Copim Compass -- a one-stop knowledge base on publishing open access books

Copim Compass is an online information hub developed by Copim's Open Book Futures project (2023-2026).

This toolkit is the output of one of Copim's Open Book Futures project deliverables: to establish a knowledge base to provide comprehensive resources on alternative funding models and modes of publishing, acquiring and archiving open access books, alongside new training and guidance on archiving and preservation best practice.

Its aim is to:

• Develop resources for stakeholders
• Consolidate existing resources
• Promote business models best practice
• Showcase project work on metadata, experimental publishing and archiving

By providing a comprehensive tool suite of resources we will accelerate outreach to libraries, publishers, academics and the wider public, to advocate for, advise on and encourage open access publishing and initiatives. 

In the course of our scoping research and gap analysis, we discovered that a great many resources, guidelines, and toolkits have been developed in the last few years, many of which are regularly maintained and updated, and that many others are currently under development. We therefore developed Copim Compass with the following aims:

1. That a valuable exercise would be in collating these existing resources, categorising them, and providing a central signposting location for external resources; aiming to complement rather than re-develop.
2. One of the major existing lacunae we identified was one which was well within our project competency: a resource on transitioning publishers from closed to open access.  
3. An opportunity to provide a project wide resource for all areas of Copim's Open Book Futures project to use.

The Copim Compass is, therefore, a resource of several parts. The first sections feature success stories from author, library and press perspectives and contain the collated external resources on OA for books more generally; the middle sections detail the Opening the Future revenue model, tools and experiences at Copim on transitioning publishers from closed to open access, and the final sections introduce the different components of the Open Book Futures project, and act as gateways to their resources.