Cambridge University Press Launches New Open Access Book Pilot: Flip it Open

From the Cambridge Core Blog:

In books, the most established model for funding publication of Open Access (OA) titles is still the gold model, in which an author and/or a funder pays an upfront fee known as a Book Processing Charge (BPC). Open publication means the title is freely available for anyone with an internet connection to access and view, wherever they are in the world.

Most Academic publishers currently offer the gold route in one form or another. We offer it ourselves at Cambridge University Press. We have published, to-date, almost 100 books through the Gold OA model and we are very proud of our established Gold Open Access publishing program, which subjects our OA books to exactly the same publishing vetting, quality control and approval processes as all our other books. We are also keenly aware of the limitations of the model; it is a route to OA, but it cannot be the only route. Funding for Gold OA Books is scattered and complex, is often not well-understood, and inevitably favours certain subjects, author affiliations or book types. We want to launch a program and funding mechanism which is broader, scalable, and very importantly more inclusive and equitable.

All of this has led us to launch our exciting new Open Access books initiative, Flip it Open. We will publish and sell a selection of 25+ books through our regular channels, treating them at the outset in the same way as any other book; they will be part of our library collections for Cambridge Core, as well being sold as hardbacks and ebooks.  The one crucial difference is that we are making an upfront commitment that when each of these books meets a set revenue threshold we will make them available to everyone Open Access via Cambridge Core.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post

Direct to  Flip it Open Website

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