Often when we talk about open access (OA), we talk about research articles in journals, but for over a decade there has been a growing movement in OA monograph publishing. To date, Oxford University Press (OUP) has published 115 OA books and that number increases year on year, partly through an increasing range of funder initiatives and partly through opportunities to experiment.
Often when we talk about open access (OA), we talk about research articles in journals, but for over a decade there has been a growing movement in OA monograph publishing. To date, Oxford University Press (OUP) has published 115 OA books and that number increases year on year, partly through an increasing range of funder initiatives and partly through opportunities to experiment.
Increasingly, the policy conversation recognises that the drivers for OA are as applicable to books as they are to research articles, and research funders and policy makers are looking for ways to increase the volume of OA book publishing, but how simple is it to apply the accelerator?
The value of the monograph has been questioned over recent years. Some commercial publishers have withdrawn from monograph publishing, and budgets for monographs have been squeezed. Despite being warned during this time that, if we simply listened hard enough, we would hear the death knell sounding for the academic monograph, a report published by OUP and Cambridge University Press last year found that it was very much alive. Respondents came in their thousands to advocate for it as a format and to confirm that they had no intention of giving up on it. This is supported by the growth in usage for Oxford Scholarship Online and the University Press Scholarship Online service which confirms that discoverability and access to our monographs at the point of need has never been better.
At the same time the report showed that there are now new and emerging expectations for what the monograph is and it was refreshing to see that both authors and readers expect the monograph to evolve. As open research is increasingly a foundational goal for scholarly research, the monograph must also adapt if it is to continue to be a vital resource within scholarly communications. The challenge that lies ahead of us, however, is to be mindful of both the vehicle and the terrain—how do you accelerate that evolution while protecting the value and sustainability of the monograph format?
It sounds obvious but there are significant differences in what books are, and how they develop from a period of research with practical consequences for the extent to which processes that have been applied to open access journals can be made to apply to open access books. There are several reasons for this:
There are several reasons for this:
OA is already a successful publishing model for some monographs with the most popular OA books published by OUP receiving upwards of 10,000 downloads. We publish over 1,500 monographs every year so the opportunity for greater growth and dissemination through an OA model is sizeable but the risks in the current shifting landscape are also significant.
The theme of this year’s International Open Access Week is “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion”. There are many angles to this which must be addressed for a more equitable future to the world of academic research and, as a university press, maintaining and expanding the future of the monograph is a particularly important. We are one of the world’s primary monograph publishers and we are accountable for ensuring that the publication model is equal and inclusive for all scholars, both in terms of funding and dissemination. A model that only works for some scholars in some institutions in some fields is not viable for an equitable future. We need to ensure that the monograph, such a key part of the scholarly discourse, has a viable future for all.
While we don’t have all of the answers and cannot do this alone, we do have some important questions that must be tackled if we are to move the discussion forwards:
As we reach the end of International Open Access Week for another year, these are the questions that we will be taking forward in our conversations with policy makers and funders alongside our own publishing models as we look to support our authors and readers through the transition to a more open world for research.
Andy Redman is Editorial Director for Law at Oxford University Press. He’s one of the leaders of OUP’s open access books publishing programme and sits on the Academic Publishing Council of the UK Publishers’ Association.
This post originally appeared on the OUPblog
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