Tom Mosterd

Open Access Books – Helping small libraries think big

Over the last couple of years, the OAPEN Library and Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) collections have grown significantly. We have seen more open access (OA) books being added, and welcomed new publishers from around the world. Much of the continued momentum for OA books has been made possible thanks to the support of a growing library community: investing in OA book programmes, infrastructures and services that enable not only the availability of these books in an OA format, but also their discoverability, preservation and integration into everyday workflows.

Today, we are speaking with David Dusto, Electronic Resources Librarian at the Elizabeth City State University to learn more about their engagement with OA books.

David, thank you for agreeing to share your story with us. Libraries worldwide increasingly include our collections in their library catalog. These range from large academic libraries to specialized libraries attached to research institutes as well as smaller colleges. For those unfamiliar with Elizabeth City State University, could you share a bit more about the University and its library?

Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) is a public university that is part of the University of North Carolina system. With just over 2,000 students, ECSU is one of the smallest universities in the system, and it is also a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) and approximately ⅔ of the enrolled students are minorities. Historically, ECSU started in 1891 as a teaching college, and still has a large education school. Today, ECSU is also known for its innovative aviation program. The largest U.S. Coast Guard base in the United States is also located in Elizabeth City, so we have many military students as well. The G.R. Little Library is the campus library. We have a small staff of 5 full-time librarians and two other permanent staff, and we work to meet the research and information needs of all the student body.

Could you share more about your role in the library and how you first became familiar with open access books?

I am the Electronic Resources Librarian, but my predecessor held the title “Serials Librarian”, which shows how rapidly academic libraries are changing. I first became familiar with open-access books while I was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina School of Library and Information Science over a decade ago, and have been avidly interested in the subject of both open access books and journals since then. I am also involved with the university’s institutional repository (NCDOCKS), which serves as an open-access collection for material published by students and employees at the university.

To what extent are OA books a part of your library’s strategy today?

ECSU is a small university and our budget for collection development is limited, but I have found that I can supplement our existing eBook collections by locating high-quality open-access collections and adding them to the library website and discovery system. This has been enormously helpful – usage statistics indicate that a considerable percentage of eBook views through the library website are from open-access items. Therefore, despite the small size of the library and its resources, I have been able to build a large and useful online collection for our students and faculty.

How can OA books further support your library and the institution’s mission?

It’s important for institutions such as DOAB to exercise quality control in what they add to their collection, in order for it to be as useful and relevant as possible. Ensuring that links are working correctly in OA directories will save librarians like me a lot of time and aggravation in the long run, as we won’t have to deal with authentication issues and access limits that we are often confronted with when working with subscription-based collections.

In recent years open access for books has gained momentum, yet starting from a small base with a long road ahead still. Do you have any particular expectations or wishes for the open access book community and how this may evolve in the coming years?

I hope to see more institutional support for open-access book publishing. The focus for OA materials that I have seen from universities is primarily focused on journals rather than books, and I would be pleased to see increased support from both university presses/publishing houses and also from smaller institutions that may not have their own press. This would give authors from smaller universities the opportunity to publish and raise the prestige of their own institution, rather than going through a central system press. Similarly, I would like to see increased support for open course materials, such as open-access textbooks. As textbook costs continue to rise, having open course materials not only available but also adopted by instructors would go a long way towards easing the financial burden for students while simultaneously increasing access to materials.

NWO-funded book author interview: Rens Bod

Since the start of our collaboration with NWO – The Dutch Research Council, the OAPEN Library has seen the NWO collection grow, now containing almost 200 titles. OAPEN asked 3 authors/editors of books arising from NWO-funding to share their experiences and views, the third interview is with Rens Bod:

L.W.M. (Rens) Bod is a professor in digital humanities and history of humanities at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the exploration of patterns and underlying principles in language, music, art, literature, and history. He is the author of the first historical overview of the humanities from Antiquity to the present: A New History of the Humanities. Bod is a Vici-laureate and he is currently PI in the NWO Gravitation project “Language in Interaction”.

Your recent publication is an English translation of your book that was previously published in Dutch. Published with Johns Hopkins University Press: World of Patterns – A Global History of Knowledge was made freely available under a CC-BY licence, allowing re-use. What was your motivation for publishing the translation of your book openly and under this license, in other words what was your motivation to change your pattern?

I wanted to make the book as widely accessible as possible, and open access is the best strategy to do this. Thus I learned from the publisher (JHU Press) that my book was downloaded already over 40.000 times in the first month only. So for creating impact, open access seems a fantastic way to go. As to the CC-BY licence: this was entirely the publisher’s choice.

In the acknowledgements of World of Patterns, you mention various funding sources. Could you elaborate on your experience in gathering funding for an open access version?

My previous funding sources, such as NWO Vici and NWO Gravitation, did not involve funding for open access. But in the recent past I did ask for funding to make our book series The Making of the Humanities open access(three volumes published together with Jaap Maat and Thijs Weststeijn by Amsterdam University Press, 2010, 2012, 2014). We obtained small amounts of funding from different foundations, including the J.E. Jurriaanse Foundation and the Dr. C. Louise Thijssen-Schoute Foundation. This involved quite some work, as it meant that we had to apply several times for small amounts of funding for each volume.

Did unrestricted access help you to reach new audiences compared to traditional publishing?

Definitely, I noticed that I have several readers from the Global South who might not have been able to read my book if they had to pay for it.

What is your view in general on open access academic book publishing, its benefits, or limitations?

I am generally positive and I believe NWO should use its open access fund also for books that are not the product of one of its funded project (my book was in fact the result of an NWO Open Competition project). It would be fantastic if many more scholars can publish their books open access, as it would increase accessibility which may be especially important for other parts of the world. Sure, there are also some disadvantages: it becomes very easy to re-use just a chapter or even a smaller part of the book without taking into account its context. People can simply copy and paste. But of course these are the consequences of our digital world. So far, I haven’t seen any misuse or abuse of my book, so perhaps the risks are not that high.

In World of Patterns you examined where our knowledge of the world began and how it developed. What is your perspective on the direction of knowledge development in the future?

That’s the hardest question to tackle. It appears that all knowledge will continue to be based on patterns (regularities, laws), principles (deeper generalizations, deterministic or statistical) and the relations between these two (inductive, deductive, abductive). I noticed in my historical research that there can also be patterns in the relations between patterns and principles, and even more: principles underlying these patterns in the relations. Now I realize this gets terribly abstract, but if we look at a variety of disciplines, such as artificial intelligence, digital history, medical information science and forensic science, then we find the re-use of successful derivations between patterns and principles all the time. It seems that this might be a promising way for future knowledge development.

Tom Mosterd

Behind the scenes: optimising workflows for OA books

In recent months, OAPEN and Bloomsbury Academic collaborated on optimising the workflow for getting open access books into the OAPEN Library. As publishers such as Bloomsbury Academic make a growing part of their book portfolio available open access, this calls for processes, workflows and ‘behind the scenes’ work evolve too to make these books more easily discoverable. We had a chat with Ros Pyne, Global Director, Research and Open Access to learn more about Bloomsbury & its OA book programme

Q: Bloomsbury has published over 300 open access books within various disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Having started publishing open access books in 2008, how are things different today compared to then, for you as a publisher?

We’ve grown a lot since our early days, expanding the range of arts, humanities, and social science subjects that we publish, and launching a range of leading digital resources such as Drama Online alongside our book publishing.

One big change is that back in 2008 scholarly book publishing was largely a print concern. Over the last decade and a half – and especially in the last couple of years – we’ve seen a substantial increase in demand for digital. That shift affects the dynamics of open access, and for Bloomsbury meant a move away from our original freemium model, which was reliant on print sales. Overall, though, interest in ebooks is a positive development from an OA point of view, as the digital open access book is increasingly viewed on equal terms with the print edition.

What hasn’t changed is our commitment to originality and excellence in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and our focus on communicating great ideas and scholarship to the world.

Q: Why was it important for Bloomsbury to improve this particular workflow with the OAPEN Library for its OA books, and why now?

The OAPEN Library and the DOAB have long been the premier platforms for discovery of open access books. The quality-control aspect, in the requirement for books to be peer reviewed, is particularly important. We also value OAPEN’s community governance and long-term commitment to open access books.

Up until now we’ve been uploading metadata to DOAB manually for each OA book we publish. That’s not particularly efficient, especially as our open access programme grows. Setting up a feed to OAPEN means we can populate both the OAPEN Library and our DOAB records automatically, which should make for a faster and more reliable process – better for us, for our authors, and for readers and libraries that use OAPEN’s services.

We also had broader aims in this project. Until now, we haven’t been able to include open access metadata in our external datafeeds, such as ONIX, and it’s been a priority for us this year to change this. Having accurate OA metadata is really important: it supports discovery and visibility of OA titles, and makes it easier for third-party organisations to flag OA status and so ensure we’re being fully transparent about that. We have found it incredibly helpful to work with OAPEN to refine our OA metadata and ensure we’re adhering to best practices, as we know we can trust your expertise in these matters. As we now move on to work with other discovery services which may have less experience in OA books, we can pass that along and help to embed those practices in the scholarly supply chain.

Q: We often hear from publishers that publishing open access books in parallel to non-open access books can be challenging. How do you handle these two publishing streams?

Our open access books are handled by exactly the same teams as our non-open access books, from editorial through to production, marketing, digital platform management, and print sales. That’s really important as it means that all our books receive the same care and attention from our expert staff, meet the same standards, and are promoted alongside each other. However, open access does affect almost every part of the book publishing workflow, and at each stage we have OA-specific requirements – this includes special open access terms in our agreements; adding Creative Commons information inside the book and on online product pages; flagging OA status in marketing materials and to third-parties; and of course distributing the titles to OA discovery services such as DOAB and the OAPEN Library.

Q: Finally, how do you foresee the role of the open access portion of your book portfolio to evolve in the coming years?

Open access is very much a priority for us. We know that open access books are read and cited more and reach more diverse readerships. That’s good for the scholarship we publish. And indeed, the arts, humanities, and social science communities that we serve are increasingly knowledgeable about and interested in open access for books. We see open access as integral to the future of research publishing, including for books, and we remain committed to exploring new and more equitable approaches. 

Tom Mosterd

International Open Access Week interview: NWO-funded book editor Karène Sanchez-Summerer

Since the start of our collaboration with NWO – The Dutch Research Council, the OAPEN Library has seen the NWO collection grow, now containing almost 200 titles. To celebrate Open Access Week, OAPEN asked authors/editors of books arising from NWO-funding to share their experiences and views, the second interview is with Karène Sanchez-Summerer:

Karène Sanchez-Summerer, Professor and Chair Middle East Studies, Faculty of Arts at Groningen University. She obtained her PhDs from Leiden University and EPHE (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris Sorbonne). Her research considers the interactions between European linguistic and cultural policies and the Arab communities (1860-1948) in Palestine. Currently, she is the PI of the research project CrossRoads: European cultural diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine. A connected history during the formative years of the Middle East (1920-1950) funded by The Netherlands National Research Agency (NWO). Five books by Karène Sanchez-Summerer are included in the OAPEN Library.

Just recently you published a book titled The House of the Priest. An Orthodox Palestinian Life (1885-1954) which is included in the OAPEN Library collection. This book is the result of the CrossRoads project funded by NWO. Could you tell us some more about your motivations for conducting this research project?

This project aims to revisit the relationship between the European cultural agenda and the local identity formation process, and social and religious transformations of Arab Christian communities in Palestine, when the British ruled (1918-1948). When we started, our main questions were: what was the role of culture in European policies regarding the Arabs of Palestine; how did Arab Christians use culture to define their place in the proto-national and religious configuration between 1920 and 1950? Eighteen months after the beginning of the project, we found in Lebanon (Beirut) so far unpublished and untranslated memoirs of Niqula Khoury, a senior member of the Orthodox Church and Arab nationalist in late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine. This amazing manuscript discusses the complex relationships between language, religion, diplomacy and identity in the Middle East in the interwar period. We wanted to share an annotated translation of this precious and significant manuscript to explain Khoury’s memoirs and their significance for the social, political and religious histories of twentieth-century Palestine and Arab relations with the Greek Orthodox church. Khoury played a major role in these dynamics as a leading member of the fight for Arab presence in the Greek-dominated clergy, and for an independent Palestine, travelling in 1937 to Eastern Europe and the League of Nations on behalf of the national movement.

This is one of two books, available in the OAPEN Library, from the new peer-reviewed series, Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies, published by Brill. Previously you have also published your work with Springer (now SpringerNature). What was your experience with these publishers?

I’ve published several volumes in OA the last years, with Brill, and, though different with Springer (an extended book proposal is evaluated), the process went rather smoothly. The publishers wanted to know whether the book was going to be open access before starting the editing process. In addition, you can apply for NWO’s Open access books fund only after the book has been accepted for publication by the publisher (which was my case for the House of the Priest). As for the NWO Open books grant is concerned, I thought it was a very easy process, so I recommend it to anyone who would like their book to reach out to a bigger audience. Open access might cause some delay in the publication, but the advantages are worth it.

Your recent books are published under an open license, CC-BY, making it freely available and granting others a certain level of re-use, what was your motivation for publishing the book openly and under this license?

First of all, I believe any academic endeavour should be open to the public. Since this book is the result of an NWO project, which was paid for by public funds, open access is now required. Furthermore, working as a scholar on Middle Eastern studies, I’ve seen various academic settings and open access is essential in regions where many do not have access to print copies, fewer institutions can afford subscriptions.

How do you think academia and society at large can benefit from your book being available open access?

Scholars working on the Middle East can now easily prescribe parts of the book to their students, it gives them an easy access to a source translated from Arabic, all the more relevant that it is a critical edition. They can also prescribe only some of the chapters, so that students get an idea of certain aspects only (for example the Arabs in Europe and their political representation during the interwar period). The fact that institutions/individuals don’t have to purchase the book makes it easier to prescribe only some parts of it.

It has been a while since you have published these books. Did unrestricted access in any way help you to reach new audiences? In new, unexpected ways or in any way different compared to traditional publishing? If yes, how do you know this?

The creative commons engage audiences beyond the traditional readers, broadening and diversifying the audiences who get access to the book, anyone can access it. We were contacted by various types of readers, in Europe and from the Middle East – we even received a message with photos of the persons mentioned in the manuscripts (1920’s and 1930’s). The book The House of the Priest has been published just before the summer; we are eager to receive more reactions in the future.

Looking at your own publishing journey, have your views on open access book publishing, its benefits or limitations in any way changed over the years?

I was always convinced by the necessity to share widely publications, to make them available to various audiences, and that all students and scholars, all the more so when they are from/in Middle Eastern countries, in my particular case, should easily and immediately access them. Over the years, this opinion was only reinforced.

Tom Mosterd

International Open Access Week interview: NWO-funded book editor Janneke van Bergen

Janneke van Bergen is a landscape architect and PhD researcher at the TU Delft. Over the past decade she worked in the field of water and infrastructure, including Room for the River, the National Coastal Delta Program and Studio Coastal Quality. She currently works for the ShoreScape research, funded by NWO Top Sector Water Program, to investigate Building with Nature and coastal design.

Building with Nature is a concept where nature is used to cope with climate change risks, such as floods, waves, and sea level rise. You have recently published a book on Building with Nature perspectives which is included in the OAPEN Library collection. Could you tell us some more about this concept and your research project?

Within the ShoreScape project we combine research from coastal engineering and landscape architecture to promote Building with Nature (BwN) along urbanized sandy shores. In this research we develop design principles to stimulate dune formation after nourishment and reduce the negative effects of beach urbanization. The collaboration promoted new joint insights on BwN, and gave incentive to a publication on this topic: Building with Nature perspectives. This publication was funded by NWO and DIMI, a fund focusing on interfaculty research.

You published your work in TU Delft Open Publishing which follows a diamond business model. What was your experience with the publisher?

We collaborated with Research in Urbanism Series (RIUS), a scientific journal, that took well care of the publication process within TU Delft Open Publishing.

Your book is published under an open license, CC-BY, making it freely available and granting others a certain level of re-use, what was your motivation for publishing the book openly and under this license?

I think it is important for emerging fields of science, such as Building with Nature, to share scientific perspectives and work towards an overarching agenda, besides more specialist, mono-disciplinary publications. This will help to build new layers of innovative, joint knowledge.

It has been more than a year since you have published this book. Did unrestricted access in any way help you to reach new audiences? In new, unexpected ways or in any way different compared to traditional publishing? If yes, how do you know this?

It was a good way to reach a hybrid audience of both coastal engineers, spatial designers and even social sciences to cross the bridge to other disciplines working on the concept of Building with Nature. It has increased the interest for our ShoreScape publications from both disciplines (documented by ResearchGate), that otherwise would have been limited to our own disciplines only.

This year’s theme for the International Open Access Week is “open for climate justice’’. How do you think society at large can benefit from climate research being openly available, and your book being OA (Open Access)?

Certainly, I think climate adaptation is urgent, therefore is not just an academic, but public matter where all parties should be involved in. It will help academics to open up their specialisms to the social perspective, and the public to making conscious choices for climate-proof evolution.

Tom Mosterd

Providing transparency and building trust: the Peer Review Information Service for Monographs (PRISM)

In the summer of 2021, DOAB started a new service in beta phase: PRISM (Peer Review Information Service for Monographs). PRISM’s goal is to provide transparency about the peer review process that applies to the books in DOAB. Services such as PRISM can support research integrity and help build trust in open access academic book publishing.

From beta to launch

DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers. PRISM, provided by the DOAB Foundation as part of the OPERAS Service Catalogue, was tested in 2021. Several open access academic book publishers participated in the testing phase. We are very grateful for their feedback, which resulted in fine-tuning of the service, and preparing the aimed launch of PRISM in the last quarter of 2022.

How does PRISM serve our different stakeholders (publishers, libraries, funders, and researchers)?

PRISM is a standardised way for academic publishers to display information on DOAB about their peer review processes across their entire catalogue. At the publisher level, all their peer review processes are visible (as they may have more than one process in use across all their series and titles). At the level of an individual publication, the peer review process applied to that work is displayed.

If you’re a publisher, PRISM helps you display the peer review process that has been applied to works in your collection. This helps you showcase how you apply best practices in peer review.
If you’re a librarian, PRISM allows you to see the quality control process that applies to a given work. This will give you confidence in recommending the work as a reliable source to your researchers and students.
If you’re a funder, PRISM gives you fuller information about the research outputs you’ve funded.
If you’re a researcher or a general reader, PRISM allows you to see the quality control process that applies to a given work. This will give you more information about the publisher.

How to participate in PRISM

Currently, we are preparing the launch of PRISM. This launch will be phased, where we will gradually invite publishers of open access academic books to join us. Stay tuned for more details.

In anticipation of the launch, publishers can prepare by gathering information about their peer review process(es), as this information will needed to create a PRISM record:

The title for the peer review (in order to differentiate between peer reviews)
Is the document peer reviewed? Yes/No
What is being reviewed? Proposal/Full text/Section
What is the level of openness/anonymity between author(s) and reviewer(s)? Double-anonymised/Single-anonymised/All identities known
Who conducts the review? Internal editor/Editorial board member/External peer reviewer/Crowd or open review
At what stage is the peer review being conducted? Pre-publication/Post-publication
Are the review comments published? Yes/No
Who takes the decision to publish? Publisher/Books or series editor/Scientific or Editorial Board

Keep up-to-date with the development of the PRISM service by subscribing to our newsletter or following us on Twitter: @DOABooks (and look out for #DOABPRISM!).

By Laura J. Wilkinson, Tom Mosterd and Lotte Kruijt

Tom Mosterd

The OAPEN Dashboard – a new partner service

During the UKSG 2022 Annual Conference held from May 30th to June 2nd in Telford UK we officially launched the OAPEN Dashboard¹ – a new analytics service for our library members, publishers and funder partners to help them gain a deeper understanding of the usage of open access books.

Over 179 publishers, libraries and funders are using the dashboard today and we expect to welcome more users over the coming months. The dashboard service includes data for the entire OAPEN Library which is home to over 24,000 open access books that see over 1 million COUNTER-conformant downloads per month.

The OAPEN Dashboard, includes unique features and functionalities that allow its users to gain a better sense of the uptake of open access books globally, regionally and locally. Next to this users can also look at usage by discipline or apply other filters – here we take a closer look at the perspective of a library user.

Figure 1 – Library dashboard: title view

As shown in figure 1 – from a library perspective, users can apply filters to change the ‘ending month’ for which they’d like to access the data, filter by specific funders, publishers, or item type (full book or book chapter). This allows library users to gain usage insights and run reports on subsets of the full collection of 24,000+ books.

Figure 2 – Library dashboard: geolocational usage

For libraries, the dashboard can be used to gain insights into both institutional usage (based on IP-ranges) and geolocational usage. While libraries are accustomed to measuring usage based on their IP-ranges, insights into geolocational usage offers another unique functionality helpful for understanding the uptake of open access books. Open access books, due to their free nature, do not require users to register and authenticate themselves prior to accessing these books. This enables students, researchers, and readers generally to use these books from home, a local coffee place, or a coworking environment. With this dashboard, a library –user can gain insights into the regional usage of open access books, capturing on- and off-campus usage – setting their preferred radius ranging from 20 to 500 kilometres.

To view the OAPEN Dashboard in action, have a look at one of these two-minute demonstration videos for publishers, funders or libraries.

Share your thoughts on the dashboard and next steps

Throughout this year, we will be presenting the OAPEN Dashboard service at conferences around the world. We invite our stakeholders to provide feedback and to learn more about how insights into open access book usage may help them. Next to this, we are excited to start working with colleagues at Educopia and Curtin University on the recently introduced Book Analytics Dashboard project, with more news on this becoming available soon.

To learn more about the OAPEN Dashboard service please contact Ronald Snijder (r.snijder[@]oapen.org).

Developed by Trilobiet (https://www.trilobiet.nl/)

Tom Mosterd

New functionalities for DOAB and OAPEN Library: Selective Export and KBART format

New export format: KBART

This month we have introduced a new metadata format: KBART. Adding the KBART export format to both DOAB and the OAPEN Library has been requested by the library community and offers another option for exporting our metadata and seamlessly connecting to the metadata and to open access books. The KBART export format is now available alongside the other metadata feeds on the OAPEN and DOAB websites.

Selective Export

In addition to the KBART format we have introduced a ‘selective export’ functionality for the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) & the OAPEN Library. This enables users of both platforms to export books and chapters in a flexible way: first by selecting the relevant titles and secondly by choosing the export format.

The selective export functionality makes it easier for specialist libraries, subject repositories and frequent users to only retrieve specified subsets of open access books according to their preferences. Please be aware that this export function is optimised for sets up to 500 titles.

How to use the Selective Export

Step 1: Search for books

Step 2: If needed, you can refine the export even further

Step 3: Select the export format

Step 4: The metadata becomes directly available

If you have questions about these new functionalities or wish to share feedback, please contact Ronald Snijder (r.snijder[@]oapen.org).

Tom Mosterd

Tour de Bibliothèque: The OAPEN Library SCOAP³ for Books collection

The OAPEN Library is a growing virtual library of open access books. Researchers and curious readers find their way to the OAPEN Library via a number of entrances. As they browse, land upon or virtually stroll through the OAPEN Library, what unique books may one discover on its bookshelves? Today we’ll take a tour through the high energy physics section, where we’ll find the latest collection added to the OAPEN Library: the SCOAP³ for Books collection.

Open access books in high energy physics

The SCOAP³ for Books collection currently includes over 20 open access books in high energy physics and will, as part of this pilot initiative, grow to include a set of over 100 important texts within the discipline.

This collection includes titles such as “The Standard Model and Beyond’’ written by Paul Langacker, part of the High Energy Physics, Cosmology, and Gravitation series published by Taylor and Francis (2017). This open access book provides an advanced introduction to the physics and formalism of the standard model and other non-abelian gauge theories. It provides a solid background for understanding supersymmetry, string theory, extra dimensions, dynamical symmetry breaking, and cosmology.

Next to this readers may encounter the open access book “Challenges And Goals For Accelerators In The XXI Century’’, edited by Stephen Myers & Oliver Brüning and published by World Scientific Publishing Company (2016). This book describes the past 100 years of accelerator development with a special focus on the technological advancements in the field, the connection of the various accelerator projects to key developments and discoveries in the Standard Model, how accelerator technologies open the door to other applications in medicine and industry, and finally presents an outlook of future accelerator projects for the coming decades.

The role of books for SCOAP³

These open access books are made available thanks to the work of SCOAP³ – the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics. SCOAP³ enables open dissemination of global research outputs in high energy physics and was first introduced in 2012, with the support of the European Organization of Nuclear Research (CERN).

So what is the role of the academic book for SCOAP³ and within high energy physics more generally?

The overall objective for SCOAP3 is to enable global, equitable open access for research in the discipline of high energy physics. Having successfully converted the majority of the journal literature in the discipline to open, the Consortium decided to expand the scope of the initiative to include academic books in high energy physics and related disciplines (such as accelerator physics and instrumentation).

“Through the support of members of the consortium and partnerships with key publishers, we are making important texts in our domain completely free for students, faculty and researchers around the world. The COVID19 pandemic demonstrated how important it is for content to be widely and seamlessly accessible, and we are committed to a future where research and academic texts are available openly to anyone who might need them.” – Dr. Kamran Naim, Head of Open Science, CERN

OAPEN Library collection services

Thanks to the partnership between SCOAP³ for Books and the OAPEN Library, the SCOAP³ for Books collection benefits from the various OAPEN Library collection services. These include hosting, digital preservation, dissemination and usage reporting.

The OAPEN Library includes these books as part of its metadata feeds, API schema and OAI-PMH harvesting protocol. This enables a wide range of organisations such as academic libraries, library intermediaries, research institutions, and discovery services (including Google Scholar) to provide visibility for these open access books around the world.

In the course of the next few months, more titles can be expected to be added to this unique collection of open access books.

Tom Mosterd

Guest post: Overcoming the challenges of open access books – part 2/2

We are pleased to share the second part of this guest blogpost by one of our DOAB Gold Sponsors, written by Leila Moore, Taylor and Francis. Part one is available here.

Leila Moore is Open Access Books Lead at Taylor & Francis. After graduating from the University of Reading with a BA honours in English Leila went on to a career in publishing, working across a variety of disciplines and publishing formats. A keen interest in the emergence of the open access model encouraged Leila to take the leap into open access publishing. Leila now specialises in open access books.

Overcoming the challenges of open access books – part 2/2

In part one of this series, we explored some of the challenges around policies and funding for OA books, that were highlighted by authors and editors who were kind enough to participate in interviews about their experiences with OA publishing.

In part two we will explore how we can better support researchers during the OA publication process and how the wider OA books community are collaborating to tackle the wider issues.

‘It was a bit weird that we had to do all the work for this OA publishing then as editors we would lose out on royalties.’

Although it was clear from speaking to authors and editors that financial incentives are not high on the list when it comes to the benefits of publishing monographs, the majority of the authors and editors I interviewed did mention the reduction in royalty payments as a negative outcome from OA publishing. It is worth noting that if print copies of OA books are available authors will receive royalties from these sales and studies have shown that there is minimal effect on print sales for OA books. For example, the OAPEN-CH report[1] published in 2018 indicates that making books available open access does not significantly affect print sales, these results are also in line with the OAPEN-NL report[2] published in 2013. Many authors believe the benefits of OA publishing far outweigh the financial incentives of keeping monographs behind a paywall, but for the OA community this raises some key questions about what can be done to incentivise authors to publish OA if the incentives are not financial. How are authors being recognised and rewarded for publishing OA by their academic institutions? Can publishing OA have a positive impact on academic career progression? How can publishers track and convey the impact of OA publications to better support researchers?

‘The overall situation with permissions and understanding how things go is still very complicated for all of the authors.’

Authors noted that the permissions process is complex even before you bring OA into the picture. There was a consensus that standardising the permissions process to reduce complexity and confusion would be very well received. Publishers and funding bodies need clear policies in place for managing third party material in OA books to ensure that authors can effectively comply with funder mandates and permissions rules set by third parties. This was a particularly relevant issue for authors and editors working in certain Arts, Humanities and Social Science subject areas where third party content can play an important role in the context and understanding of the work. Having to leave third party content out due to complex and expensive permissions issues can have a detrimental effect on the quality of the work.

‘I would have liked the Publisher to be more active in promoting the volumes as freely available.’

Authors noted that often OA books content is difficult to find on publisher websites and publishers could do more to make OA content more discoverable. They were also unsure about where their OA content would be available, which repositories their work would be added to and whether their work would be discoverable via the major retailers’ websites. Authors felt that sometimes they were lacking the key information that would enable them to proactively promote their work.

Working together to overcome the challenges of OA book

To overcome these obstacles, we need to work together as a community; academic institutions, research funding bodies and publishers all play an integral role in shaping the future of OA books. Book authors are looking for more consistent OA policies from academic institutions and research funding bodies. There is a need for a shared infrastructure and simpler processes that remove some of the confusion and complexity from the OA process and reduce the administrative burden on authors and editors. Authors would benefit from more consistent guidelines around how to navigate the permissions process, ensuring authors of books with a large amount of third-party content are not prohibited from publishing OA. Clear and transparent explanations about the benefits of OA publishing backed up by impact metrics from publishers and incentives from academic institutions would help to remove some of the uncertainty around OA publishing, as would providing a central place to help authors find funding and navigate the complex funding ecosystem. Open access publishing should be an option for all, irrespective of geographical location or circumstance.

The good news is that as a community we are already responding to these needs and we have been able to begin creating some shared infrastructures for OA books, such as the Directory of Open Access Books which serves as a central hub for OA books and helps to improve discoverability, the OA Switchboard which has been created to remove some of the administrative burden around APC and BPC funding and the OA eBooks Usage Data Trust project is working to improve the measurement and analysis of OA books. We may not have solved all of the problems yet, but these initiatives show that we can come together as a community to ensure the sustainability of OA books.

My thanks go out to the authors and editors who took the time to speak to me about their OA publishing experiences. Particular thanks go to:

Dr Ir Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek is an associate professor at Eindhoven University of Technology,Netherlands.

Dr. Sc. Vitalija Danivska is a lecturer and researcher in the Academy for Hotel and Facility at Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands.

Rianne and Vitalija are co-editors of the OA book

A Handbook of Theories on Designing Alignment Between People and the Office Environment

Rick Szostak is a professor at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Rick is the author of the OA textbook Making Sense of World History and the forthcoming OA title Making Sense of the Future

Jürgen Runge is a Professor of Physical Geography and Geoecology at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany. He is the director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF).

Jürgen is series-editor for the OA book Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics: The African Pollen Database

Joshua C. Gellers is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Florida, Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance Project, and former Fulbright Scholar to Sri Lanka.

Joshua is the author of the OA book Rights for Robots: Artificial Intelligence, Animal and Environmental Law

Kirsten Drotner is Professor of media studies at the University of Southern Denmark and director of two national R&D programmes DREAM and Our Museum.

Kirsten is the co-editor of the OA book Experimental Museology: Institutions, Representations, Users

Discover open access books from Taylor and Francis here

[1] OAPEN-CH – The impact of open access on scientific monographs in Switzerland: A project conducted by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2018) https://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/OAPEN-CH_schlussbericht_en.pdf

[2] OAPEN-NL – A project exploring Open Access monograph publishing in the Netherlands (2013) https://oapen.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/0cdef1a177b6470ea5257240682b38e3.pdf

Tom Mosterd

Guest post: Overcoming the challenges of open access books – part 1/2

We are pleased to share this guest post (published in two parts) by our latest DOAB Gold Sponsor, written by Leila Moore Open Access Book Lead at Taylor & Francis.

Overcoming the challenges of open access books – part 1/2

Benefits versus challenges

When I first started thinking about this article my aim was to focus on the benefits of open access (OA) books, but as I had more conversations with book authors and editors, the focus began to shift. One thing became clear to me; the benefits of OA publishing are obvious, but the challenges are more complex and varied and need to be tackled before any real progress can be made.

In part one of this two-part series, we’ll explore some of the challenges around policies and funding for OA books that were highlighted by authors and editors who were kind enough to participate in interviews about their experiences with OA publishing.

Each of the authors and editors I interviewed named wider dissemination and a more equitable research ecosystem as the main benefits of OA publishing. But they also highlighted a number of challenges which we will delve into below.

‘Dealing with different academic institutions, what are their requirements for books/book chapters/journal articles. Everybody is trying to understand the policy at their own academic institution, can they get funding or not. I think that was very complicated.’

Many of the researchers that I spoke with noted that it was not always easy to understand their own academic institution’s OA policy. It was not clear where enquiries to find out this information should be directed, or if it was at all likely that they would be able to get funding, particularly when it came to OA funding for book projects. For edited collections or multi-authored projects this is even more complex to navigate. There are differing rules for what constitutes lead author status, payments may need to be split between different academic institutions, and there may be different rules and processes to follow. For those authors who did manage to secure funding from their academic institutions the processes varied dramatically; some even varied for different book projects within the same academic institution.

‘Because authors would be expected to pay a certain amount of money for the ability to publish OA it does limit who could potentially serve as an author.’

Equitability for published authors was highlighted as an issue in OA publishing. Are the opportunities to publish OA limited to the chosen few? If an author is at a well-funded academic institution with a clear and robust OA policy, they are far more likely to apply for OA funding. How do we ensure that authors without grants or funding still have the option to publish OA? Authors and editors did note that there are policies in place to try to combat this inequality, for example, book publishing charge (BPC) waivers for authors in low and lower middle-income economies are available, but there is still a clear inequality in OA outputs from authors in these regions that needs to be addressed. Who can afford to pay the OA fee is not something that authors or editors want to consider when making their publishing decisions.

‘The money. For most arts and humanities scholars, it is much too expensive to publish a new volume OA from the start. Our programme, which is the world’s largest of its kind, only had the option because of COVID. Our funders would probably not agree to the amounts spent under normal circumstances.’

All of the authors and editors that I spoke to mentioned funding as a major obstacle for OA books. Many of the authors received funding as a one off or acquired funding due to exceptional circumstances. For example, because of COVID authors were able to divert funds that may have been spent on conference attendance. Some authors resorted to crowd funding or donations from corporations to cover the cost of OA. Innovative and new approaches are underway that seek to address, in part, the issue of funding for OA books such as the COPIM project, and publishers such as Taylor & Francis are actively engaging with innovative new approaches such the Knowledge Unlatched initiative to enable more authors to publish OA books. However, there is still work to be done to address a funding ecosystem for OA books that is not yet fully fit for purpose. Much of the additional work that is taken on by authors/editors relates to funding; trying to find funding and trying to navigate complex and diverse processes and requirements. Some of the authors that I spoke to talked about article publishing charges (APCs) and how, particularly in the Science, Technology and Mathematics subjects, it is becoming the norm for researchers to request OA funding as part of their initial research grant application, making it much easier to manage when they do eventually get an article accepted in a journal. When we talk about Humanities and Social Sciences subjects and monograph publishing, it is not that simple. A large proportion of this research isn’t funded, so who picks up the book processing charge (BPC) bill? If it is the author’s academic institution, then we need to see a more robust approach to OA policies and for OA funding for books to be more widely available.

Coming up in part two we will explore how we can better support researchers during the OA books publication process and how the wider OA books community are collaborating to tackle the wider issues.

Tom Mosterd

The Holy Grail does not exist: OPERAS-P and OASPA’s workshops for publishers on innovative business models for books

The Holy Grail does not exist: OPERAS-P and OASPA’s workshops for publishers on innovative business models for books

workshop 1 business models

By Agata Morka & Tom Mosterd

In May 2021, together with the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), OPERAS hosted a series of three European workshops on business models for open access books targeted specifically at small and medium-sized academic book publishers¹. As part of the OPERAS-P project work package 6 (Innovation) OPERAS was looking into innovative, non-BPC business models. The feedback gathered in the course of these three workshops informed a report The Future of scholarly communications, published at the end of June 2021 as an OPERAS-P project deliverable.

We have heard you

The first workshop in the mini-series was informative in nature, not only for the audience, but also for us, as organizers. Participants had a chance to familiarize themselves with six different models for OA books, ranging from these based on BPCs, national subsidies, to those relying on collaborative funding from libraries (see a short report on the first session here). From the organizers perspective, the event gave us a chance to understand which of the presented models were of particular interest for the gathered participants. The following two workshops were therefore shaped by what we heard in this first one. It became clear that the community sought to explore non-BPC approaches, these based on collaborative funding in particular, in more depth.

Following this desire, we invited Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, from Punctum books (see his presentation here) and Rupert Gatti from Open Book Publishers to talk about mixed collaborative funding models for the first session. Martin Paul Eve and Tom Grady graced the second one (see their presentation here) discussing their Opening the Future idea (now nominated for the ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing). In these focused workshops thirty small and medium-sized academic book publishers came together to ask questions, express their doubts, and discuss challenges they encounter when it comes to OA books.

The Holy Grail of OA book publishing

Recent studies on OA book business models has shown that there is no one model that will suit all cases. Both the OPERAS white paper from 2018, and the 2020 COPIM report came to this conclusion and our workshops further proved it. Publishers in both workshops stressed the importance of circumstances in which every single one of them operates: different approaches might apply for OA born publishers than to those seeking a full or partial transition to OA. Regional context, with existing publishing traditions, also comes into play as a factor affecting the choice of the pursued model: while publishers from Germany were less reluctant about applying BPC-based models given the fact that their researchers are used to paying for publication under traditional models, others found OBP and Punctum’s approaches more appealing.

University presses looking into transitioning towards OA expressed interest in applying the Opening the Future model, although some doubts about its scalability were also voiced. The discussion showed that while the Holy Grail of OA book publishing does not exist, what does exist however, is a strong will to experiment with various approaches, spearheaded by small and medium sized academic book publishers.

Do you speak digital?

Among challenges raised by the workshop participants two stood out as the most common: these of production and distribution processes. Some publishers expressed a certain anxiety when it comes to dealing with “all things digital”, starting from offering formats other than PDF, to assigning DOIs and creating high quality metadata. A certain lack of technical expertise was found troubling and, in some cases, resulted in production and distribution parts of the publishing process being outsourced or simply neglected. Distribution of digital copies proved to be somewhat of a terra incognita, and navigating between the DOAB, Google Books and Amazon proved to be no trivial endeavor, especially for non-OA born publishers. Some participants found learning digital intimidating and saw it as a substantial hurdle to overcome. It became clear that strong support is needed in this area. In this context COPIM-originated Thoth, an open bibliographic metadata management and dissemination system, gained a lot of interest among the participants. Discussion about its features dominated the second workshop with Rupert Gatti and Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, both engaged in the development of this project.

Let’s collaborate on collaboration

One of the most important takeaways of the two workshops was perhaps the realization that events of this type are found truly helpful by the community. We received several emails following the workshops stressing their relevance and usefulness. The opportunity to discuss a particular model with colleagues who are practicing it, in the spirit of openness and sharing, might be a powerful tool to encourage a larger uptake in OA book publishing initiatives. We would like to continue this best practice exchange to enable interested publishers to pick and choose from existing models and create their own, tailored solutions that would be most suitable for their needs. As the first step in this direction, we will be launching a publishers’ database with case studies of different models, open to everyone to use and contribute their own cases. We are looking forward to officially launch the project in the autumn 2021. For now, mark the database link and stay tuned for further developments.

Tom Mosterd

While these three workshops focus on innovative business models and approaches used within Europe, we would like to emphasise similar innovative business models have been implemented outside of Europe too. [↩]

Crowd-funding the Open Science and Open Access Infrastructure: Reports from the Field 2/2

As part of the 2020 Charleston Conference we participated in a, virtual, Lively Discussion organised by SCOSS and moderated by Vanessa Proudman (SCOSS). During this session, Eelco Ferwerda (DOAB / OAPEN) together with Lars Bjørnshauge (DOAJ), Kevin Stranack (PKP) and Silvio Peroni (OpenCitations) shared their reports from the field forming the basis for an exciting conversation around the crowd-funding of Open Science and Open Access infrastructure.

This blog post is a short summary of this session, the reports, discussion and some of the questions asked. It is split in two parts, this being the second part including the lively discussions and some of the questions. Part one can be found here.

Questions

SCOSS: What particular risk does your service face if it is not sufficiently funded and how would it affect the open science community?

PKP: I think we really face two primary risks. The first being that, without sufficient funding, the pace of our development and level of innovation slows down. This’d be concerning since this would mean we’d fall behind with the commercial sector in terms of development of features and general levels of innovation.

Second, we give away a lot of free support, free documentation, free online support and learning how to use our services. Having to cut back in this area could result in a downward spiral as we can offer less help to the community which can impact the adoption of our tools and services.

OpenCitations: We need manpower to manage the technical infrastructure, such as the server, and also developers who maintain and develop new services, e.g. to allow for new data queries via the REST API. We need people to work on that, to make these services a reality and make sure they are used by the Open Science community.

DOAB & OAPEN: We’re not publicly funded, or part of an institution. So if we cannot fund our activities we are faced with the risk that we may have to shut down. So we do rely on support from the community to provide our services.

SCOSS: Has your not-for-profit status made any difference compared to the commercial players with your users, members or clients?

PKP: our independence has really allowed us to be led by the community and not by shareholders. It has allowed us to translate our software into 40 languages, and give away the software and everything around it for free in multiple languages. Enabling those around the world to really make use of the software.

OpenCitations: Our independence allowed us to serve the community without an ulterior motive. We follow Open Science principles, our data is completely freely available. Since there is no commercial interest, we can make everything available without limiting users to earn revenue.

DOAB/OAPEN: The mission is essential to what we do. Commercial considerations would have probably prevented us from starting such an infrastructure at all.

Questions from the floor

Do you have any efforts underway to reach beyond libraries to reach richer funders to support these wonderful services? As libraries are, especially in these times, under budget pressure and our coffers are slim.

SCOSS: SCOSS is starting to talk to funders but at the same time we are talking to libraries and with COVID this is particularly challenging. However, even if it is just 500 dollars that can be contributed, or a similar small amount, this all contributes to the greater good of open infrastructure. After all, the consequences of not supporting these infrastructures might lead to these infrastructures disappearing, and as a consequence this might mean that you face having to develop and offer this service at a higher cost yourself or alternatively a commercial party takes over with a prospect of vendor locked in.

DOAJ: In DOAJ we have more or less a policy not to apply for grant funding. So far we have managed. To rely on crowd-funding from many individual institutions has brought us a lot of good things, it is as well a channel to listen and learn from the community. While COVID has brought many bad things, as a former Librarian, it has also meant less traveling and conferences saving some budgets, and this might be an option, though perhaps not for all. But we have to be creative these days and small contributions help us a lot.

PKP: We’ve also been able to count on some additional areas of funding, such as paid services on top of our free offerings. Everything we do we give away for free. Now if a library wants to use our software but doesn’t have the technical ability to host it themselves they can pay us to host these services. So I think all of these projects we are all looking at innovative ways to sustain ourselves in addition to the crowd-funding, but the crowd-funding has proven extremely helpful because it allows us to focus and spend directly on our operations. Grants often have strings attached, but typically don’t pay the day-to-day operations.

One of the big things that libraries have justifying to University administration is investing in crowd-funding initiatives that are freely available. What is the return on investment for that crowd-funding investment? And also, how do we choose between different investment opportunities?

SCOSS: SCOSS helps take the pain out of the infrastructure funding selection process since we vet infrastructure in need of immediate funding on an annual basis on your behalf; recommending 2-3 infrastructure (after rigorous evaluation) in need of funding on an annual basis.

PKP: I think this is the core question. Part of it is having this conversation about the values of these projects and what are some of the problems library budgets have found themselves in because of the commercial dominance within traditional publishing. We’ve seen the cost of publishing gone up and up. And then there are some infrastructures here, some communities and some librarians that got together and are showing an alternative way. Though it is still early days, things are changing and we can think about how we want to be part of this change. I think all of the projects here offer benefits so it is not just writing a check.

How does membership and support of these excellent organizations translate into annual communication about annual achievements so we can use these to convince the others?

SCOSS: For all the SCOSS infrastructures on the call today, they have completed the thorough application process including what their plans are and what they plan to do with their fundraising target. The infrastructures also have to enter into a contract with SCOSS which includes obligation to report what they have achieved from the work plan at the end of the year. SCOSS also publishes these reports , so you, as a contributor, know where the funding is going.

End of part 2.

Help sustain the SCOSS infrastructures. More information here.

Tom Mosterd

Crowd-funding the Open Science and Open Access Infrastructure: Reports from the Field 1/2

This blog post is a short summary of this session, the reports, discussion and some of the questions asked. It is split in two parts, this being the first part including background information on SCOSS and the field reports from the various infrastructures. Part two, which you can find here covers the discussion and some of the questions part of the discussion.

What is SCOSS?

Vanessa Proudman: SCOSS, which stands for the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science, is an initiative formed in 2017. So what problem is SCOSS trying to solve?

Over the last fifteen years, we have seen critical non-for-profit open science and open access support services develop and we have come to depend on many of these, with our services, or policies that have been developed. Many of these services initially starting out as projects or receiving initial funding have grown and developed but now some of them are on somewhat unstable footing. What happens to those services that have served us well over time but are struggling now to operationally continue and further develop? Will the community step up now to sustain these services and encourage diversity and equity in the scholarly communications ecosystem? The SCOSS mission is to provide a new coordinated cost-framework to help ensure not-for-profit open science infrastructure are sustained.

SCOSS is a community-led and governed initiative. Mainly consisting of networks of academic libraries including ARL and CARL among others. SCOSS forms a consolidated voice that vets open science infrastructure before recommending anything to you, the community. Furthermore, SCOSS encourages good governance in anything they promote.

SCOSS is not a subscription or payment agency and thus do not collect any funds, these funds go directly to the individual infrastructure. Encouraging potential funders, libraries, to build direct relationships with these infrastructure service providers.

Thus far 2.35 million dollar has been committed to Open Science infrastructures.

Reports from the field

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

Lars Bjørnshauge: The SCOSS program has made a real difference for the DOAJ. Thanks to the SCOSS program many new supporters joined and existing supporters were willing to grow their commitment in order to help sustain the DOAJ. Thanks to support received due to the SCOSS recommendation significant improvements have been made in technical improvements, reducing the backlog, creating more efficient processes, for instance for handling applications, and many other improvements to the DOAJ platform.

Our mission is global, to help publishers to do a better job and see to that open access journals are made as visible as possible. We operate in over 60 languages, and have been able to put together a brilliant team thanks to the funding support we have received from libraries through SCOSS. It has been a pleasure for us to participate in SCOSS and I’m very fond of it as it is one of these initiatives that is getting things done as we speak.

While for individual libraries, the level of support may just be the equivalent of 1 or 2 article-processing-charges (APCs), it means a lot to us and thanks to the crowd-funding effect makes a real difference for us.

Public Knowledge Project (PKP)

Kevin Stranack: The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit started on the principles of openness with the goal of increasing the quality, access and diversity of the voices heard in scholarly publishing. We’ve developed Open Journal System (OJS), which anyone can use and modify to run their own high quality journal as what we often refer to as WordPress for journals.

With over 10,000 journals being published from almost every country in the world. Library publishing has taken of internationally, many of the journals using Open Journal Systems are in the DOAJ and we actually work closely with the DOAJ team on helping journals apply and assist the DOAJ staff in any way we can.

Translated OJS in over 40 languages, thanks to which we think uptake has been so great. Volunteers contribute code, write documentation, and donate financially. We’ve developed a community based governance structure and a technical committee to advice on our future software directions.

Supporting an international community of this size really requires financial support. We give everything away for free so we must rely on these funding sources for maintaining and further developing the infrastructure.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) & OAPEN

Eelco Ferwerda: The DOAB and OAPEN are two interconnected services dedicated to open access for academic books. Both operate globablly, OAPEN launched 10 years ago, and works with publsiehrs and research funders to hosts books. By contrast, the DOAB only hosts metadata for books and provides links to the freely available open access edition on the publisher website.

Both platforms make the metadata freely available in various formats for download and integration into library systems and third-party aggregator systems. DOAB became its own independent non-profit entity in 2019 governed by OAPEN and OpenEdition. It currently host over 32,000 open access books and chapters from over 400 publishers around the world.

DOAB has become a global hub for open access books and it must recognize the diversity and publishing practices around the world. This connects with efforts around quality assurance which is essential to achieve trust. Currently, the DOAB is developing a certification services for peer-review practices to improve quality assurance and transparency for open access books.

OpenCitations

Silvio Peroni: OpenCitations has been established as a fully free and open infrastructure to provide access to global scholarly bibliographic and citation data and to have quality coverage of data to rival proprietary services in this area. OpenCitations is not-for-profit and all our services are free though we have costs to maintain and keep this available for free.

We provide data containing more than 700 million citations that the community can use and re-use for any purpose. Such data can be crucial as a vehicle for making national and international research evaluation excellence exercises and to make such activities more transparent and reproducible compared to other proprietary services. As a librarian, you can use our citation data through the to enhance or develop new tools that can support your authors, students or institutional administrators. For instance, by providing metrics or new discoverability tools.

The community is directly involved in the governance. One can become a member of opencitations, or support us through a one-off financial donation. Through this you can become involved and play a part in the OpenCitations governance structure.

End of part 1

Help sustain the SCOSS infrastructures. More information here.

Tom Mosterd

OA Week 2020 Interview: the Dutch Research Council (NWO) funding for Open Access Books

The OAPEN Library is a partner of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and provides a quality hosting environment for all peer-reviewed academic books, book chapters and collected volumes which are the result of or report on research funded partly or in whole by NWO and are primarily aimed at an academic reading audience.

The interview below discusses the new funding scheme for Open Access books introduced by the NWO in June 2020. The first two books financed through this new funding scheme can be found on the OAPEN Library:

Worlds of Labour Turned Upside Down : Revolutions and Labour Relations in Global Historical Perspective; Brill; https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/42483

The Journeys of a Taymiyyan Sufi : Sufism through the Eyes of ʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Wāsiṭī (d. 711/1311); Brill; https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/42527

An overview of all 89 NWO-funded Open Access books can be found here.

This interview is a cross-post from the interview posted on the Open Access Books Network on October 21st 2020 which can be found here.

Start of interview

Amidst a year filled with turmoil and change, the International Open Access Week makes it annual return (19-26 October). Its theme is ‘Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity & Inclusion’. As part of Open Access week the Open Access Books Network (OABN) would like to zoom in on a few developments in the open access books world through a series of interviews. As part of this second interview Agata Morka (OABN) spoke with Hans de Jonge (Dutch Research Council, NWO) to learn more about their recently announced funding scheme for open access books.

Agata Morka (OABN), Hans de Jonge (Dutch Research Council, NWO), October 2020

As part of the OA week we want to focus on developments in OA books; could you give us a short overview of your initiative in 2-3 sentences as an introduction?

At the Dutch Research Council NWO we have recently launched a dedicated funding scheme for Open Access Books. It is part of our strategy to step up our efforts for Open Access and Open Science in general.

How would you describe your initiative to someone who knew nothing about it?

At NWO we are deeply committed to making sure the results of our funding are made openly available. Open Access to journal articles have over the years become an established practice. For NWO in 2019 around 68% of all scholarly papers are openly available. The transition to Open Access for academic books has been much slower, which carries the risk of leaving disciplines behind for which the book is (and hopefully will remain) an essential means of scholarly communication. In the Netherlands around 40% of scholarly output in social sciences and humanities has a “bookish” format. NWO wants to contribute to making sure that at least the part of those books that are the result of NWO research funding will become available in Open Access. That’s why we have launched a new funding scheme for Open Access books.

What is the main goal/ambition of the project and why?

It is becoming increasingly clear that Open Access has the same benefits for scholarly books and monographs as for scientific papers. Open Access books are more findable, are downloaded more, are cited more and have a much wider readership than non-OA books. Unlike in countries such as the UK, where we have seen a series of very inspiring reports, there has not been much debate about Open Access books in the Netherlands. Only recently it was stated in the National Plan on Open Science (NPOS) that the aim is to extend Open Access to academic books and other formats. Together with colleagues Eelco Ferwerda, Jeroen Sondervan and Astrid van Wesenbeek we prepared a note for the NPOS. In our view the reason why Open Access books are lagging behind is: (1) a lack of policies (it is not clear whether books are in or out of scope of existing OA policies in the Netherlands), (2) a lack of funding and (3) persistent misconceptions about Open Access and a clear need to communicate about the benefits of Open Access for books. With the new Open Access book fund, NWO wants to contribute to help solve the funding problem. But we also updated our OA policies with regard to books as part of our new Plan S compliant OA policy. It is now crystal clear that we expect books that are the result of project funding by NWO awarded from January 1 2021 onwards to be made Open Access, either by publishing in Open Access or by taking the repository route (also known as ‘Green’ OA). We have partnered with the OAPEN-library so that it will become our dedicated Open Access book repository for this purpose.

What is the biggest problem you are trying to solve and how?

NWO has always allowed its grantees to use (part of) their grant money to pay for open access fees. This also includes possible book processing fees charged by publishers. The problem, however, is that very often books are long in the making and often will only get published a significant period of time after the NWO research project has ended. This effectively makes it impossible to use our grant money. The new Open Access book fund wants to solve that problem by providing post-project funding for books that are the result of NWO funding.

What one thing would best help you achieve your goal?

In developing this new funding instrument I have been very fortunate to have received the help and advice of many in the Open Access book community. Experts from the Netherlands like Eelco Ferwerda and Jeroen Sondervan, but also from sister councils in Austria (FWF) and Switzerland (SNSF) where similar funding instruments have been developed in recent years. And also the contacts with some of the commercial book publishers in preparing this funding instrument have been very inspiring.

As an organization how do you respond to this year’s OA week theme, ‘Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion’?

Last year I attended the OASPA conference in Copenhagen where these issues were brought forward very prominently by Professor Sarita Albagli. Her presentation has made a big impression on me. Also, as members of cOAlition S NWO is of course very well aware of the critique around the APC-based business models that have come up in the West. And although I think cOAlition S has genuinely tried to be as agnostic as possible as regards business models, I do understand the critique from parts of the world where alternative, very well-functioning and most probably also more equitable models have been developed. I am glad that, together with Science Europe, cOAlition S has now taken the step to commission a study on these alternative Diamond business models. I hope this will lead to a better understanding and ultimately to more equitable and inclusive OA business models.

What question do you wish we had asked but didn’t, and why

Where does your passion for Open Access come from?

One of the things that made the biggest impact on me when I graduated and started my working life outside of the university some 20 years ago was the inability to access scholarly literature. From one day to the other suddenly my library pass was blocked and I couldn’t access the vast digital (and physical) collections to which I had become accustomed. Frustration about this grew over time as I worked as policy advisor at several organisations that just couldn’t afford access. It’s simply absurd working as a policy advisor in higher education but not being able to access the most recent papers on the topic you are working on. I found my way around it obviously, as we all do. But I am very thankful from my current position to be able to contribute towards opening up all the research that is being done in the Netherlands!

End of interview