News & Views: Open for Business – Tracking New OA Models for Journals and Books - Delta Think

"Some new(er) models to consider for books and journals

Direct to Open

Being developed by MIT Press, and designed by Raym Crow, Direct to Open (D2O) will open collections of the Press’s frontlist monographs contingent on specific financial targets being reached. Direct to Open is similar to Subscribe to Open (S2O) in that institutions that commit to supporting the frontlist gain term access to substantial collections of gated backlist titles, even if the open frontlist offer fails. Unlike S2O, Direct to Open is a collective funding approach, and the support fees will be reduced if more institutions participate. Titles are available in HSS and STEAM packages. MIT intends to make its model freely available for other presses to adapt.

In January 2022, MIT released a white paper on the program and announced that it had hit 55% of its participation target (180+ libraries). Some of the success criteria for D2O detailed in the report include it being “economically sufficient for all press monographs”; that it integrates with “current editorial processes” along with existing distribution platforms for both online and print; inclusive and equitable; and “replicable by other presses.” The report provides extensive information on financial modeling, as well as contextual information about other OA book models.

Flip It Open

Announced in the summer of 2021, Cambridge University Press (CUP) added Flip It Open to their OA book offerings. CUP committed to make 28 titles available as OA books once they have met “a set revenue threshold.” Aware from the outset that the titles could become open, libraries pay to receive the titles early and to fund a wider good for the community. Once the threshold is met, CUP will release paperback versions of the titles, acknowledging there (and in the digital version) the libraries that contributed towards the opening of the title.

This experiment, which is not proposed to replace other OA models nor to scale to cover all CUP books, is “more fundamentally geared towards demand.” In contrast to trends where publishers might exclude their more popular or best-selling titles from special arrangements, Flip It Open is a way to make those high-demand titles freely available more quickly.

Read, Publish + Join

While Read + Publish or Publish + Read agreements may be familiar (if somewhat confusing) to readers, in 2020 the American Physiological Association added a new element to the mix, announcing their Read, Publish + Join model. Combining reading and publishing for a participating institution, this offering also provides authors with a one year membership to the society.

In a time when some membership organizations may struggle to appeal to early career researchers, this model connects them “to the Society’s multidisciplinary community of scientists and educators from around the world, driving collaboration and spotlighting scientific discoveries in physiology.” It provides an opportunity for institutions to both bolster the professional development of their own researchers and demonstrate support for professional societies.

Pay to Close

Not to be confused with closed or toll access content, Liberate Science announced in December 2021, in conjunction with the release of their Research Equals incremental publication platform, a model they call Pay to Close. With the goal of providing more equitable access to researchers around the world, Pay to Close would provide 0 cost APCs to those publishing with the most permissive licenses, CC 0 or CC-BY, with increasing APC costs for more restrictive licenses up to and including All Rights Reserved. The resulting articles would all be free to read, regardless of the license selected...."