The Challenges of Transitioning from Closed to Open Access Books
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By the end of the first phase of the Copim project (2020-2023) the Opening the Future open access monograph funding model could be described as a successful pilot with (cautious) grounds to believe it could extend well beyond that. This blog post examines progress made (and a few challenges encountered) since then, beginning with Copim ‘Phase 2’ the Open Book Futures project, 2023-2026.
First of all, a quick recap on what OtF is…
OtF is a simple model and can be adopted by almost any small/medium-sized scholarly publisher: library subscriptions to a selection of the press’ closed backlist fund new books to be OA on their frontlist. The backlist stays closed, so the press can continue to sell that traditionally. One of the tricky things in flipping a closed backlist to OA retrospectively is that it can be expensive, complex and time-consuming. So OtF concentrates, as the name suggests, on opening up future books instead: funding the frontlist OA by using the closed books as a benefit or lever. That closed backlist starts to recede as more and more of the new books are published OA. The idea is that a press can use OtF to move towards an ongoing completely open frontlist year on year.
It’s incremental with very low thresholds and low risk - the press just waits for enough money to build up from library backlist subscriptions before publishing the next OA book when they have enough in the pot to meet their production cost. We launched it with Central European University (CEU) Press and Liverpool University Press (LUP) in Copim Phase 1 and libraries took to the idea immediately: since the member libraries keep the closed backlist books in perpetuity after three years’ membership it allowed them to use acquisition funds to participate. This was quite revolutionary for an OA model at the time, and libraries could justify participation on the grounds of traditional collection-strengthening and/or as part of an OA strategy. It seemed like a win/win and by April 2023, when the project Phase 1 drew to a close, OtF had been shortlisted for an ALPSP Innovation in Publishing Award, had accrued funding for around 50 new pipeline OA books, with approx 100 library members around the world, and was positioned well as a tried and tested concept among the growing number of new OA models that soon followed.
Bringing on board three more publishers to OtF
So for Copim Phase 2 (real name ‘Copim Open Book Futures’) we suggested some ambitious targets. Discussions about OA for books, their funding models, and policies and mandates were on the rise globally (see Annex 1 of this 2021 Plan S news piece for a list of proliferating European funder mandates). Articles, conference presentations and webinars explaining the greater dissemination, and global reach made possible by OA for books seemed to have convincingly made the case that if OA for journal articles was becoming the norm, then OA for books would soon follow suit. Work Package 3 at Copim decided that with another three years (2023-2026) the ground would be fertile for presses wanting to take up the model - with our help - as CEU Press and LUP had done so successfully. For small/medium-sized presses with minimal staff, not much time, no spare cash and a back catalogue of excellent closed books there really aren’t many other models out there right now that can help them flip to no-embargo OA on the frontlist. So we committed to spending 2023-2026 bringing three more publishers onto the OtF programme.
Flipping from closed to open
Our project colleagues launching the Open Book Collective (OBC) were well-positioned to help born-OA presses gain a measure of sustainable funding for their activities (though note the OBC is not exclusively for born-OA presses, it’s a broad church). However, for traditional or what some might call ‘legacy’ presses with closed, traditional backlists it’s tricky to flip to OA. MIT Press have been making great progress with their Direct 2 Open model (launched only weeks apart from Opening the Future, as it happens); JSTOR’s Path to Open offers one avenue though it requires the new OA books to be embargoed for a time and there may be a limit to how many books a press can submit to the OA programme; Michigan University Press have a neat model engineered to their very own specific set up; and more models have appeared since, several of them using a similar backlist-to-fund-the-frontlist premise (e.g. Bloomsbury Academic, Taylor & Francis, UPLOpen by DeGruyter).
But in mid-2023 there was only one, mature (ish) and proven (somewhat) mechanism designed for small presses that anyone could pick up and run with: that’s OtF. It’s freely available to implement, there’s a ‘how to’ toolkit already online, and we have two staff assigned to helping three more presses adopt it by April 2026. So we set up shop, put out press releases, and spoke to industry contacts to try to get presses to work with us.
The challenges facing lots of presses
As we write this in early October 2024 we’re just over half way through Copim Phase 2 and have had conversations with 10+ presses about launching Opening the Future with them. What we found quite early on is that (surprise) all of them are facing the same challenges as everybody else. So we’re still in conversation with them and are confident we’ll be working with more than one soon, but in the meantime this blog post outlines a few of the challenges that they have surfaced.
1. Mandates, priorities, and time-constraints
One factor seems to be that the scholarly publishing landscape has shifted quite a lot already in the last 1.5 years. In the UK, Research England’s decision not to proceed with an OA mandate for books submitted to their Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise has probably been a factor, i.e. there is now less of a policy imperative for publishers to engage with OA book models. But that decision was only made a couple of months ago. That alone does not pose the main challenge to adopting OA models. Rather, I think the main issue is time, or to be more precise, lack of time. One industry insider observed recently:
“The small and medium sized university presses around the world are really struggling with trying to keep up with just trying to keep their businesses running. They see the reliable funding challenge in moving towards open, but it’s more about finding the extra time than the money – they have to worry about signing, editing books, paying authors, designing book jackets, stocking print, sharing ebooks with providers, keeping the lights on! The intentional and strategic move to open is challenging.”
So time and priorities are factors. OA for books is necessarily lower down a publisher’s priority list than keeping the lights on, particularly without the big stick of major mandates - in the UK and USA at least - to force the issue. But tied up with all of this is also the other perennial factor: money and budgets.
2. Shrinking budgets
Libraries remain the main acquirers of academic monographs, so when we hear that library budgets are tight and are getting squeezed tighter we know that must be a factor in how much financial support is available for OA book models. As an example in the UK, at time of writing, there are 70 UK HEIs undergoing some kind of redundancy or ‘restructuring’ programme: those numbers make it clear that when libraries say budgets are tight, they really mean they are tight. Libraries will be having to watch and justify every penny they spend. Financial support for OA monograph initiatives like ours is still ‘back of the sofa’ money in many cases - leftover bits of budget and one-off pots of cash. Our existing library support is very much appreciated and we’re grateful for every single one of them. And we have every sympathy for them in having to cost-save, and prioritise, even if that means they’re not in a position to renew their support at the end of their initial membership period. Libraries are also still grappling with the dizzying and climbing costs seen in their other budget lines: a July 2024 study estimated that, globally, APCs cost HEIs a staggering $8.349 billion USD between 2019 and 2023, paid to just 6 mega-publishers. (One might argue that there is plenty of money in the publishing ecosystem to sustain OA monographs but that the money is being spent inequitably… but that is a discussion for another blog post.)
3. Proliferating (competing?) models
So, in considering how we might get publishers to take up our model we can add the possibility of unreliable funding to their continuing challenges of no time and different priorities. To complete the picture, another factor must also be that more and more OA book funding models now exist, many of them worthy of library support. Are we all ‘competing’ for the same bits of library cash? And are libraries getting increasingly confused by, or fatigued by (and with less time to engage with), the proliferation of new models: membership models, EBA models, non-profit models, commercial models, BPC models, and more besides?
Where does all this leave us?
One of the recurring objections from some universities and their authors to a REF mandate in the UK was that there were not enough avenues for authors to publish OA books, and that it would bankrupt the sector. Setting aside for a moment the oft-repeated (and incorrect) assumption that a large scale transition to OA would have to be funded one-book-at-a-time through BPCs, this proliferation of funding models since 2020 would seem to give the lie to the other assumption/REF objection that OA severely restricts author choice. A cursory glance at the list of publishers and their models on the OAPEN website tells a very different story, and that’s not an exhaustive list by any means: you can add to this the recently-launched models from big publishers like OUP, Taylor & Francis, DeGruyter/Brill and others all of which rely on ‘community-funding’ of some sort, not-dissimilar in some aspects to the Opening the Future premise which pools small contributions from many libraries. (Another blog post for another day is where these models differ from ours - some readers may wonder which of the new models are ‘commercialised OA’ and using terms like ‘community-led’ in service of ‘openwashing’ i.e. to actually mean business-as-usual commercial activity).
So where does all of this leave Copim Work Package 3 and our desire to bring on board new presses?
Well, we still have another 16 months in which to implement OtF at more presses, and in that time we also intend to ensure the model’s continued success at Liverpool University Press and CEU Press by helping them to embed it, and to grow and retain members.
Simple onboarding process for OtF
We’ve prepared a simple onboarding process for interested publishers where the WP3 team will be able to advise how to launch it, and can quickly help set up the relationships with library partners, and sector stakeholders like Jisc, Lyrasis and Project MUSE. We’re also working on revising the existing ‘how to’ toolkit into a much more user-friendly and adaptable format - so that, when the time is right, interested small publishers might pick it up and run with it themselves. We aim to have this ready by December 2024: when priorities, carrots and sticks have sufficiently shifted, those publishers that currently don’t have the time to think about all of this will find it ready and waiting. We're making this as accessible and user-friendly as possible because it is quite possible that by the time that tipping point has come, Copim Open Book Futures will have concluded. Part of our remit as Copim and OtF is to create sustainable and openly usable tools with the wider diamond OA community in mind; when the landscape has shifted, 'we' may not still be around but the tools we've created and refined will be, and they'll still be relevant because they're so adaptable.
Follow us, get in touch, meet us at conferences …
In the meantime we continue to work with the sector and the Copim community in advocating for OA books, including discussing with libraries on the potential changes in the way their budgets are configured to pay for OA. We’re regularly invited as expert speakers at events discussing revenue models for OA books, and we continue to present the OtF model at conferences and webinars, including a breakout session at UKSG in April 2024, followed by a webinar version in October’s OA Week that will present to an international audience. Look out for us in person at:
the Frankfurt Book Fair (Hall 4.0, E69/71 (sharing with Thoth, OBC, and DOAB/OAPEN) in October;
presenting in person at the Charleston Conference (USA) on Thurs 14 November at 4pm;
and presenting for the IOAP and OIPA groups also on Thurs 24 Oct at 2pm, free to attend, register online.
presenting at the Researcher 2 Reader Conference (London, UK) 25-26th February 2025.
Anyone wanting to discuss OtF in any capacity - including publishers who might be interested in running the model - please get in touch with the team at [email protected], and follow us on BlueSky at @openingthefuture.bsky.social, and on LinkedIn.
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