£5.8m project will deliver a more sustainable future for open access books
Jisc is a partner in the new Open Book Futures (OBF) project that launches in May.
The OBF, which works to increase access to valuable research, has announced it will receive more than £5.8 million in funding.
Led by Lancaster University and funded by the charitable foundation Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund, it will develop and support organisations, tools and practices that enable both academics and the wider public to make more and better use of books published on an open access basis.
The OBF launches on 1 May 2023 and builds on the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project, which was also jointly funded by Arcadia and the RED Fund. It will significantly increase and improve the quantity, discoverability, preservation and accessibility of academic content.
This will be done by building the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources needed to deliver a future for Open Access books led by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries, rather than large commercial operations.
The project also aims to deepen COPIM’s long-term impact and to make sure a wide range of voices have the opportunity to shape the future of Open Access book publishing.
To achieve this, it will strengthen existing networks in the UK and North America and engage with a diverse set of publishers, universities and infrastructure providers.
Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002, Arcadia has awarded more than $1 billion to organisations around the world.
RED supports innovation in research and knowledge exchange in higher education that offers significant public benefits.
Principal investigator Dr Joe Deville, of Lancaster University, said:
“It is exciting to be able to contribute to a project that promises to profoundly reshape the very mechanisms through which academic knowledge circulates in a context in which far too much high-quality book-length scholarship remains widely inaccessible.
“I am so pleased to be able to bring together such a talented group of scholars, librarians, publishers, infrastructure providers and advocacy groups with the skills to deliver the new technical infrastructures and ways of working that can respond to the many and varied needs of a global scholarly community.”
Neil Grindley, director of content and discovery at Jisc, said:
“Jisc is delighted to be working with consortium partners to take forward the Open Book Futures project. It will help ensure long-form academic publishing has the best possible chance of reaching everyone who will benefit from it.
“The further development of sustainable publishing business models and the establishment of broadly accepted workflows around open access books is a vital pathway to democratising access to scholarship.
“The support from Research England and the Arcadia Foundation will be transformative in helping UK HE institutions embrace and embed these evolving approaches.”
Partners joining Lancaster University and Jisc in the consortium include:
- Birkbeck, University of London
- Coventry University, Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
- Loughborough University
- Open Book Collective (OBC)
- Open Book Publishers (OBP)
- punctum books
- Thoth and Trinity College, University of Cambridge
For more details on the project, its aims and the consortium, visit the COPIM website.