Introducing the Open Book Collective (OBC)

Snyder L. (2023). Introducing the Open Book Collective (OBC). Tietolinja, 2023(1). Pysyvä osoite: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2023062865285

The recent policy shifts towards Open Access (OA) scholarship have envisioned promise to a world where OA could be an accessibility standard, yet there remain concerns about its implementation. While larger publishers are adapting to new OA policies and University presses are creating their own funding models, there are concerns about the sustainability and equality of OA publishing. Book Processing Charges (BPCs) present a high expense barrier to authors looking to publish OA, favoring large legacy presses and perpetuating systemic inequalities. Additionally, the commercialization of OA infrastructure can lead to monopolization and serve the interests of shareholders rather than the communities they serve. In response to these concerns, alternative funding models are crucial for supporting and delivering OA books in equitable and accessible ways to the widest variety of international readers and authors. The Open Book Collective (OBC) is a non-profit charity platform that allows for the support of smaller OA presses through collective library funding, fostering resilience and bibliodiversity through cooperation and knowledge-sharing. The OBC is a crucial component for the long-term viability of OA publishing and dissemination, providing open knowledge sharing and encouraging more informed decisions about the long-term management of librarians’ investment in consortial library funding programs. By bringing together publishers, publishing service providers, and scholarly libraries, the OBC promotes mutual aid and collaboration while also serving as a tool for users to easily discover, compare, and support various OA book initiatives.

Scholarly Landscape in Transition

As policies demanding Open Access (OA) scholarship increase,^[1] presses are quickly adapting to a new OA reality. Large publishers are brokering transformative OA agreements^[2], and a wave of University presses have introduced their own OA funding models.^[3] Additionally, smaller presses – particularly ‘born-OA’ presses like Open Book Publishers and punctum books – are playing a crucial role in paving the way for the scholarly landscape’s transition to OA.^[4]

Funder mandates requiring OA have raised hopes of it becoming an international accessibility standard; however, there remain concerns about the sustainability and equality of this shift. One major concern relates to Book Processing Charges (BPCs) which present a barrier to publishing open access. In Finland, an open science and research monitoring exercise concluded that the expenses of OA Article Processing Charges (APCs) and BPCs totaled 4 million euros in 2021.^[5] Institutions and funders covering BPCs also result in favoring large legacy presses, which can lead to less diverse scholarship and perpetuate systemic inequalities.

Another concern includes the commercialization of OA infrastructure. A well-known example is the acquisition of Knowledge Unlatched, which was founded as a not-for-profit organization in 2012 but sold as a for-profit company in 2016.^[6] Such acquisitions can also lead to the monopolization of the market, which is concerning because for-profit companies answer to their shareholders, not to the communities that they serve. The unease caused by commercial entities is so pervasive that the International Open Access week recently announced its theme for 2023 as “Community over Commercialization.”^[7] Faced with the threat of acquisition or commercial takeovers as well as BPCs, funding models are essential to support and deliver OA books in equitable and accessible ways to the widest variety of international readers and authors.

The Open Book Collective (OBC), and its platform, makes it possible to support smaller OA presses, not based on BPCs, but collective library funding.[8] The OBC is a non-profit charity consisting of a community of publishers, publishing services providers, librarians, and OA experts who jointly manage and govern the collective and its online platform. The platform enables research institutions to survey and support various OA initiatives seeking financial aid. The OBC is based on mutual aid and non-competitive collaboration, and in this article, we will discuss its history and how it functions as a values-based community. Our argument is that in order to advance progress in scholarly communication, we need diverse partners working together on solutions and strategies for the long-term viability of OA publishing. Especially for librarians and publishers, it is particularly crucial to develop these solutions and strategies together rather than in isolation. The OBC aims to foster resilience and bibliodiversity^[9] through cooperation and knowledge-sharing, rather than individual initiatives seeking to grow larger at the expense of competitors. Ultimately, the OBC provides open knowledge sharing, and as a result, encourages more informed decisions about the long-term management of librarians’ investment in consortial library funding programs.

Background

 The OBC was born out of the Community-led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. Funded by Research England and the Arcadia Fund, the three-year COPIM project was launched in 2020 to develop open access (OA) publishing infrastructures for monographs. It brought together OA publishers, librarians, academic researchers, and open-source tool builders to improve the sustainability of OA book publishing and integrate them into universal knowledge systems. One of the project aims was to create new funding models for OA books, which led to the establishment of the OBC.

In order to develop the OBC, we conducted research that gathered information from librarians, funders, researchers, and policymakers from various countries about the support for open access books in their communities. We inquired about funding for OA books within their institutions and countries and discussed the challenges faced by libraries in transitioning from acquiring content to subscribing to various platforms for content access.

From these conversations, we concluded that despite operating in different contexts within scholarly communications in different parts of the world, many of us share a common goal to promote open content and technical infrastructure within local and global learning and research communities. To achieve this effectively, we need to create stronger and interconnected communities and collectives guided by mutual aid and collaboration, where OA content and tool creators work with librarians, researchers, funding, and policy agencies to govern these collectives together.

 The OBC’s online platform is a space that brings together publishers, publishing service providers, and scholarly libraries to secure the diversity and financial futures of open access book production and dissemination. It is a crucial component, serving as a tool for users to easily discover, compare, and support various OA book initiatives. Through the platform, users can explore the values, mission, and offerings of different OA academic publishers and infrastructure providers. It also allows publishers to promote their activities and manage funding from libraries and other institutions. The platform offers membership programs for publisher collectives, individual publishers, and publishing service providers, instead of focusing on individual book titles or bundles. Users can choose to support these initiatives on an annual or multi-year basis. By joining the OBC, funders gain a sense of ownership and become strategic partners in the (r)evolution of OA publishing and dissemination.

The platform has a shared catalogue that provides detailed metadata and allows librarians to search for books by subject area or press. The catalog is also a useful tool for funders to explore and compare different member initiatives and discover publishers and open tools builders that may not have been as visible but are worthy of funding. As more publishers join the OBC, the catalog will continue to expand. Serving as the foundation for the shared catalog is the open metadata management system, Thoth, also developed by the COPIM project. As additional OA presses adopt Thoth as a metadata management system and discovery platform, it will expand significantly.

Funding Model — Transparent and Fair

The OBC offers a funding model to support small to medium sized OA publishing initiatives emphasizes mutual aid and anti-competitive collaboration. While most OA initiatives seek funding independently, the OBC operates on a distributive business model, gathering small annual contributions from a wide network of institutions that offer an effective and sustainable funding method for OA books and service providers. This funding scheme will look somewhat similar to other library-funded OA initiatives like Lyrasis’s Open Access Community Investment Program and SCOSS. However, the OBC is notable for its distribution costs.^[10] The OBC retains 10% of the income paid by a library or other supporter and a 12.5% fee for new subscribing members.^[11] The income retained by the OBC is used to cover operational costs, but more notably, the OBC’s Development Fund, and the creation of Toolkits all of which support the wider OA book publishing ecosystem.

Funds distributed to the OBC’s Development Fund and the OBC Toolkits provide a unique aspect of the OBC. The Development Fund enables individual members to sustain and expand their operations, and to seed-fund new OA book initiatives through small grants. The OBC Toolkits, created in tandem with other COPIM Project work packages, offer guidance to OA publishers and publishing service providers to develop and innovate their operations. The OBC’s mutual aid and support model enables libraries and other knowledge institutions, publishers, and publishing service providers to collaborate through a consortial funding model for OA books, distinct from other OA platforms that rely on library funding.

The OBC’s funding model differs from other library-funded OA initiatives in its emphasis on collective support rather than competition. All fees are transparently communicated on the OBC’s platform and, as said, the OBC is notable for its distribution costs. The OBC’s funding scheme allows libraries to support both the OBC as a whole and the individual initiative they have chosen. This funding decision has a significant impact, which libraries can highlight as part of their collection’s strategies.

The OBC is not just a financial intermediary between OA initiatives and funders. The OBC has been designed to empower a unique collaborative community of OA creators, researchers, and libraries and other funders with vested interests in promoting non-proprietary the landscape of non-proprietary OA initiatives.

Governance – Led by Community

The OBC’s governance should reflect membership diversity, be led by the community, ensure democratic representation, fairness, and transparency, while also embodying true global inclusivity that doesn’t favor the Global North. To achieve this, the OBC adopted an ”Association” model for the organization. This model allows for a wider membership, including voting members other than the Trustees, as opposed to the ”Foundation” model where only the Trustees have voting rights. The OBC’s governance has been structured to strike a balance between the decision-making power of the members (whom we call Custodians) and the responsibility of the trustees (whom we call Stewards) for running the organization. The membership includes OA publishers, OA infrastructure providers, librarians, and other funders, while the Board of Stewards represents all these constituencies and includes external OA Research Experts. The OBC’s governance has been designed to ensure that it is responsive to both its funders and the larger ”community of communities” dedicated to OA book publishing.^[12]

As the OA presses and tool builders are also financial beneficiaries of the OBC, our governance model ensures that the interests of the community are protected at all times. The majority voting position held by the funders and OA experts on the Board of Stewards ensures that the OA initiative beneficiaries are more responsive to the larger community of actors in the OA landscape.

Ultimately, the governance of the OBC aims to empower a collaborative community of OA creators, researchers, libraries, and other funders, along with OA experts, to transform academic book publishing towards a fully open public commons.

Conclusion – Fostering Bibliodiversity

Since the launch of the OBC last December, we are calling new publisher and infrastructure provider members as well as library supporters to join us. At this point in time, the OBC’s members include: African Minds, mediastudies.press, mattering press, Open Book Publishers, punctum books, and White Horse Press as well as infrastructure providers DOAB, OAPEN, and Thoth. As more members join the OBC, it will continue to expand and foster bibliodiversity through cooperation and knowledge-sharing.

The OBC is continuing to expand its work with The COPIM project, and the grant Open Book Futures project (OBF) funded by Research England and the Arcadia Fund. From May 1, 2023, to April 30, 2026, the OBC specifically plans to strengthen its established networks in the UK and North America but also engage with publishers, universities, and infrastructure providers in various national and linguistic contexts, such as Africa, Australasia, Continental Europe, and Latin America.^[13]

Works Cited

Deville, J. (2023). Beyond BPCs: Reimagining and re-infrastructuring the funding of Open Access books. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.bd1b0402

Gerakopoulou, E., Penier, I, &and Deville, J. (2021). The Promise of Collaboration: Collective Funding Models and the Integration of Open Access Books into Libraries, Community-led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM), https://zenodo.org/record/4756894#.ZFFzD-zMJqs DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4756894.

Adema, J. (2020). Scaling Small: Enabling a More Diverse Ecosystem for Scholarly Book Publishing. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). Retrieved from https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/scaling-small-enabling-a-more-diverse-ecosystem-for-scholarly-book-publishing

“COPIM statement on the corporate acquisition of OA infrastructure.” Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) (blog). December 15, 2021. https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/copim-statement-corporate-acquisition-oa-infra/release/1?readingCollection=1bb570ed DOI:10.21428/785a6451.123ec90e.

Deville, J. (2021). Open access publishing and the promise of collaboration. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.5ba5502c

Joy, E. A. F., Adema, J., & COPIM. (2022). Open Book Collective: Our Organisational Model. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.13890eb3

Fathallah, J. (2022). Introducing the Open Book Collective. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.c41e43be

Snyder, L. O., Corazza, F., & Deville, J. (2022). How the Open Book Collective works. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.fc24f71a

Snyder, L. O. & Fathallah, J. (2023) “Sustainable Futures for OA Books: The Open Book Collective”, The Journal of Electronic Publishing 26(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3372

van Gerven Oei, V. W. J. (2020). Open Metadata in Thoth. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.eb0d86e8

Author

Livy Onalee Snyder

Livy Onalee Snyder is based in Chicago and advocates for Open Access. Currently, she works as a Libraries Outreach Associate at the Open Book Collective and is the Associate Director for Community and Library Outreach at punctum books. 

Open Book Collective, Libraries Outreach
punctum books, Associate Director for Community and Library Outreach

References

^[1] A few international policies include: the Open access to Scholarly Publications in Finland, cOAlition S/Plan S guidelines, the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) mandate, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

^[2] One example is Springer Nature’s agreement, with a variety of institutions, including FinELib Consortium.

^[3]  A few examples include: MIT Press launched Direct to Open (D2O), the University of Michigan Press created Fund to Mission, and most recently, JSTOR joined a cohort of established university presses to initiate Path to Open.

^[4] Eileen A. Fradenburg Joy stresses the importance of Born OA presses in their 2023 Charleston presentation ‘The Open Book Collective: A Community-led Project for Funding Open Access Books.’

^[5]“Diamond future of open access” Publication Forum, February 15, 2023, accessed https://julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/news/diamond-future-open-access

^[6] “Market Consolidation and Scholarly Communications” https://ospolicyobservatory.uvic.ca/market-consolidation-and-scholarly-communications/

^[7] “2023 OA Week Theme Announcement: Community over Commercialization” SPARC, https://sparcopen.org/news/2023/2023-oa-week-theme-announcement-community-over-commercialization/

[8] To learn more about the OBC’s funding model, read Joe Deville’s “Beyond BPCs: Reimagining and re-infrastructuring the funding of Open Access books,” Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM), (2023), https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.bd1b0402.

^[9] Bibliodiversity indicates a commitment to epistemic pluralism and situated knowledges, which means we actively support different and multiple publishing forms, languages, formats, practices, cultures, and (experimental) genres in book publishing. We disseminate works in multiple languages and encourage maximum accessibility of publications while doing outreach to under-served readerships, publishers, libraries, and communities. We also promote a bibliodiverse publishing ecosystem, meaning one consisting of different types of publishers and infrastructures, in response to the ongoing homogenisation and privatisation of publishing cultures and infrastructures. More information, see the OBC’s governance documents: Eileen Joy, Janneke Adema, and COPIM, “Open Book Collective: Our Governance,” Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM), (2022).  https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/open-book-collective-our-organisational-model/release/, DOI: 10.21428/785a6451.13890eb3D

^[10] Eileen A. Fradenburg Joy 2023 Charleston presentation ‘The Open Book Collective: A Community-led Project for Funding Open Access Books.’

^[11] All OBC fees are communicated openly and transparently on the platform website: www.openbookcollective.org

^[12] Eileen A. Fradenburg Joy, Janneke Adema, & COPIM. (2022). Open Book Collective: Our Organisational Model. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.13890eb3

^[13] COPIM, “Open Book Futures Announcemment” Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/open-book-futures-announcement/release/1