Spotlight on Open Access Books at COASP 2012 | Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association

'For the first time, 2012 saw the 4th Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (COASP) feature an afternoon of sessions entirely dedicated to Open Access books. In his introduction, OAPEN’s Eelco Ferwerda highlighted that with this year’s milestones – the launch of the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), PKP’s Open Monograph Press, and Springer’s announcement of SpringerOpen books – the time for Open Access monograph publishing has arrived, culminating in Open Access books being made part of the program at COASP.  Things are speeding up for books, Ferwerda remarked. However, there are still a lot of unknowns: What will be the main business model for Open Access books? Under what license should they be published? What do the stakeholders in scholarly communication—the authors, libraries, funders and publishers—think about Open Access monographs? The afternoon thus set out to explore emerging business and publishing models for Open Access books, and current research on user and stakeholder needs..."