Bloomsbury announces pilot collective-action funding model for Open Access books

"Bloomsbury has announced ‘Bloomsbury Open Collections’, a pilot collective-action funding model for Open Access books.  The publisher said Bloomsbury Open Collections seeks to improve equity in scholarly publishing by spreading the cost of Open Access publications across multiple organisations, while providing private benefits to participating libraries. According to Bloomsbury, it is the first commercial publisher to pilot such a model, and this approach aims to "reach and engage a more diverse set of authors, bringing their work to a wider global audience". An "alternative to more traditional Open Access models," which typically rely on an individual or their funder or institution paying a fee (or ‘book processing charge’) to cover the costs of publishing, this collective-action approach seeks to spread the cost more equitably across multiple institutions...."