| Open Access Book Collective |
| Directors' Report |
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| Report of the directors of Open Access Book Collective for the period ended 30 April 2023 |
| Introduction |
| It has been an incredibly busy period for the Open Access Book Collective, which trades as the Open Book Collective (OBC). The OBC was established, legally, on the 19th May 2022, with the website launching in December of the same year. The period between these two dates was spent in internal discussions about the details of the OBC’s business model, the governance structure, and website design. The OBC’s website was launched in December 2022: |
| https://openbookcollective.org/ |
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| Thereafter followed a further period of intense testing, streamlining of the website, and planning our outreach. This meant that outreach only began towards the end of this financial period, in March 2023. Much of this report highlights the preparatory work that underpinned this launch. The work of founding the OBC was directly connected to and supported by the Community-led Open Publication for Monographs (COPIM) project, funded by the Research England Development Fund and Arcadia, and led by Coventry University. |
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| Governance |
| During the OBC’s inaugural accounting year, significant administrative work was undertaken, including the development and implementation of a robust governance structure, led by Eileen Joy (punctum books), Dr Janneke Adema (Coventry University) and Judith Fathallah (Lancaster University): |
| https://copim.pubpub.org/copim-project |
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| Following consultation and deliberation, the details of the OBC’s governance structure was published in September 2022: |
| https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/obc-organisational-model |
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| Membership Criteria |
| This included details of the OBC’s initial membership criteria. It determined that members of the Open Book Collective would comprise: |
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Born OA presses (and collectives of such) whose entire catalogues are Open Access (OA), and who either don’t levy Book Processing Charges (BPCs) or are aiming to lessen their reliance on such. OA Presses included in this category could be independent, scholar-led, library-based, and university-based publishers, including New University Publishers (NUPs) as well as more established university publishers, whose entire catalogues of books are OA; |
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Hybrid presses (university-based or not) who have catalogues that combine OA and non-OA books (frontlist and/or backlist) and who want to transition their frontlist to a minimum of 75% OA while also lessening their reliance on BPCs; |
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Open Publishing Service Providers (and collectives of such) who build open infrastructure for repositories, discovery channels, catalogues, indexes, usage metrics, metadata management, preservation, and the like for integrating OA books with global knowledge systems, and who also develop software and platforms for the creation and dissemination of OA books; and |
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Libraries (and consortia of such), Library Membership Organisations, undefined and other Knowledge Institutions who have vested interests in growing and helping to sustain the landscape of OA initiatives as part of their commitment to public service-oriented knowledge production and who help to support the publishers and publishing service providers of the OBC. |
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| Governance Structure |
| We also confirmed how exactly these different groups of members would contribute to the ongoing governance of the OBC, visualised here: |
| https://openbookcollective.org/media/profile/images/90013fe8-1089-46fb-a584-4d18b395d231.png |
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| A key part of the OBC’s governance structure are the OBC’s three ‘caucuses’: |
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| 1. |
Libraries: most of whom we expect to be university libraries. |
| 2. |
Publishers: comprising both Born OA and Hybrid presses |
| 3. |
Service Providers: Open Publishing Service Providers, in other words |
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| Each participating organisation is invited to nominate a representative, which we refer to as a ‘Custodian’, to represent their interests and to contribute to the governance of the OBC. Members may choose to either participate as ‘Full’ or ‘Associate’ Custodians. |
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Full Custodians: members of the OBC who have opted in to being fully involved in the OBC’s governance; and |
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Associate Custodians: members of the OBC who have opted out of being fully involved in the OBC’s governance, but have or retain the right to serve in an advisory capacity |
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| The primary mechanism for Custodians feeding into the work of the OBC is at the OBC’s General Assembly of Custodians, which is convened annually. |
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| Custodians comprise the OBC’s first governing body. The second is the Board of Trustees, which we refer to as the ‘Board of Stewards’ (see visualisation linked above). |
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| The Board of Stewards is the OBC’s primary management body, and closely supervises the daily operations and management of the OBC and its Supporter Programmes. Stewards are answerable to Custodians and are elected by them but are given control over the management of the organi-sation at all other times. The Board is comprised of two members from each of the three caucus-es, as well as three ‘OA experts’ elected by Custodians. The structure has been designed so that library representatives and OA experts together have a potential voting majority. This structure, underpinned by a comprehensive Conflict of Interest Policy, is designed to safeguard the OBC’s future. |
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| There are two further bodies involved in OBC’s governance: Committees, which are established by the Board of Stewards to undertake particular tasks related to OBC’s work, and the Secretariat, consisting of two Secretaries who support the Board’s work. |
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| Meetings of the Board of Stewards |
| During the financial year, meetings of the Board of Stewards took place on the following dates: |
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2022-09-08 |
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2022-12-07 |
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2023-03-08 |
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2023-03-29 |
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| New Members |
| Despite only being fully operational for a relatively short period of time in this financial year, the OBC saw a number of new members join. |
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| Provider Members |
| During the financial year, the following Provider Members joined the Open Book Collective: |
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| Publishers |
Service Providers |
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African Minds (6/12/2022) |
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DOAB/OAPEN (7/12/2022) |
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Mattering Press (7/12/2022) |
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Thoth (7/12/2022) |
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mediastudies.press (5/12/2022) |
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meson press (7/12/2022) |
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Open Book Publishers (5/12/2022) |
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punctum books (5/12/2022) |
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White Horse Press (30/01/2023) |
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| Library Members |
| During the financial year, the following Library Members joined the Open Book Collective: |
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University of Manchester (9/02/2023) |
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KU Leuven Libraries (1/03/2023) |
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Amherst College (22/03/2023) |
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Iowa State University Library (27/03/2023) |
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Cambridge University Library (3/04/2023) |
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Michigan University Library (30/03/2023) |
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Macalester Library (25/04/2023) |
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| Outreach & outputs |
| A significant part of the OBC’s work is engaging with the scholarly community, with a particular focus on academic publishers and university libraries. As part of the COPIM project, colleagues working to support the OBC contributed to a range of events and outputs, in which they explored issues related to the OBC’s aim to support a fairer, more sustainable future for OA book publishing. |
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| These outputs include the following: |
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| Blog posts |
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Livy Onalee Snyder and Lucy Barnes. 2022.10.24. Open Access Week 2022: How to run a major international project with a mini carbon footprint. |
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https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/open-access-week-interviews |
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Eileen Joy and Livy Onalee Snyder. 2022.06.22. U.S. Library Outreach Workshop. |
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https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.997a28a5 |
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Livy Snyder, Francesca Corazza, and Joe Deville. 2022.05.17. How the Open Book Collective Works. |
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https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.fc24f71a |
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| Stakeholder workshops involving the OBC |
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UK Libraries meet the Open Book Collective workshop. 2022.05.04. Participating institutions: University of York, University of Sussex, University of Leeds, Imperial College London, University of Nottingham, Sheffield Hallam University. |
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US Libraries meet the Open Book Collective workshop. 2022.06.03. Participating institutions: Iowa State University, Syracuse University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Denver, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota Libraries, University of Pennsylvania, Virginia Tech, Yale University. |
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European Libraries meet the Open Book Collective workshop. 2022.09.29. Participating institutions: Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Universität Duisburg-Essen, University of Utrecht, University of Copenhagen Library, National Library of Finland. |
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| Webinars |
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Emma Booth, Jen Bayjoo, Judith Fathallah & Livy Onalee Snyder. Collective Funding for Open Access Books: How Libraries and Publishers Can Banish the BPC. NAG National Acquistions Group Webinar Week. 2022.10.11 |
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Eileen Joy, Livy Snyder, Tom Grady, Lucy Barnes, Toby Steiner. COPIM OA Australasia workshop on practical support for OA books and accelerating the takeup of OA models. Open Access Australasia Webinar series. 2022.10.11. |
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Martin Paul Eve & Joe Deville. Open Access Books, and COPIM. Open Access Australasia Webinar. 2022.04.05. |
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| Conference Papers and Proceedings |
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Judith Fathallah, Open Access Monographs for Teaching and Research: Equity and Diversity Beyond Book Processing Charges. Open Education Conference. 2022.10.18. |
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7225583 |
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Joe Deville, Processing Open Access Books, Open Access: Where Next? 2022.11.18. |
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https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/open-access-where-next/release/1 |
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Judith Fathallah, Tom Grady, & Martin Eve. Community-Led Infrastructures for Open Access Books: A Sustainable Model and Platform. Proceedings of The Open/Technology in Education, Society, and Scholarship Association Conference 2. 2022.12.23. |
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https://conference.otessa.org/index.php/conference/article/view/68 |
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Judith Fathallah, The Open Book Collective: An Infrastructure for Equity and Diversity. The Geneva Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OA13). 2023.02.04 |
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8322034 |
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Judith Fathallah, The Open Book Collective: Sustaining and Disseminating Open Access Books. BOBCATSSS 2023. 2023.01.27. |
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7573199 |
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Judith Fathallah, Supporting Bibliodiversity in Open Access Book Publishing: The Open Book Collective. FORCE11, 2023.04.18 |
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7850364 |
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Judith Fathallah, The Open Book Collective: Equity, Diversity and Sustainability in Open Access Book Publishing. OASPA Webinar: Funding Open Access after the Transformation. 2023.05.23. |
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7991155 |
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Judith Fathallah, The Open Book Collective: Supporting and Sustaining Bibliodiversity in Open Access Publishing. National Acquisitions Group Seminar. 2023.05.23. With Kyle Brady (St Andrews) and Peter Barr (Sheffield). |
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7991170 |
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Eileen Joy and Livy Snyder. Open Book Collective: A Community-led Project for Funding Open Access Books. The Charleston Conference 2022. 2023.03.03. |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBkVMOCRYI |
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| Grant funding & future priorities |
| The OBC was supported throughout this financial year by the COPIM project. However, this project ended on the 30th April 2023. Happily, the OBC secured further follow on grant funding, as a partner in the Open Book Futures project. This award was confirmed at the start of 2023 and publicly announced on the 30th March of the same year: |
| https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/open-book-futures-announcement/release/1 |
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| The Open Book Futures project, led by Lancaster University and with an overall budget of around £5.9million (across the 11 consortium members), includes full funding for the OBC’s work until the end of April 2026. A key aim is for the OBC to achieve full financial sustainability by the end of this period. Further priorities within the life of the project including engaging publishers and libraries beyond the Anglosphere and Global North, to increase the size and diversity of its Members. |
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| We look forward to providing further updates about the development of the OBC in next year’s report. |
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| Dr Joseph Deville |
| OBC Managing Director and Trustee |
| Approved by the board on 10 January 2024 |
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