Laying the foundations: Building systems of support for OA books

Barnes, Lucy and Deville, Joe (2021) Laying the foundations: Building systems of support for OA books. In: UKSG November Conference 2021 - Open Scholarship: the good, the bad and the ugly, 2021-11-17 - 2021-11-18.

Abstract

This talk will outline the support systems that we see as vital for a flourishing OA books ecology as well as examining the challenges that are involved in both building and fostering engagement with such systems. In doing so, we will draw throughout on our experiences as part of the COPIM (Community-led Publication Infrastructures for Monographs) project, a partnership of researchers, librarians, publishers, and infrastructure providers that is in the process of building open and community-led infrastructures to support the funding, creation, dissemination, and preservation of long-form academic content. Books are only recently becoming prominent in conversations (and policies) about Open Access. The relative immaturity of the OA books landscape creates both opportunities and challenges: opportunities, in that much remains unsettled and there is the potential for motivated groups to have significant influence on the future funding, creation, sharing, and preservation of OA books; and challenges in building the infrastructures and creating the support networks among researchers, publishers, and librarians that will be required to make a successful transition to OA. Our talk will address three major challenges that we and our colleagues are grappling with: how to foster researcher engagement with, and enthusiasm for, OA books, in an environment when change is often driven by policy mandates and authors see very mixed levels of publisher support for OA; how to make it easier for institutions to offer forms of support to OA books focused initiatives in the face of scepticism from some colleagues and increasing degrees financial constraint; and how to build infrastructures to strengthen and improve the funding and dissemination of OA books, in the face of an increasing diversity of OA initiatives looking for support and a landscape dominated by infrastructures designed to promote the circulation of non-OA content.