OPERAS supports Open Book Futures project to expand Open Access infrastructures

Photo by Noah Grossenbacher

Starting on May 1st this year, the project Open Book Futures (OBF) will develop and support organisations, tools and practices to enable both academics and the wider public to make more and better use of books published on an Open Access basis. The project is led by Lancaster University, and OPERAS is one of the project’s supporting institutions. 

Funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund with £5.8 million, the project marks a shift in the ambition, scope and impact of community-owned Open Access book publishing, aiming to significantly increase and improve the quantity, discoverability, preservation and accessibility of academic content freely and easily available to all. 

Among its activities, OBF will deepen and accelerate the work of:

• the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to small- and medium-sized OA publishing initiatives;
• the Thoth metadata management and dissemination platform;
• the Opening the Future revenue model;
• the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium; 
• the forthcoming Thoth Archiving Network.

Open Book Futures builds on the pioneering work of the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. COPIM, a strategic international partnership led by Coventry University, began the work of establishing the key open, community-led solutions required to address the barriers to the wider impact of Open Access books. COPIM was also jointly funded by Arcadia and the RED Fund. A particular aim of the Open Book Futures project is to deepen COPIM’s long-term impact and to make sure a wide range of voices have the opportunity to shape the future of Open Access book publishing.

Project partners 

Partners joining Lancaster University in the Consortium include:

• Birkbeck, University of London, 
• Coventry University, 
• Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), 
• Jisc, 
• Loughborough University, 
• Open Book Collective (OBC),  
• Open Book Publishers (OBP), 
• punctum books, 
• Thoth, and
• Trinity College, Cambridge University. 

Additional supporting partners include, besides OPERAS:

• Continental Platform/University of Cape Town, 
• the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), 
• the Digital Preservation Coalition, 
• the Educopia Institute, 
• Knowledge Futures, 
• LYRASIS, 
• Public Knowledge Project (PKP),
• Research Libraries UK (RLUK), 
• SciELO Books, 
• Scottish Universities Press/SCURL, 
• and SPARC Europe. 

The project is also supported by Lancaster University Library

About the funders

Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1 billion to organizations around the world.

 RED supports innovation in research and knowledge exchange in higher education that offers significant public benefits.