PALOMERA – Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area
The PALOMERA project (Supporting the development of aligned policies for open access books and monographs) is funded by the European Union for two years under the Horizon Europe program: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101094270). In a nutshell, it seeks to understand why so few OA funder policies include books, and to provide actionable recommendations to change this.
Members and Partners include:
- OPERAS, coordinator
- OAPEN
- Hanken School of Economics
- IBL PAN
- LIBER
- University of Coimbra
- DARIAH
- European Science Foundation
- ZRC SAZU
- SPARC Europe
- Bielefeld University
- Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
- OASPA
- Aix-Marseille Université
- JISC
- Open Book Publishers
Academic books continue to play an important role in scholarly production and research communication, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. As an important output of scholarly production, academic books must be included in open science/open access policies and strategies developed by research funders and institutions, to ensure that open science becomes the modus operandi of modern science across all disciplines. However, contrary to article publishing in journals (especially in the areas of Science, Technology, and Medicine) academic books have not been a focus point for OA policymakers. Consequently, books are only rarely mandated to be published OA by research funders and institutions.
PALOMERA will investigate the reasons for this situation across geographies, languages, economies, and disciplines within the European Research Area (ERA). Through desk studies, surveys, in-depth interviews, and use cases, PALOMERA will collect, structure, analyse, and make available knowledge that can explain the challenges and bottlenecks that prevent OA to academic books. Based on this evidence, PALOMERA will provide actionable recommendations and concrete resources to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for OA books, with the overall objective of speeding up the transition to open access for books to further promote open science, divided into five specific sub-objectives:
- To develop and coordinate a Knowledge Base with qualitative and quantitative data on the OA book policy landscape in Europe.
- To understand the challenges preventing research funding and research performing organisations from developing and aligning on policies for OA books.
- To engage relevant stakeholders in the validation of the collected data and the analyses hereof, and the evidence-based, actionable recommendations on how to further advance alignment, diversity, equity, and inclusion in OA book policies and strategies.
- To help research funding and research performing organisations develop policies and strategies that will advance the transition to OA books through the establishment and operation of a trusted forum (the Funder Forum).
- To learn from and share experiences with research funding organisations outside of the ERA who have developed OA book policies.
The recommendations will address all relevant stakeholders (research funders and institutions, researchers, publishers, infrastructure providers, libraries, and national policymakers). The PALOMERA consortium broadly represents all relevant stakeholders for OA academic books, but will facilitate co-creation and validation events throughout the project to ensure that the views and voices of all relevant stakeholders are represented, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. This will assure maximal consensus and take-up of the recommendations.
Start date: 1 January 2023
End date: 31 December 2024