Category: Funding models

UMass Amherst authors benefit from Libraries’ investments in open access book publishers

The UMass Amherst Libraries now provide financial support for a number of open access book publishing programs that do not charge author publication fees. MIT Press Direct to Open (D2o), University of Michigan Press Fund to Mission (F2M) and Open Book Publishers each rely on slightly different funding models to make selected books open access upon publication, but all rely on academic libraries as a major source of financing. Authors follow traditional practices for manuscript submission, and the publishers coordinate peer review and provide editorial, production and marketing services.

The benefits to authors are many. They retain their copyrights to their works while more people the world over can use them at no cost. Jenny Adams, Associate Professor of English, published her book Medieval Women and Their Objects with University of Michigan Press in 2016. She raved about working with Michigan Publishing, and she appreciates the broader impact of open access publication. Adams said, “Now that it’s out there, more people have read it, more people have cited it, and more people–from high school honors students to my scholarly peers–know my work.”

Janice Irvine, Professor of Sociology, is also working with University of Michigan Press on her forthcoming book, Marginal People in Deviant Places: Ethnography, Difference and the Challenge to Scientific Racism. She noted both the editorial and production support she received:

Publishing my book on a digital, Open Access platform is an exciting opportunity, and the University of Michigan Press has been enormously supportive of this process. My editor made incisive comments on multiple drafts, learned a software program to help edit my videos, and generally fixed every problem that came up. The staff have been really responsive during the production process, all of which has been new to me because of the hyperlinks and other digital features.

Janice Irvine

In addition to the open access format which allows additional features, these publishers sell print editions of the titles through traditional channels. Emily West, Associate Professor of Communication, is writing about one of those online channels in her forthcoming book, Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly. She says “I recognize and embrace the irony that readers will be able to access a book called Buy Now for free through The MIT Press’s Direct to Open Program, and I thank the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries for supporting this program.”

If you’re interested in publishing your book open access and would like more information about how the Libraries can help, contact Christine Turner, Scholarly Communication Librarian.

New study on MIT Press open monograph model

Funding models for open access articles and journals have been evolving for at least two decades, but substantial open access book publishing has come into the fore in the past five years or so. Scholarly books have different audiences, uses, production and distribution workflows, costs and markets than journals. In “The MIT Press Open Monograph Model: Direct to Open” Raym Crow breaks down the elements of financially viable scholarly book publishing; considers the knowns, unknowns, risks and opportunities of open access book publishing; examines MIT Press’ book market; and describes the characteristics of what has become the MIT Press Direct to Open (D2O) model. The study provides general analysis and a case study useful for libraries that constitute 85% of MIT Press’ sales and other scholarly publishers. Crow takes on the “free-rider” problem of open access, public good publishing and how the MIT D2O model is designed to incentivize libraries to participate. Academic libraries are contending with shrinking acquisitions budgets, with allocations for books getting squeezed by the increasing costs of journals, streaming media and ebooks. Scholarly book publishers need new means of funding their operations. The two partners have shared interests in costs (administrative, editorial and production), comparative value and public good principles. This report lays out factors both parties must weigh and offers D2O as a potential solution to the ongoing need for stable, non-profit, open book publishing.

Sustaining open content and infrastructure: views from research libraries

Academic research libraries are among the stakeholders – with scholars, funders, professional societies and public policy experts – with a mission to widely disseminate research and scholarship. Many believe that open content and infrastructure are critical means to unfettered distribution and beneficial impact. The Association of Research Libraries’ recent report, Research Library Issues, no. 302 (2021): Sustaining Open Content and Infrastructure, delves into three aspects of open scholarship ecosystems: open persistent identifiers, digital accessibility planning, and standardized data about open scholarly infrastructure use and funding. If these terms and acronyms sound vaguely familiar, this report will give you context: PIDs, DOI, ORCiD ID, ROR, APIs, DMP, HTML, EPUB, and PDF, WCAG, Accessible EPUB3, PDF U/A, captioning, 2.5% commitment, SCIP, SCOSS, COAR and more! The report gives rationale, history and current standards or initiatives for each of these. It doesn’t break new ground, but it does highlight what the Association of Research Libraries deems in need of urgent attention.

Report from the 15th Berlin (B15) Open Access Conference – Adapt and Advance

The 15th Berlin Open Access Conference (B15), with the theme “Adapt and Advance”, was co-hosted by the University of California and the Max Planck Society’s Open Access 2020 Initiative from September 28th – October 1st, 2021. Stakeholders in research and scholarly communication from 46 countries reflected on progress towards transforming subscription-based journal access to open dissemination of research outputs for common benefit. The goals of transformative agreements are twofold: “(1) empower authors to grant free and universal access to their peer-reviewed research while retaining their copyright, and (2) empower institutions to integrate, rationalize and rein in their financial investments in scholarly publishing.”

The Executive Summary of the conference summarizes and outlines action steps for these key takeaways:

  • Open access to scholarly journals is essential for progress in science and society. 
  • Open access is advancing thanks to transformative agreements. 
  • Negotiations with scholarly journal publishers are a pathway to openness and equity. 
  • Open access publishing must be enabled under equitable economic conditions. 
  • Increasing transparency of funding flows and reorganizing just a tiny share of investments can have immeasurable impact.
  • Further open access developments require bold new partnerships. 
  • Scholarly publishers are embracing open access. 
  • Mature open access strategies include different synergistic approaches.

These issues are more deeply explored in the 4 plenary sessions (with recordings and transcripts provided) and posters. The international scope and collaborative spirit of this conference signal the paths forward towards more open and equitable scholarly exchange.

Inclusive access to college textbooks: is it the right choice?

Inclusive access, or automated textbook billing, has become a popular sales model for textbook publishers to provide course materials to students. Pitched by publishers as a way to save students money on skyrocketing textbook prices, the inclusive access model may not be entirely positive. The new InclusiveAccess.org initiative was developed by open education resource organizations, Creative Commons, SPARC, student PIRGs and others to provide facts about automated textbook billing programs and their consequences. The site has sections for administrators, students, faculty and policymakers and addresses myths vs. facts, frequently asked questions and resources for further action.

UMass Amherst Libraries signs agreement with PLOS to cover Open Access publication fees in 12 journals

Effective October 1st, 2021, corresponding authors from UMass Amherst of accepted manuscripts in 12 journals published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS – an original open access, non-profit publisher) will pay no or reduced fees. The 6 journals with no fees are:

These 6 journals normally charge author processing charges of $775 to $2,575 but under this agreement, the article fee will be $400:

UMass Amherst Libraries and PLOS issued press releases with more details about the three year agreement between PLOS and the NERL Consortium.

Busting the myth of authors paying to publish Open Access

The Open Access Book Network has produced a video of Dr. Sebastian Nordhoff, Managing Director, Language Science Press telling us how open access book publishing is funded. In OA Mythbusters: episode 1 Dr. Nordhoff refutes the assertion that if an author wants to make their book available open access, they must pay to do so. Using the 160 open access books published by Language Science Press as examples, he describes a discipline-based – in this case linguistics – consortial funding model in which institutions come together to underwrite publication costs. As a result, neither the reader nor the author pays; instead authors and readers from Oman or Indonesia or anywhere can exchange research in linguistics.

Cambridge University Press reflects on funding OA journals

In a guest post on Scholarly Kitchen, Transforming the Transformative Agreements, Bridget Shull from Cambridge University Press celebrates the recent growth of the publisher’s open access agreements with institutions in the United States, and then describes some challenges ahead from multiple perspectives. A transformative agreement fundamentally shifts journal publishing costs from payment-to-read to payment-to-publish, with the author retaining copyright, an assigned open license and the reader having barrier-free access and re-use rights. It is but one form of funding open access journal publication.

Publication fees paid on a per article basis raise new barriers, as Shull notes, and for these reasons this type of agreement will need to evolve. Tracking article-based author fees requires new and often cumbersome administrative workflows for publishers, authors and funders (most often libraries, institutions and granting agencies). As these agreements are relatively new, each publisher is figuring out how to manage them without existing standards. Many (most?) libraries and organizations do not have the means to cover the administrative costs nor the personnel to do the work. Open access publication is hindered by bandwidth blocks. More and more publishers are offering different options for OA publication, and libraries are forced to choose which they can take on, financially and administratively. This will need to change, and initiatives to do so are already underway.

Authors, whether they are producing new types of scholarship or working from underfunded circumstances, may not have the means to pay for publication. Moving payment for publication to authors imposes a filter on research distribution based on financial circumstances rather than quality and interest of the work. The research that is published becomes more narrow and exclusive in scope.

Shull outlines widely recognized issues with transformative agreements and she calls out funder mandates as insufficient to solve them. Furthermore, open access needs broader recognition as a means to more diverse, widely used and impactful research rather than an end unto itself. More stakeholders – researchers, institutions and publishers in addition to funders – need to solve these problems together.

Musings on transformative agreements

Back in April in the wake of University of California’s open access agreement with Elsevier, Ashley Jester, self-described political scientist/data scientist/librarian at Stanford University, wrote a piece expressing concern about the affect of transformative agreements on open access as a public good. In “Discomfort with Gold OA“, Jester describes open access scholarship as a public good that is available to everyone, without restricting anyone else’s access. It benefits the world.

Transformative agreements (TAs) shift payment for access by the reader (or the reader’s library) to the author (or the author’s institution) for publication. The reader can use scholarship freely, but the scholar cannot publish without cost. However, a scholarly communication ecosystem that provides true public goods imposes barriers for neither reader nor author/researcher. Transformative agreements are intended to be transitional, but each contract further solidifies a system that privileges those scholars who are members of institutions, or “clubs” that are party to these agreements. Restrictions, and diminished diversity and equity, are placed on the production of knowledge. Dave S. Ghamandi, in “‘Transformative Agreements’ & Library Publishing: a short examination,” further elaborates on how TAs reinforce an existing publishing oligopoly for the mutual benefit of the university’s prestige. The means of production are maintained, and they are not for the public good.

Jester lays out alternatives to funding scholarship through transformative agreements, namely governments and non-profits. The costs of scholarly communication are born by agencies whose missions are driven by collective benefit over that of selected individual(s). Universities and academic libraries should be alert to the risks of replacing one approach that restricts reader access with another that diminishes scholar participation.

cOAlition S on open access for academic books

cOAlition S recently issued a statement with 5 recommendations to achieve open access publication of academic monographs, book chapters, edited editions and other long-form works. Originally known for its plan to convert journal publications to open access, cOAlition S principles issued in 2018 recognized the importance of research dissemination through books, especially for disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

Advocacy and support for OA books is growing. Some of the agencies within cOAlition S’ European research funders have issued book policies, and the statement recognizes important existing OA book infrastructure components, such as the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the OA Books Network. The recommendations are that:

  1. all books should be published openly,
  2. authors/institutions should retain intellectual property rights/copyright,
  3. Creative Commons licenses should be applied,
  4. embargoes, if required, should be as short as possible and no longer than 12 months, and
  5. cOAlition S funders should financially support the publication of open access books with dedicated arrangements.

These recommendations will be followed by implementation guidelines which will account for the varying needs of book publishers.