Open Access Books - A World Beyond Covid

"With this in mind, we reached out to a group that knows a lot about open access book publishing—the TOME community. TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) is an initiative that brings together scholars, librarians, publishers, and university administrators in pursuit of a sustainable open monograph ecosystem. The annual TOME stakeholders meeting was held in October 2021, with a focus on “Where do we go from here?”. 

A post meeting survey asked the 135 participants to answer a number of questions regarding their current attitudes toward open access book publishing and what they expect/hope to see in 2022. 33 people (nearly 25%) completed the survey, and we explore the results below. 

A clear message from the survey: open access monograph publishing has tremendous support. When asked whether or not open access has had a positive impact on scholarly book publishing, 91% of respondents believe that open access has had a positive impact on scholarly publishing. In addition, an overwhelming majority of respondents said that COVID-19 has positively affected their view of open access book publishing. Responses such as ‘It seems more necessary than ever’ and ‘We must make more of our valuable books open so as to keep people better informed of global issues’ were just two of the many supportive responses we received. "