Webinar: Open access books myth busting two: quality and prestige. Nov 16, 2022, 3pm (GMT) | Jisc

In August 2021, UKRI launched a new open access policy, which for the first time includes a provision for long form scholarly works including monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024. In preparation for policy implementation, a collaboration of UK university presses, supported by Jisc, have come together to hold a series of online events about the myths around open access for books, as well as to address legitimate concerns and suggest ways to remove barriers to open access publishing. This online event is the second of three sessions. Questions around quality and prestige in relation to new formats and new publishers have been repeatedly posed over the course of many years. Open access and the rise of new university presses and scholar-led publishers are often confronted by perceptions of lack of professionalism and quality of open access book publishing. These concerns are sometimes expressed by academics, sometimes by those working in publishing, and, less often, by librarians. It is also common for these views to be expressed explicitly, such as direct comparisons with self-publishing or vanity publishing. However, well established publishers who have an open access route have repeatedly gone on record to emphasise that there is no difference between the book proposal and production workflows between OA and more traditional routes to publishing. Peer review itself can be an opaque process for book publishing (although transparency of peer review processes is a requirement for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Books). Likewise, prestige is an issue faced by any new publisher or imprint. Indeed, prestige can be very discipline-specific - a high prestige publisher in one discipline may be, at best, less well thought of in another. In this online event authors, publishers and other experts in the field will dispel some of the myths around open access publishing for books and the quality of ‘born open access’ publishers.