarm and concern for the long tail of OA books. Read more here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7305489 .

Action required! CLOCKSS and the OAPEN Library to the rescue!

In partnership we have connected our services to safeguard valuable longform scholarship. This collaboration has been particularly powerful for smaller publishers who often lack the resources to independently secure the future of their publications. For this reason, we have concentrated on publishers that have added a small number of books available in the OAPEN Library. This group is actually quite large: we identified 164 publishers that fall within this category.

However, this is not the only thing that has come out of our cooperation. We also prepared the OAPEN Library to comply with the requirements for preservation in the Global LOCKSS Network (GLN). All book records in the Library contain a machine readable description of the licence. The GLN checks the licence on those records and ingests content with a Creative Commons licence. And this adds up, as OAPEN hosts more than 32,000 titles that have been licenced that way already and is set to grow!

The Community Comes Together

Community support has been central to the success of both CLOCKSS and the OAPEN Library. By engaging with libraries, publishers, and academic institutions, these services have expanded their capabilities and better served the needs of the scholarly community. The involvement of diverse stakeholders has driven continuous improvement, making OAPEN and CLOCKSS more inclusive and comprehensive resources for the global academic community.

The growth of OAPEN and CLOCKSS has been marked by an unwavering commitment to transparency and collaboration. By working closely with partners and the academic community, we have developed policies and practices that align with the needs and values of their users. This collaborative approach not only strengthens their infrastructure but also fosters a sense of shared responsibility among contributors.

CLOCKSS and OAPEN demonstrate a strong commitment to biblioequity by ensuring the broad and inclusive dissemination and curation of scholarly knowledge from around the world, in multiple languages. This commitment guarantees that all users, regardless of their financial resources or geographical location, have ongoing access to a diverse range of scholarly works. Both organizations promote biblioequity by supporting open access to content, which enhances accessibility and discoverability of academic resources. By providing open repositories and encouraging open access publishing, CLOCKSS and OAPEN remove barriers to knowledge, fostering a more equitable distribution of educational resources globally. Together, CLOCKSS and OAPEN play a crucial role in promoting equitable access to information, supporting a more inclusive and diverse global scholarly community.

Planning for the Future

Looking ahead, the OAPEN Library and CLOCKSS are poised to continue their growth, building on their strong foundation of community support, reliable data preservation, and a commitment to open access. By maintaining these core principles, we will remain vital resources for the global academic community, contributing to the broader movement toward more equitable and accessible scholarly communication.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the partnership between OAPEN and CLOCKSS will be essential in preserving the durability of knowledge, ensuring that scholarly output remains accessible and secure for generations to come.

About CLOCKSS: CLOCKSS is a not-for-profit, community-driven digital archive dedicated to the long-term preservation of academic content. It ensures the enduring availability of scholarly literature by securely archiving digital content from academic publishers and making it freely accessible under an open access license if the content becomes unavailable from any publisher or database. By utilizing a decentralized preservation model, CLOCKSS maintains multiple copies of digital content across a network of geographically distributed nodes, safeguarding against data loss due to technical failures or economic challenges faced by publishers. This robust approach to digital preservation supports the academic community’s need for reliable, long-term access to scholarly materials, thereby playing a vital role in maintaining the integrity and continuity of academic knowledge over time.

About the OAPEN Foundation: OAPEN started out as a project funded by the European Commission and became a legal non-profit Dutch entity in 2011. The OAPEN Library hosts, disseminates, and facilitates the preservation of open access books. The OAPEN Foundation launched the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in 2012, inspired and supported by DOAJ. It indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books. DOAB became a legal non-profit Dutch entity in 2019, managed by the OAPEN Foundation and OpenEdition. The OAPEN Foundation also manages the OAPEN Open Access Toolkit, which aims to help book authors to better understand open access book publishing and to increase trust in open access books.


[1] Laakso, M. (2023). Open access books through open data sources: Assessing prevalence, providers, and preservation. Journal of Documentation, 79(7), 157–177. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2023-0016


Addressing the recent issues with DOAB

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is an independent, not-for-profit index of  peer-reviewed open access books. Our current collection consists of 86,000+ titles from 750+ publishers and in 100+ languages.  

Lately, we have received feedback on a disruption to DOAB, noticing the website takes a while to load, times out, or even crashes. We apologise to anyone who has experienced any inconvenience. This is due to a server capacity overload. Put simply: DOAB is too large for the environment it currently runs on.  

To solve this more structural issue and provide you with an improved service, we have struck an exciting partnership with the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), see the announcement from March, and we currently are in the process of migrating our services  to the CERN Data Center. We hope to finalise this move by the end of September. 

We value our community of stakeholders and users and share in your frustration. We thank you for your continued patience with us as we navigate this challenge and move the entire DOAB (and OAPEN) environment to CERN’s Data Center.  

Guest post: Taylor & Francis – A Decade of Publishing OA Books

We are excited to share with the members of DOAB that we recently marked 10 years of open access book publishing. Negotiating Bioethics became the first fully open access Taylor & Francis book back in 2013. Ten years later, with a list of more than 1,500 OA titles and thousands of individual open chapters, we continue to strive to be one of the world’s leading open access book publishers.  

To celebrate a decade of open access books, a new collection was created by our commissioning editors who nominated 12 standout OA books of the last decade. This diverse range of titles puts a spotlight on the role of open access in sharing new knowledge with a broad readership on important global issues, including human rights, environmental justice, sustainable development and public health.

A commitment towards our vision to enhance dissemination of our OA content and cultivate a successful OA books program was boosted as early as 2017 by joining and hosting OA content on OAPEN. We are proud that we are the largest participating publisher in the OAPEN platform, as discoverability and trustworthy metadata is an important piece of the puzzle and challenge in OA book publishing.

We would like to thank our colleagues at DOAB for the opportunity to answer some of their questions below which we hope would be of interest to all of you.

What drove T&F’s decision to sponsor DOAB and why was it an important one to make?

As a leading OA book publisher, we believe that we have a role to play in supporting community driven services, as well as ensuring the widest dissemination of our content. Therefore, we are delighted to contribute to the development and sustainability of DOAB’s platform and services via our continuing Gold sponsorship.

We really enjoy collaborating with the broader DOAB team on a range of initiatives, including via the ongoing OA Book Usage Data Trust, as well as providing input to OAPEN’s Book Analytics Service, PALOMERA, and joining the innovative new PRISM initiative.

Tell us a bit about your experience with PRISM. How was your experience describing your peer review processes and what have you learnt from this?

Our participation in DOAB’s new Peer Review Information Service for Monographs (PRISM) initiative was indeed a positive experience.

It is our policy to peer review all proposed book projects before offering a contract, including open access proposals. Therefore, our open access content follows the same editorial and production processes as the rest of our book publishing including a robust peer review workflow which encompasses a large cohort of scholars, internal subject matter experts, and practicing educators who serve as peer reviewers.

During the PRISM project it was encouraging to confirm that, despite the broad range of our publishing program across over 60 subjects within HSS and STEM, our peer review processes remain thorough and consistent.

How has inclusion in PRISM been received by your community? 

Research integrity is an issue of ever-increasing importance within the broader open research movement, including addressing author concerns around the quality of OA book publishing. Therefore, it is our hope that joining initiatives such as PRISM, in which information about the peer review process is easily available to DOAB users, will help to address these wider concerns.

By providing details about when the review took place (such as at proposal stage) and the type of peer reviewer (for example, by an external reviewer), we are able to enhance the transparency and trust of OA books and to showcase the high quality of this scholarship.

How do T&F see OA book publishing developing and what do you predict your role in this might be?

We are keen to listen and are proactive in initiatives and discussions with funders, libraries, societies, and other stakeholders, with the ambition to make the option to publish open access as straightforward as possible for all involved. With this in mind, we aim to continue to innovate and experiment with new OA models to enable the long-term, sustainable transition to open access.

For example, we have recently introduced a new pilot initiative, Pledge to Open as the first step towards building a sustainable and affordable collective funding model. We continue participating in the SCOAP3 books programme opening up titles in high energy physics, at no cost to the authors. We have also now published over 100 T&F books OA via Knowledge Unlatched, including collections within African Studies, providing an alternative OA publishing solution for Africa-based scholars.

As we are all witnessing, the OA book landscape is constantly evolving, presenting a range of challenges, in particular within an international context where open access mandates and perceptions differ, especially when some countries and regions have well-established open access frameworks, while others are still getting to grips with navigating the complexities of the OA book ecosystem in their own setting.

Therefore, every stakeholder has an integral role to play to speed up the transition to open access for books and promote open research in book publishing. It is important for all of us, publishers, funders, institutions, librarians, researchers, services providers, and other key players in scholarly communication and open research to engage and work together towards aligned practices that will maximise the impact, diversity, and equity of the OA books landscape.

Maria Angelaki (Partnership Development Manager, Open Access Books)

James Watson (Open Access Books Lead)

‘Ubuntu’ in Africa and Beyond: Building a Global Community for Open Access Books

This blog post is written by Jordy Findanis, Project Manager, on DOAB’s recent participation in the workshop “Towards Sustainable Open Access Book Publishing in the African Context” at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, 7–9 February 2024.

A more equitable, inclusive and sustainable open access (OA) publishing landscape can only be achieved by engaging with communities outside the usual sphere of influence within the wider publishing ecosystem. Such an understanding informs DOAB’s mission to serve as a global discoverability service as it continues to build its collection of high-quality, academic, peer-reviewed OA books. Despite the list’s growing diversity, now including more than eighty languages and 700 publishers, there is still a strong underrepresentation of OA research from the global South, not least Africa. As part of DOAB increasingly accelerating its outreach activities in the African context, and growing our understanding of OA in the many different settings that constitute that vast continent, my colleagues Niels Stern (Managing Director) and Mary Felix-Mania (General Manager) and I welcomed the opportunity to attend the in-person workshop “Towards Sustainable Open Access Book Publishing in the African Context” held on 7–9 February at the University of Cape Town. 

Beautifully perched on the lower slopes of iconic Table Mountain, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and UCT Libraries served as an ideal venue for the three-day workshop. The remit of the workshop was to address barriers and challenges impeding open scholarly communication from flourishing in the African context and to probe opportunities and developments that can support the open agenda and grow African scholarship. In collaboration with our good colleagues from the Open Book Futures project, the UCT, Lancaster University and the Association of African Universities, we teamed up with delegates from countries all over Africa − including South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, Zambia and Namibia − to learn from each other, exchange ideas and skills, and share best practices.

Reclaiming Equity in Practice

A key issue informing the workshop from the outset was inequity within scholarly publishing. With the advent of the internet and the early drafting of OA declarations came the hope of the enfranchisement of marginalised research communities. But rather than enabling the production and dissemination of research, the very inequities that the OA movement sought to redress have become further entrenched. As the publishing landscape continues to be disproportionately “northernised,” systemic inequalities will persist and prevent a healthy and not least necessary bidirectional flow of research between the north and south. A significant point reiterated throughout the workshop was to work towards adopting practices and policies that address local concerns, that is, leveraging support for local knowledge production and developing bespoke infrastructures and resources to serve that very aim. This begs the question: how can this be done in practice?

Something that was stressed throughout the workshop was the importance of developing local infrastructures that can support African research. The University of Cape Town, for example, has made significant inroads in reclaiming ownership of its knowledge production by flipping their publishing house to a fully-fledged OA press and further developing the African Platform for Open Scholarship. Sitting within the UCT Libraries, this platform seeks to sustain diamond OA publishing, and its overarching aim is to make it possible for “the African research community to take ownership of creating and sharing its own scholarly content, which contributes to the growth and development of local research for African society,” and thus fostering a “community-based publishing alternative model that disrupts the commercial publishing system. This shift returns the control of publishing back to the researcher community.”[1] In 2023 DOAB was delighted to welcome the African Platform for Open Scholarship as one of our new Trusted Platform Network partners. Such collaborations are important as they promote the equitable flow and exchange of research, but also, crucially, as we depend on these partner platforms’ expertise and understanding of their own local research areas and cultures. We trust that, in time, this and the enhancement of similar initiatives across Africa will improve research dissemination, ensure more bibliodiversity and pave the way for bridging the global North−South knowledge divide.

There are many components that need to be in place to ensure a healthy and sustainable OA ecosystem. In dedicated workshop sessions, a wide range of important issues impinging on OA were collectively discussed, including repositories, metadata and distribution, funding, network building and advocacy, dispelling of OA myths, facilitating OA toolkits and resources, OA publishing and the production processes, and copyright and licensing. What emerged from these lively sessions was a myriad of different perspectives and experiences. Within the library space, for example, we heard of cases in which one institution had some resources and infrastructure but no policy in place, whereas the reverse would be the case for another institution. Several delegates mentioned that it was difficult to align strategies even within the same institution − as one delegate eloquently put it, using the metaphor of a band: the drums are playing in the east, the guitar in the west, the bass in the south and the singer in the north. At the end of the day, it is up to a few committed staff to align, facilitate and drive OA in their institutions with whatever resources they have at hand.  

Takeaways and Challenges

The Secretary General of the African Association of Universities, Professor Olusola Oyewole − representing over 440 African universities – spoke to some of the most immediate and pressing challenges raised by delegates as critical to overcome in a continental OA push: 1) advocacy and OA awareness; 2) capacity building for OA; 3) fostering networks, partnerships and collaboration; 4) and nurturing leadership and governance of Africa higher education institutions to respond to the needs of research communities. He proposed that AAU could serve as a vessel to leverage support in following through on key action points with concrete measures. Some of these included working closely with UCT and appointing officers at the AAU to facilitate OA-related initiatives. The assistance of a pan-African organisation such as the AAU is crucial to the promotion of African knowledge production and the infrastructures that must sustain it, but so too is advocacy and the championing of OA on a local level. Delegates acknowledged that much work needed to be done and that institutional, cross-institutional and cross-national stakeholder collaboration is important in the African context over the next years.

Though familiar challenges were discussed across the event, the recurring ones were lack of funding, infrastructure (relating to both technical challenges and repositories or service providers like DOAB), human resources and training and generally the lack of awareness about OA and incentives to solicit support from researchers, university leadership and policymakers.

A key takeaway from the workshop was that working in isolation or in a siloed manner prevents the necessary exchange of skills and resources − whether in the university, library, independent publishing house or in other scholarly communication spaces.

To sustain OA publishing there is an imperative need for collaboration and sharing – or summed up in a word spoken by many delegates, ubuntu, a nebulous word of Zulu origin that is used in many African countries. Although generally understood to mean “humanity,” the word encompasses a wide range of meanings and nuances that can also evoke a sense of the interconnectedness − or shared community − of individuals. In a research context, it is immediately clear why ubuntu is an apt word to designate community-led values, sharing research and resources to the benefit of all. No researcher, publisher, university, or library is an island unto itself − each holds an important stake in the other, and a healthy and sustainable OA environment is one in which the sum of all its parts work together, further empowering each in its turn.

We all shared the sense that the event had been a success – confirmed by post-workshop responses from participants. We learned so much from each other, made new friends, forged networks and left the workshop with a much better understanding of OA in the African context. This included the challenges that lie ahead, but also concrete ways of overcoming them. We aim to continue supporting local initiatives, including an OA landscape mapping exercise, and make best use of the momentum gathered from the workshop. DOAB will continue to make its services available to researchers, publishers, libraries and other stakeholders and to support African OA agendas. Over the next few years, we will seek to increase our outreach activities in Africa and engage with publishers, libraries and other stakeholders to continue our community-driven mission of ensuring bibliodiversity, equity and inclusion within OA book publishing.

A Word of Thanks

On behalf of DOAB, I would like to thank the University of Cape Town and UCT Libraries, and particularly Ujala Satgoor, Reggie Raju, Jill Claassen and Sai Maharaj for graciously hosting us and making our stay so pleasant; thanks also to our Open Book Futures partners, Thoth Open Metadata’s Vincent van Gerven Oei and our colleagues at the Open Book Collective, particularly Judith Fathallah and Joe Deville, for their invaluable work in bringing the workshop together; and last but not least we express our deepest gratitude to the AAU and all the other African delegates who came from near and far, for enriching the event with important perspectives from the spaces they are all working in.


[1] https://blog.aau.org/a-webinar-on-a-continental-platform-for-sharing-african-scholarship/