Investing in the Open Access Book infrastructure: a call for action

This is a guest blog post by Pierre Mounier, Jeroen Sondervan, and Graham Stone.

Join Pierre Mounier (EHESS, OpenEdition, OPERAS), Jeroen Sondervan (Knowledge Exchange Open Access Working Group and Utrecht University Library), Graham Stone (Jisc), and key stakeholders in signing a position paper calling for investment in the open access book infrastructure (Zenodo version of record, Google doc version for signatories).

In June 2020, we published a blog Open Access to academic books: Working towards the “tipping point”, which reflected on the work of the Knowledge Exchange (KE) task and finish group’s work around open access books (see “Towards a Roadmap for Open Access Monographs: A Knowledge Exchange Report”. The blogpost led to a number of valuable discussions with stakeholders and key experts in the OA books community regarding the need to develop a joined up approach to the open infrastructure required for a successful transition to open access for books.

In light of forthcoming (and existing) policy on open access for books, the KE task and finish group agreed to extend their work on open access books by facilitating a partner exchange in February 2021. This one-day virtual workshop gathered key stakeholders, including representatives of cOAlition S, SPARC Europe, OASPA, OAPEN, DARIAH-EU, OpenAIRE, national funders, KE partner organizations and many more.

After a brief overview, the day used a workshop approach to develop a common understanding on the need for further attention and support for open access for academic books. Delegates explored the key issues in three parallel sessions (OA Book Watch, OA Book Network, OA Book infrastructure), before a Mentimeter poll was used to prioritise areas for further discussion. At the end of a long day of vibrant and fruitful discussion, we took stock of the contributions and discussed the idea of a position paper on open access books infrastructure. A writing group was formed and we started work on the position paper.