Oberlin Group launches 'platinum' open-access publisher Lever Press

"Amherst College Press, the University of Michigan Library and the dozens of liberal arts colleges that make up the Oberlin Group on Thursday unveiled a new scholarly open-access monograph publisher that aims to promote digital scholarship and lower the barriers to publication for researchers at smaller institutions. As part of that concept, the press will require neither authors nor readers to pay for publication costs. Known as Lever Press, the publishing venture is the end product of the initiative of the same name. The Oberlin Group launched the initiative in the summer of 2013 to gauge interest in how colleges and libraries could work together to improve scholarly publishing. Emboldened by a survey of faculty members that showed many scholars were less than satisfied with their options in the monograph publishing market, the group quickly zeroed in on establishing a publisher of its own ... Unlike many other open-access publishers, which fund their operations by making authors, not readers, pay for operating costs (a model known as gold open access), Lever Press will shift the responsibility to colleges. That model is named after an even more precious metal -- platinum -- and ensures authors and readers won’t have to pay to have their work published or gain access to the titles, respectively.  About half of the Oberlin Group’s 80 members (in addition to two nonmembers, Allegheny College and Ursinus College) have committed to fund the press with more than $1 million. That sum will keep the press funded through 2020. The press is asking college libraries to pledge to donate between $10,000 and $40,000 individually over five years. With the pledges made so far, Lever Press is aiming to publish about 60 titles by 2021, according to a press release ..."