New Report: “Towards a Roadmap for Open Access Monographs”

The following report from Knowledge Exchange was made made available via the JISC Repository earlier today. 

Title

Towards a Roadmap for Open Access Monographs: A Knowledge Exchange Report

Abstract

 

Having been overlooked for a long time, OA monographs are now increasingly recognised as an important factor in Open Access publishing. National Open Science policies name OA Monogaphs explicitly to help achieve openness in the way research and scholarship are conducted and made available.

To support better incorporation of OA monographs in overall OA policies and approaches, Knowledge Exchange, in 2017 and 2018 produced a landscape study on Open Access and Monographs and theresults of a stakeholder survey. Outcomes indicate that there is a crucial need for international concertation and harmonisation among communities.

To follow-up Knowledge Exchange invited experts and stakeholders from academic libraries, universities, authors, publishers, EC-officers and others for an international two-day workshop in Brussels. On 8 and 9 November 2018 intense exchanges and brainstorming resulted in the information and recommendations you will find in our latest publication Towards a Roadmap for Open Access Monographs.

From the Report–Stakeholder Recommendations

For Funders these highlight the importance of policy interventions to encourage change, of sustainable policies that allow diverse publishing options, of the funding of infrastructures and platforms, and of more networked action between funders on a European level.

For Authors and Universities, these highlight the importance of the monograph as a format for humanities scholarship, of acknowledging the fears that exist around OA, of balancing mandating and incentivising, and of community engagement.

For Publishers these focus on a need for more transparency around the cost of OA monographs, and on the importance of alternative (non-BPC) funding models. For Technology Providers and Platforms these emphasise the need for common technical requirements for monographs, for dialogue between stakeholders to define technical standards and their implementation, and for robust governance of technical infrastructures; for Libraries they focused on their potentially more active role in (financing) the publication of OA monographs, and on the long-term sustainability of OA monographs.

For Citizens they emphasise the societal impact and the value of OA monographs for those outside of academia.

With respect to Monitoring they highlight how an Open Access Book Watch could help us monitor OA for books, how we should start collecting data now, and on how monitoring should be a collective stakeholder effort.

Direct to Full Text Report
44 pages; PDF.

Direct to Executive Summary
6 pages; PDF.

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Data Files, Funding, Libraries, News, Open Access, Publishing