AAU, ARL, and AUPresses Release “TOME [Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem] Stakeholder Value Assessment: Final Report”

From a Joint News Release:

The Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of University Presses have published a final report assessing the success of their five-year pilot project to encourage sustainable digital publication of and public access to scholarly books.

The associations launched the Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) project in 2018 to publish humanities and social science scholarship on the internet, where these peer-reviewed works can be fully integrated into the larger network of scholarly and scientific research. The project engaged a network of more than 60 university presses and ultimately produced more than 150 open-access scholarly works. The books cover a wide range of topics in many disciplines, including philosophy, history, political science, sociology, and gender and ethnic studies.

The pilot was designed to last five years, and the sponsoring associations committed to assessing its value to its target audience at the end of that period. The report analyzes whether the community of authors, institutions, libraries, and presses that participated in the pilot found it helpful. Author Nancy Maron of BlueSky to BluePrint surveyed and interviewed authors and TOME contacts at participating institutions to assess how each benefited from the pilot—from increased global readership to stronger relationships among libraries, research deans, and faculty. Maron also conducted preliminary research, with Kim Schmelzinger, in summer 2021 to assess the cost of publishing TOME monographs among the project’s university press participants.

The TOME pilot was a unique effort among open-access projects. It created a community of institutional funders, drew investments from across the participating institutions, and enabled authors to publish at a participating press of their choice. The sponsoring associations are eager to engage other libraries, presses, scholars, and open-access funding agencies about securing the future of a networked open-access monograph publishing ecosystem beyond the initial TOME pilot.

Please join us online for a community conversation for more on the pilot and ongoing institutional TOME activity on Wednesday, September 6, at 3:00–4:00 p.m. EDT.

Direct to Full Text Report: TOME Stakeholder Value Assessment

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Associations and Organizations, Funding, Libraries, News, Open Access, Publishing, Reports