OPERAS Business Models White Paper: Collaborative models for OA book publishers (Version 2.0), March 2023
Paper 1 (2018) Paper 2 v. 1.0 (2021)Cite this article as: Błaszczyńska, Marta, Melinščak Zlodi, Iva, Morka, Agata, Proudman, Vanessa, & Stone, Graham. (2023). “Collaborative models for OA book publishers (Version 2.0) (2.0)”. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7780754.
This is the White Paper of the OA Business Models Special Interest Group.
Authors:
Marta Błaszczyńska, IBL PAN, Poland (0000-0002-2377-4565)
Iva Melinščak Zlodi, University of Zagreb, Croatia (0000-0001-6477-2016)
Agata Morka, SPARC Europe, The Netherlands (0000-0001-8390-4336)
Vanessa Proudman, SPARC Europe, The Netherlands (0000-0001-5623-9051)
Graham Stone, Jisc, UK (0000-0002-5189-373X)
OPERAS has received funding from the
European Union‘s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme
under grant agreement OPERAS-P No 871069 and under
Horizon Europe framework Infra-Dev under
grant agreement OPERAS-PLUS No
101079608
Attribution 4.0 International
ABSTRACT
Given the dynamic rate of change in the OA books business models landscape, the OPERAS Open Access Business Models Special Interest Group launched a survey in 2021 to 1) improve our understanding of the scholarly publishing landscape and of the challenges that publishers face in the context of publishing OA monographs; and 2) to identify main trends (including opportunities and challenges) and the knowledge of collaborative funding and infrastructure models in OA publishing in Social Science and the Humanities. This white paper updates and expands an earlier version published in 2021, which presented the preliminary analysis of the findings.
Despite a small sample of presses meaning that no strong trends ought to be discussed, several insights were drawn and should be considered important directions for the future. Key findings in the report have been grouped into three main areas: collaboration, funding, and support.
The report found that, although not opposed to the idea, a majority of presses do not engage in collaboration, specifically collaborative models for shared infrastructure, mainly due to the lack of knowledge and information, or perceived lack of need. This indicates that, for OA books, we are still at the early stage of the adoption curve for collaborative shared infrastructure.
In terms of funding, most publishers perceive themselves to be somewhat sustainable. For institutional publishers, parent organisations are crucial as providers of financial or non-monetary support of OA. In addition, most publishers stress the need to have more resources and rely on more than one funding source, including grants and subsidies.
The report found that awareness-raising and targeted support and training could be used to engage the presses but further incentivisation may be required to encourage publishers to collaborate more widely.
We believe that the insights from this white paper may be interesting to a number of projects, such as DIAMAS, OPERAS-PLUS, and Palomera and have presented areas for further research and more specific actionable points for these projects.
Contents
- Introduction
- Methodology
- General Overview
- Publishing workflows
- Book publishing
- Funding sources, revenues and costs
- Collaborative models for funding and infrastructure
- Further support
- Key findings
- Comparison with OPERAS-P report on innovative business models in publishing
- Suggestions for further research
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- References
APPENDIX 1. OPERAS business models survey on open access books
1. INTRODUCTION
OPERAS is the European Research Infrastructure for the development of open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities. In 2018, the OPERAS Open Access Business Models Special Interest Group (OPERAS n.d.) published a white paper on Business Models for Open Access (Speicher et al. 2018). The report described the landscape of open access (OA) publishing at the time, and identified multiple approaches to open access publishing. Since that report was compiled, there have been significant developments in the OA publishing world, and an increasing focus on OA monographs in particular. A number of new, funded studies and reviews have been published or are underway, all seeking to identify ways to support an increase in OA for monographs. Of particular note are the Research England and Arcadia funded Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project, which has published a number of reports including a key report on open access revenue models (Penier, Eve, and Grady 2020), which built on the 2018 OPERAS white paper, and a COPIM/OPERAS landscape study on academic libraries and open access books in Europe (Morka and Gatti 2021). Additionally, the European Commission funded PALOMERA (Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area) project will commence in January 2023 (European Commission 2022; OPERAS 2023).
After a relatively slow start compared to journal policies, there are now a number of existing and emerging OA monograph policies, which are leading to an increased focus on business models. Early adopters include the Austrian Science Fund, Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Dutch National Programme Open Science. Developing policies include the European Commission (Tóth-Czifra 2021), cOAlition S principle 7 on plans for OA monographs (European Science Foundation 2022), National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket 2022), and the UKRI open access policy, which includes a new requirement for monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from January 2024 to be made open access (UKRI 2022).
In addition, new business models are also being explored. For example, ‘Opening the future’, a collective subscription model for open access books (Birkbeck, University of London n.d.), MIT Press’ Direct to open, a collective action open access business model for scholarly books (MIT Press 2022), and the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot (SHMP) at the University of North Carolina Press funded by Andrew W Mellon foundation (Sherer 2020). The emerging research funder policies, particularly from cOAlition S, have also helped to focus attention on infrastructure (Mournier, Sondervan, and Stone 2021).
Given this dynamic landscape, it was clear that the original OPERAS OA Business Models Special Interest Group white paper needed to be brought up to date. It was also felt that a more in-depth understanding was needed of European monograph publishers’ current business models for open access, their challenges, and their views on how infrastructure for open access monographs could be improved.
The above reports have influenced the development of the survey that underpins this white paper, as well as the OPERAS-P project, which has shown that there is significant interest coming from the community in finding ways of sustaining OA books, without necessarily going through the book processing charge (BPC) model (Morka and Gatti 2021). Workshops held in the summer of 2020 and spring of 2021 with librarians from Germany, Poland, the Nordic countries and Southern Europe, and with European publishers (Morka 2020a; 2020b; 2020c; 2020d; Mosterd 2021a), also revealed that these stakeholders are exploring new ways of funding OA books publication and share interest in collaborative models.
Therefore, a special emphasis has been put on the idea of collaborative approaches, which rely on sharing of information, funds, and infrastructures (Adema and Moore 2018). OPERAS wished to understand more about how the social sciences and humanities (SSH) publishing community applies or could apply collaborative models for open access books, and what issues it encounters when dealing with them. We further wanted to understand what challenges publishers faced when engaging with or thinking about engaging in collaborative models for OA books. Are there enough funds, enough human resources? Are relevant infrastructures in place? What kind of support is needed? These survey results provide a more comprehensive insight into how OPERAS and associated projects can make a tangible change and best support the community in building sustainable paths of transition towards collaborative models for open access books.
The first version of this white paper (Stone et al. 2021) presented some early observations from the preliminary analysis of the findings concentrating on the sections of the survey that dealt with questions on collaborative models. It gave us an indication of the challenges that European presses see ahead regarding collaborative models for funding and infrastructure.
An anonymised dataset has been made available under a CC BY licence (Błaszczyńska et al. 2023).
2. METHODOLOGY
The survey was designed to serve two core aims:
- To further, better or improve our understanding of the scholarly publishing landscape and of the challenges that publishers face in the context of publishing OA monographs;
- To identify main trends (including opportunities and challenges) and the knowledge of collaborative funding and infrastructure models in OA publishing in SSH.
The survey was aimed at academic publishers who published books in SSH (but did not need to specialise in these disciplines). It was open between 16 February and 14 April 2021, and was disseminated to the intended audience via the OPERAS blog (Schulte 2021), targeted emails (when possible in the national languages of the publishers), and social media. All questions were optional. While we believed that this encouraged a greater number of participants, it also means that it can be difficult to compare the answers to individual questions, as the number of responses and respondents vary. Where appropriate, the number of responses to a question discussed is indicated.
We did not receive enough responses to perform a country analysis. However, we grouped the publishers who responded to the survey into four regions of the European Research Area (ERA):
- Central and Eastern Europe (Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia)
- Northern Europe (Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Norway)
- Southern Europe (Italy, Portugal)
- Western Europe (Austria, Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Netherlands)
Grouping countries into regions allows analysis to be carried out with clusters covering more presses than there would be in the case of countries in order to look for any patterns, e.g. whether a specific region has a preferred funding model. However, it should be noted that this is still a relatively small dataset. One publisher, which was based outside of the ERA, was excluded from regional analysis.
Any larger grouping of smaller actors may be an oversimplification of a complex landscape and this proposed clustering is no exception. There are important distinctions to be noted between countries in each group. For example, Croatia (approx. 4 million citizens) and Poland (with a population of around 38 million) have both been grouped in the Central and Eastern Europe region. While the presses in the two countries may have similar experiences in terms of public funding (see 6.1 FUNDING SOURCES BY PUBLISHER TYPE AND REGION), some other factors such as the size of readership in their national languages vary considerably.
We asked respondents to classify themselves by ‘publisher type’. They were asked to select all options that applied from the list below:
- University press
- Publishing department in an academic institution
- Library-based publisher
- Scholar-led publisher (independent, not connected to the academic institution, non-profit publisher run by scholars)
- Scholarly society
- Other not-for-profit publisher (museum, archive or other non-academic institution with publishing activities relevant to SSH)
- Commercial publisher
- Other
The results are shown in section 3.2 below. However, in order to perform further analysis we grouped those that identified as university presses, publishing departments, library-led publishers and scholarly societies into a new group called ‘institutional publisher’. It should be noted that there is no overlap between this group and the remaining types. The publisher types ‘scholar-led’, ‘other not-for-profit’ and ‘other’ have very few responses. Although we do include them in some of the data, there is not a sufficient number of full responses to conduct any detailed analysis. Therefore, much of the comparison below will be between ‘institutional publishers’ and commercial publishers.
It is important to note that the analysis will only match publisher type OR region against other survey answers. There is not enough data to combine publisher type and region into a more granular set of data.
The survey defined books as long form scholarly monographs typically written by one or more authors, edited collections featuring chapters written by a number of authors (including edited collections arising from a conference and published as a book in its own right) and scholarly editions (the critical representation of primary sources). Textbooks (i.e. books written specifically for the undergraduate students market), conference proceedings (i.e. reproduction of the proceedings), and trade books (i.e. written specifically for the non-academic market) were out of scope of the study.
2.1 LIMITATIONS TO THE METHODOLOGY
The geographical scope of the survey focused on countries within Europe Research Area but there was also one response from the USA. The aim was to collect a variety of experiences but we realise that the number of participants from each country (see Figure 1) was too small to draw significant conclusions on differences between various national contexts. Furthermore, although all academic publishers with experience with SSH publications were encouraged to participate, it is fair to assume that most of the respondents had at least some level of interest in OA books, meaning that we might not have captured the sentiments of organisations that were in no way concerned about moving to, or at least experimenting with, open access. Moreover, collaborative business models are a new phenomenon that seemed novel to many of the participants so it would have been difficult to make any definite judgements about the publishing landscape in this regard.
The data was extracted from the same survey as the previous version of the white paper. However, responses from two publishers who selected ‘other’ and then identified themselves as intermediaries were removed from this analysis. A further response was removed after a request by the respondent. Therefore, this version of the white paper analyses 74 responses rather than the original 77. However, the removal of these three respondents’ data does not have a significant impact on the analysis.
A small number of respondents stated that they did not currently publish OA books. However, their responses have not been removed from the analysis as we do not know whether they intend to publish OA books in the future. Finally, during the analysis of the full survey we discovered an error in one of the questions where we combined two separate options into one part of a multiple choice question:
9.a.13. ProofreadingTechnical / software development
9.a.14. Submissions system Technical / software support
We have therefore taken these results out of the analysis.
3. GENERAL OVERVIEW
3.1 GEOGRAPHICAL SPREAD OF RESPONDENTS
Publishers from 14 EU countries responded to the survey, plus five responses from the UK (one did not indicate the country, but we were able to identify this from the name of the press), one from Norway, and one from the USA. Figure 1 summarises the number of participants by country.
Figure 1. Number of survey participants by country.
The sample is relatively small, but we can deduce that the survey has managed to achieve a balanced and geographically dispersed representation of European publishers of different types (see below). It appears that the survey was successful in attracting respondents from European countries outside of the current OPERAS network, such as the Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland. This is likely to be a result of the combination of disseminating by the local networks of OPERAS members, but also through SPARC Europe, the Association of European University Presses and UKSG eNews.
Figure 2. Responses by region.
As stated in the methodology section above, we combined the country data into four European regions (Figure 2) in order to see whether any regions had different approaches. We excluded one publisher from the United States.
3.2 CLASSIFICATION OF ‘PUBLISHER TYPES’
Respondents were asked to select from a selection of ‘publisher types’, those that they felt best described their press. It was possible for respondents to select more than one option. All respondents answered this question with the most common answer being ‘university press’ (33), followed by ‘publishing department in an academic institution’ (18) and ‘commercial publisher’ (14). ‘University press’, ‘publishing department based in academic institution’ and ‘library based publisher’ were often chosen in combination.
Of the 14 responses for ‘commercial publisher’, only two might be described as large international commercial publishing houses.
We aggregated publisher types ‘university press’, ‘publishing department based in academic institution’, ‘library based publisher’ and ‘scholarly society’ into a new grouping: ‘institutional publisher’. We have also added one of the respondents that selected ‘other’, as they described themselves as a publisher created by three research institutes. This gives a total of 52 ‘institutional publishers’ compared with the 14 ‘commercial publishers’. Of the other eight responses, four selected ‘scholar-led publisher’, two selected ‘[o]ther not-for-profit publisher (museum, archive or other non-academic institution with publishing activities relevant to HSS)’, and two selected ‘other’ – we could not identify these as either institutional or commercial publisher.
Figure 3. Aggregated publisher type by country.
Figure 3 shows the aggregated publisher types by country of the 74 responses. The aggregated publisher type by country indicates that we do not have enough data to compare the results by country.
Figure 4. Responses by European region and publisher type.
Figure 4 illustrates that it is not possible to compare by both publisher type and region as the sample sizes are too small. This excludes one scholar-led publisher from the United States.
In this relatively small sample, it can be observed that the spread of responses from institutional publishers is fairly even between Central and Eastern, Southern, and Western Europe. Northern Europe has a slightly larger number of responses from commercial publishers than from institutional publishers. Responses from Central and Eastern Europe have the highest proportion of institutional publishers to commercial publishers. However, there is not enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions about whether particular publisher types are dominant in certain regions of the ERA.
3.3 SUBJECT COVERAGE
All 74 respondents published in at least one SSH discipline. Figure 5 shows the breakdown by subject area and publisher type. Percentages show the subject coverage in relation to the publisher type, e.g. 73% of all Institutional publishers published history publications.
Figure 5. Subject disciplines by number of occurrences and percentage of total output by publisher type.
All subjects were covered by institutional and commercial publishers. History was the most common subject area for institutional publishers, with history, sociology, political science and philosophy being the most common subjects for commercial publishers. Biological anthropology was the least published subject area for both of the main publisher types.
3.4 GOVERNANCE AND PEER REVIEW
We asked respondents to describe their governance structure as a free text response. Institutional publishers responded with a variety of governance structures, including
- Publishing Director for day-to-day operations
- Management Board for administration and strategic planning
- Academic Board with internal/external members for quality control
- Editorial Boards for journals and edited book series, especially for quality control
- Steering Committees or Publishing Council to review book proposals
- International scientific committee
- Internal Management Boards reporting to the head librarian or head of department or institution
Commercial publishers comments included:
- CEO or Board of Directors/Executive Board
- Editorial Director and Department
- Editorial Boards (some internal)
- Sales Department
Some commercial publishers noted that there was only an owner/CEO and a general manager responsible for editorial direction.
Respondents were asked about peer review and quality assurance processes they had in place, they were encouraged to tick all options that applied. All 74 respondents answered this question (Figure 6). These responses are shown for illustration purposes as no further analysis was undertaken due to the responses being out of the remit of this version of the white paper.
Figure 6. Peer review or quality control processes.
Publishers comments for ‘other’ included the option to have reviewer names disclosed as part of the publication if the reviewer and author agree, review of book manuscripts by the Editorial Committee, and peer review method suggested by the publication project’s editors or authors suggest a peer review method subject to the Academic Board’s comments.
3.5 SIZE OF PUBLISHERS IN FTEs
Publishers were asked about the number of their employees by Full Time Equivalent (FTEs), their answers gave us an insight into the size of their enterprises. According to that characteristic, our sample is heterogeneous: there are many small publishers (almost half have up to 2 employees), but larger publishers are also represented (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Size of publishers (in number of FTEs).
When we look at the size of the publishers according to their type (Figure 8), we can see that among commercial publishers, large ones are well represented (more than half have more than 10 employees), but there is also a significant share of small commercial publishers. Among institutional respondents, the majority is in the smaller group, there are only four institutional publishers in the group of having 10-20 FTEs, and none with more than 20. For scholar-led, non-academic institutions and ‘other’, the number of respondents is too small to allow for any conclusions.
Figure 8. Size of publishers (in number of FTEs) by publisher type.
The heterogeneity of the sample can be a mirror of the actual diversity of the publishing landscape across Europe, but it is also possible that it is the result of the way that OPERAS was able to communicate its survey. It is clear that it was easier to reach institutional publishers. Therefore, more effort should be invested in gathering information on commercial publishers (especially smaller and specialised ones) as well as scholar-led and others. There was no discernible pattern evident regarding the relation of size (in FTEs) and European region.
4. PUBLISHING WORKFLOWS
We asked questions about the use of outsourcing and volunteering at different stages in the publishing workflow. In addition, we asked a question about the main expenses in the workflow, which offered a similar set of options. In this analysis, we have combined respondents’ answers to these three questions and have also compared them to the size of the publisher by FTE to see if there are any trends.The analysis has been divided into stages of the production workflow.
Publishers who outsourced or used volunteers were asked to rank their answers as follows: High level of reliance, Medium level of reliance, Low level of reliance, No reliance, Do not use volunteers.
4.1 OUTSOURCING, VOLUNTEERS AND MAIN EXPENSES COMPARED TO FTE
In general terms, 64 publishers outsourced at least one element of the publishing workflow. Of the 10 publishers that did not outsource, eight were institutional publishers and two were scholar-led. It should be noted however, that some publishers who said they did not outsource, then went on to answer that they did rely on outsourcing in some of the options. We have included all of the data in the analysis below.
Volunteering was far less common. 12 of these 64 publishers also used volunteers. All but one were institutional publishers, the remaining press was commercial. A further three publishers used volunteers, but did not outsource (two institutions and one scholar-led).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of publishers who used volunteers were small presses with less than 2 FTE (Figure 9).
Figure 9. Publishers using volunteers (by FTE).
4.2 OUTSOURCING, VOLUNTEERS AND MAIN EXPENSES BY STAGES IN THE PUBLICATION WORKFLOW
Copyediting
Of the 45 publishers that outsourced copyediting, 21 had a high reliance, 13 had a medium reliance and 11 a low reliance. Seven publishers used volunteers for copyediting with the majority reporting a low reliance (1 high, 2 medium, 4 low reliance). Only three publishers outsourced and used volunteers. All three had a low reliance on outsourcing and two had a low reliance on volunteers (the other a medium reliance).
Of the 66 publishers that reported expenditure on copyediting, 49 ranked it very or somewhat important. Matching the two questions against expenditure proved inconclusive. For example, one publisher reported a low reliance on outsourcing, but then reported that they did not commit any expenditure on copyediting. However, 15 of the 21 publishers that had a high reliance on copyediting also reported that expenditure was very or somewhat important.
Design
A different set of 45 presses reported that they outsourced design. 23 reported a high reliance, 12 medium, and 10 a low reliance. Only two publishers used volunteers for design, both with a medium reliance. One of these used both outsourcing and volunteers, both with a medium reliance.
Half of the 26 publishers who reported expenditure on design as very important also had a high reliance on outsourcing. However, there were no particular trends in the data.
Determining if the submission fit the publisher’s scope
Only four publishers outsourced this decision process (one high, two medium and one low reliance). A further five use volunteers to look at scope (four high and one low reliance).
Dissemination of print copies
Regarding dissemination of print copies, we had expected more than 36 publishers to report that they outsourced this activity. Of these, 20 had a high reliance, 10 had a medium and six had a low reliance. Two other publishers used volunteers and had a high reliance.
Editing and editorial boards
The majority of the 39 presses that outsourced editing reported medium reliance (18). 13 had a medium reliance and eight had a low reliance. Seven publishers used volunteers, with four using both outsourcing and volunteers for editing.
Regardless of whether they used volunteers or outsourcing, 58 presses reported that expenditure on editing was either very or somewhat important.
We also asked about whether expenditure for editorial board support was important. However, results were inconclusive with 24 of the 67 responses saying expenditure was very or somewhat important, 11 reporting it was very or somewhat unimportant and 12 answered that it was neither important or unimportant.
Hosting
A surprising result was that only 28 publishers outsourced hosting. Although the majority that did, had a high reliance (16 high, six medium, six low reliance).
Furthermore, it was surprising that only 19 and the 67 presses that answered the expenditure question thought that expenditure on hosting was either very or somewhat important.
When this question was crosschecked against the question about online hosting of OA content (See section 5.3) it was found that 17 of the 25 publishers that did outsource, or reported no reliance had their own platforms (although some also listed platforms such as OAPEN as hosts of their online content). The remaining eight publishers did not have their own platform and did not list other online hosting platforms. Regarding those that reported a high reliance on hosting, the following platforms were listed (publishers could choose more than one platform): OAPEN (6), EBSCO/JSTOR/Open Edition (3 each), Project MUSE (2), Internet Archive (1).
Legal advice on copyright
Just 18 publishers outsourced legal advice on copyright (five high, six medium, seven low reliance). No volunteers were used for this process.
Marketing
Only 14 publishers outsourced marketing, with the majority having a low reliance (one high, four medium, nine low reliance). A further seven publishers used volunteers (two high, two medium and three low reliance).
Expenditure on marketing also gave inconclusive results. However, what we don’t know is whether the publishers that did not rank marketing as an important expenditure did so because they did not have the funds to support it.
Online dissemination
Like outsourcing for hosting, online dissemination returned only 23 instances of outsourcing (nine high, eight medium, six low reliance). However, the responses only partially overlapped with the hosting responses.
Five publishers reported using volunteers for online dissemination (two high and three low reliance).
Peer review process
23 publishers reported that they outsourced the peer review process with the majority of these having a high reliance (14 high, four medium, five low reliance). One press also reported a high level of reliance on volunteers as well as outsourcing. A further six used volunteers only (three high, two medium, one low reliance).
56 publishers reported expenditure on the peer review process, but figures were inconclusive as to the importance (27 very or somewhat important, 15 very or somewhat unimportant and 14 reporting neither important or unimportant).
Print-on-demand and printing
As expected, all but seven of the 34 publishers that outsourced print-on-demand had a high reliance on it (four medium, three low reliance). The same was true for printing where 50 of the 60 who outsourced this process had a high reliance (nine medium and one low reliance). No volunteers were used for either process.
Many of the presses that did not outsource may not have published print copies, but we have not analysed this data.
Proofreading
Expenditure on proofreading was seen as either very or somewhat important by 49 of the 65 publishers that expressed a preference, only five saw it as very or somewhat unimportant and 11 neither important or unimportant. Regrettably, an error in the survey meant that we cannot analyse the data to see if proofreading was outsourced or whether volunteers were used.
Technical / software development and support
Expenditure for technical / software development and support were both seen as important by most of the 68 publishers who answered both questions. One publisher answered saying support was neither important nor unimportant. 35 of the 56 who expressed a preference regarded expenditure on development as important, 33 considered expenditure on support important. Only nine thought expenditure on development very or somewhat important and 10 for support. 12 publishers thought development was neither important or unimportant, 12 thought the same for support, but it was not the same group. Although most publishers ticked the same option for both questions (only two publishers did not think that both were very important, for example. They answered somewhat important for support), this was not the case for all.
Once again, due to an error in the survey we could not analyse the data for outsourcing or volunteers.
Training
Only 12 publishers outsourced their training, with equal numbers having high, medium and low reliance. A further three publishers used volunteers, two with high reliance and one with low reliance. Specific areas of support (that also could be included in training) are covered in section 8.2.
Translation
43 publishers outsourced translation services, with 27 having a high reliance on this service. A further eight each had a medium and low reliance on outsourcing. One publisher also had a low reliance on volunteers. Three others used volunteers rather than outsourcing (two medium, one low reliance).
However, there was little agreement between a high reliance on outsourcing and expenditure. For example, only eight publishers who had a high level of reliance on outsourcing answered that expenditure was very important. Although, the majority that expressed a preference did rank expenditure as very or somewhat important (30). 12 thought expenditure on translation was very or somewhat unimportant and 10 thought it was neither important or unimportant.
Typesetting
39 publishers outsourced typesetting (19 high reliance, 10 medium, 10 low). One of the publishers who had a low level of reliance on outsourcing also had a medium level of reliance on volunteers. Two other presses had a low level of reliance on volunteers only.
The vast majority of 59 publishers that expressed a preference on expenditure for typesetting thought that it was very or somewhat important (45). Only seven thought it was very or somewhat unimportant and the same number thought it was neither important or unimportant. However, there was no trend between high reliance on outsourcing and expenditure being important.
4.3 OUTSOURCING MODELS
For those publishers who used outsourcing, we asked what type of services they used. For example, from freelancers, small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) or large companies. Most publishers outsourced to freelancers or SMEs, typically for services such as editing, design, typesettings, translations, proofreading, layout and index creation (the final two were not included in our questions). Large companies were used exclusively for distribution/dissemination, printing/POD and hosting. Two publishers also reported that they used other universities or departments for outsourcing. One publisher noted that they were all volunteers, another commented that they had a low level of reliance on using volunteers for recording videos.
4.4 IMPACT OF OPEN ACCESS ON THE PRODUCTION WORKFLOW
We asked publishers how the transition to open access might impact on the production processes. Some publishers responded that they were already open access (4) so couldn’t answer the question, others thought that there would be no impact (6) or that the processes would stay very important (1).
There were a few interesting comments about printing and dissemination, where presses had assumed that these costs would reduce (2). Another press stated that because print was the primary method of dissemination, open access could not play a significant role. Perhaps all three publishers assumed that open access cannot co-exist with print, which is a common myth (OAPEN 2022b). Another comment was that open access would incur the same costs, but that there would be no income/funding (2). Again this appears to reinforce the assumption that open access is unfunded and that there is no revenue from print. There was also a view from one publisher that for OA titles more time would be spent on the financial management of the project, e.g. applying for financial support, exploring the OA landscape, and addressing organisations that can help to provide part of the budget needed to publish the title in OA.
A number of publishers thought that there would be an increase in costs for technical and software support/development (5), hosting (1) and the necessary increase in costs for better digital quality (1). Interestingly, there were comments about the increase in costs for metadata, keywords (2). Marketing strategies may also need to be different (1). One large commercial publisher commented that an industry group or recommendation on OA distribution in the eBook market would be welcome, to ensure the content can be made more widely available.
4.5 SHARED INFRASTRUCTURES IN THE BOOK PUBLISHING PROCESS
We asked respondents about shared infrastructures in the book production workflow. The answers given here are significantly different from the assumptions made from outsourcing and expenditure questions. All 74 participants were asked about which parts of the open access book publishing process would benefit most from having shared infrastructure. They were free to choose as many functions as they regarded as applicable.
Figure 10 shows the distribution of selected options. The functions that were regarded as the most beneficial in having shared infrastructure (35 or more selected them) were; distribution, metadata creation and distribution, technical/software development, marketing/social media, hosting, preservation, and technical/software support.
Figure 10. Shared infrastructures in the book publishing process.
Functions for which only a minority of respondents (20 or less) believed could be improved by collaborative infrastructure were; financial transaction handling, peer review, translation, copyediting, design, editing, typesetting, and proofreading. ‘Other’ was also an option but was not selected.
This was surprising in the light of the findings from the set of questions on outsourcing and expenditure. An analysis of the data for these questions showed a different set of functions that might benefit from collaborative models. Copyediting, design, proofreading and translation were processes that were outsourced and seen as an important area of expenditure. Editing and typesetting were not outsourced as much, but were also seen as important areas for expenditure. Technical and software support/development was seen as important, it was also regarded as an area that would increase in importance in the transition to open. Marketing and training were not ranked highly regarding expenditure or outsourcing, but marketing was seen as an area for collaboration.
Aside from ‘Distribution’ (where we can only assume that respondents were interpreting it as online distribution, but without certainty), all other aspects of publishing that were perceived as the ones where the presses needed help with and expected to benefit from shared infrastructure, were the aspects related to online publishing.
We find that the presses were seeing less benefit from collaboration in the functions that are inherited from print tradition, despite the reliance on outsourcing and importance on expenditure. The reasons for this could vary. It could be that most presses within our sample were generally better equipped to perform the ‘traditional’ aspects of publishing. But it could also mean that many presses were already witnessing the benefits of collaboration in the landscape of digital publishing, and were better aware of them.
And even for functions where most presses did not see the potential for collaboration, the reason could be not the lack of need, but the lack of current opportunities. It is possible that the attitudes would change if and when convincing options were to be presented. One good example could be the potential development of collaborative translation services within the OPERAS consortium.
5. BOOK PUBLISHING
The survey included a set of questions, which sought to provide a better understanding of various parts of the book publishing workflow. We ask respondents about the number of titles they published per year, the format type of these publications, where they were hosted and which licences were used for open access.
5.1 BOOK TITLES PER YEAR
Publishers were asked how many book titles they published per annum. Data for the institutional publishers shows that the majority of publishers published less than 15 titles per year. However, a significant number also published more than 21, which shows that institutional publishers fall into both small and large publisher categories for this survey. In contrast, commercial publishers tended to publish more than 26 titles per year. Although there was a minority that fit into a small commercial category of less than 10 titles per year (Figure 11).
Figure 11. Number of book titles published per year by publisher type.
Regarding region, there was no particular pattern with a fairly even spread of total publication number across all four regions.
5.2 PUBLISHING FORMATS
Respondents were asked about the different publishing formats they used for open access publishing. A number of common publishing formats were offered, with publishers able to select all that applied and also select ‘other’ if they used a format that had not been listed. The question offered three categories: Downloadable, Digital rights management applies, No digital right management. Publishers answered the categories that were relevant to them and these are shown in Figure 12.
Figure 12. Publishing format by download options.
PDF was by far the most popular format, followed by EPUB and HTML. MOBI and XML were used by relatively few publishers and TXT was only used by two in the ‘No DRM’ category. Further analysis showed that there were no discernable patterns by region or publisher type, although EPUB is used mostly in southern and western Europe.
5.3 HOSTING SERVICES
We asked publishers to select all that applied from the list of open access book hosting platforms below, with the option to add any others that were missing.
- Cairn
- Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL)
- EBSCO
- FULCRUM
- Hathitrust
- Internet Archive
- JSTOR Books
- MUSE Open
- OAPEN
- OpenEdition
- Own platform (with standardised metadata dissemination functionalities)
- Own platform (without standardised metadata dissemination functionalities)
- Self-archiving by the authors (institutional, subject, national repository)
- SharePress
- Ubiquity Press
- UC Digitalis
Of the options given, no publishers selected Fulcrum, Hathitrust or SharePress. This is perhaps understandable for the former two platforms as they are North American focussed, the latter being best associated with self-publishing.
Hosting services by publisher type
The most popular hosting solution selected was the publishers’ own platform (with standardised metadata dissemination functionalities), publishers’ own platform (without standardised metadata dissemination functionalities) also scored highly. OAPEN was the next most popular platform (nine institutions, five commercial and one scholar-led publisher). This was closely followed by OpenEdition (seven institutional, three commercial and one non-academic based press). Seven publishers selected EBSCO, six selected JSTOR Books and three selected MUSE Open. In addition, only four publishers were part of the Ubiquity Press network (the same number as selected Open Monograph Press (OMP) in the ‘other’ option).
Some publishers, that selected ‘other’, went on to identify one of the options. These have been moved into the relevant option. Other platforms used by commercial publishers were Torrossa Open (2), Google Books and Open Research Library, whereas other platforms used by institutional publishers included institutional repositories (4), Open Monographs Press from PKP (2), a local distributor, and De Gruyter. Regarding the mention of OMP, what we don’t know is if this refers to OMP as a hosted solution or if ‘the publishers’ own platform (with standardised metadata dissemination functionalities)’ could refer to local OMP installations.
Hosting services by region
There are a number of interesting observations on platform use when analysed by region. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cairn.info, the French-language social sciences and humanities is only used by two publishers in Western Europe (both in France). However, this also shows that the portal is not used by five of the French publishers or any other publishers who might publish in French.
OpenEdition is used predominantly by publishers in Southern and Western Europe, with one exception in Central and Eastern Europe. This might be expected as the OpenEdition platform is used by many French publishers and OpenEdition Italia is also available. However, only five of the eight French publishers and two of the 10 Italian publishers used OpenEdition.
UC Digitalis, a Portuguese platform based at the University of Coimbra is only used by one of the 11 Portuguese publishers. Likewise, there are only three publishers who use the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL). These are all in Central and Eastern Europe (two in Poland and one in the Czech Republic). Therefore 12 of the 15 respondents from Central and Eastern Europe do not use CEEOL.
JSTOR Books and MUSE Open are both used exclusively by Western European publishers, but again, only a relatively small number. Ubiquity Press is only used by Northern and Western European publishers. OAPEN is also used mostly by Western European publishers (with two publishers each from Northern and Southern Europe). Whereas EBSCO is used in very small numbers in Central and Eastern, Southern and Western Europe.
Finally, publishers’ own platform (with and without standardised metadata dissemination functionalities) and self-archiving by authors in a repository were fairly evenly distributed by region.
At first glance, data on hosting platforms used by respondents looks quite patchy. However, when analysed with a regional lens it does throw up some interesting observations. For example, platforms that might be expected to have wide scale use by publishers in different European regions do not seem to have full market penetration.
It would seem that there is a role for OPERAS to play in helping to promote different methods of open access book discovery/distribution. This could form part of a publisher toolkit (see Section 8.2).
5.4 OPEN LICENCES
With regards to open licensing of OA books, several issues were explored in the survey: prevalence of open licence usage, reasons for not using them, acceptability of certain licence types to publishers and who is deciding on the licence type.
Publishers were asked about the types of Creative Commons (CC) licence types they used for open access books, they were given the option to tick all that applied. Most of the responding publishers (54) use CC licences. 20 respondents did not report using them: some of them simply omitted answering the question, while nine explicitly reported not using them. However, one of them stated that they allow authors to choose the licence, while one stated they allow authors to ‘upload’ their works to any host they wish without an embargo (this is more an indicator that they are allowing self-archiving and rights retention, then that they are themselves OA publisher).
Presses that are not using CC licences were presented an option to state if they were using some other type of licences, and if yes, which one. One respondent reported using CC BY-ND with CC plus option, and another stated that they are ready to accept any open licence except CC0.
It is apparent from Figure 13 that some CC licences are generally most acceptable to publishers: most of them use (or are willing to accept) a CC BY licence, followed by CC BY-NC-ND. On the contrary, CC0 is mentioned only once, and after consulting the corresponding publisher’s website, it becomes clear that this licence is used for metadata, and not book content.
Figure 13. Licence Types by Publisher Types.
When they use CC licences, 35 publishers use only one default licence, while 17 will publish books under several different licences (from two up to all six licences). Interestingly, among the publishers that opted for using only one CC licence, 14 also stated that they let authors decide on the licence, and several explained that the listed licence is only a recommendation, but a final decision is with authors. For future research, it would be interesting to know the author’s preferred choices and what can influence their choices.
For those who publish with only one licence, 13 use CC BY and CC BY-NC-ND each. Commercial publishers using only one licence choose CC BY-NC-ND (3) and CC BY (2). For institutional publishers, the ratio is CC BY (10) to CC BY-NC-ND (9). Within our small sample there seems to be no evident pattern when it comes to the choice of the licence in relation to the publisher type.
For publishers who use more than one CC licence, five do not let authors choose the licence. The rationale for such an answer is not always clear, sometimes it means they allow for two default options but would not accommodate any other, and sometimes authors could only suggest, but the publisher makes the final decision (although we are not clear on what grounds). All five of these respondents are smaller institutional publishers.
From the survey, no relation of licence preference to business models or sustainability was found among responding publishers.
6. FUNDING SOURCES, REVENUES AND COSTS
Publishers were asked about what funding or income sources they currently use for open access book publishing. The suggested funding sources were:
- Direct grants from funders (including European/ministerial grants) where a funder subsidises OA publications, in whole or part (i.e. for the press as a whole or for individual publications)
- Membership programmes where libraries, library consortia etc. support the cost of publishing of OA books
- Sales from embargoed/delayed OA in which a monograph becomes OA only after a delay or embargo
- Freemium (digital) where an OA edition is in one digital format (e.g. HTML) and the priced edition in other digital formats (e.g. EPUB, PDF, MOBI)
- Freemium (print) where the digital version is available on open access and the print version is available to purchase
- Subscribe-to-Open where libraries subscribe to have access to some content, and when subscriptions reach a certain threshold they pay to create new OA monographs
- Crowdfunding from individuals where crowdfunding campaigns are organised to pitch monographs online to readers, usually using a crowd-funding platform like IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, Patreon or GoFundMe
- Cross-subsidized by other (publishing) activities of the organisation
- Library crowdfunding where an intermediating platform connects many purchasers with the option to ‘unlock’ or ‘unlatch’ a title. For example, Knowledge Unlatched
- Subsidy model where a university/faculty/research centre and/or library subsidise a university press directly or indirectly (financially or through facilities, equipment, or personnel, i.e. in-kind institutional support) either as a ‘library press’ or separate entity
- Book Processing Charge (BPC) where the author or his/her employer/ funder are charged a fee upon acceptance of the book for publication
- Donations, gifts or endowment
- Voluntary labour, work (excluding scientific)
It was possible for publishers to choose all options that applied as well as to state that they do not publish OA books (some of the respondents are publishers that were only considering that option) or to explain what other sources of funding they use.
The alternative sources named are:
- Grants from foundations aimed at scientific publishing
- Library Budget
- University support for OA publishing where authors not from the university pay for publishing
- Strategic funding from the state given to the research centre
- Mostly publishing of books is financed from a subvention for maintaining and developing the research potential of the (name of publisher).
It can be noted that some of those sources could also be interpreted as Direct grants from funders or a Subsidy model.
Out of six publishers that do not currently publish OA books, three stated that they would like to receive support in changing the revenue models to make more of their content open access. Comments received outlined the support they would find useful “direct funds”, “If you sent an analysis comparing OA and not-OA books sales/revenue ratio, it would be very helpful” and “OMP”. Even from that very small sample, we can see that the decision on transition to OA can rely on available funding, available technical support but also on available information and knowledge.
Some of the options offered were not recognised as applying to them by responding publishers. For example, none made use of the subscribe-to-open model, and only one (scholar-led) made use of crowdfunding from individuals. It is understandable given that survey was performed in early 2021, and the subscribe-to-open model has only recently been put into practice and is gaining traction especially in the United States (MIT Press 2022).
Out of 59 publishers that do publish OA books and that answered this question, 18 rely on only one source of revenue, all others combine multiple available sources (some up to nine different sources). Interestingly, even very small publishers (with up to two FTEs) will sometimes make use of four or more funding sources, which must present a significant organisational and administrative burden.
6.1 FUNDING SOURCES BY PUBLISHER TYPE AND REGION
Figure 14 gives an overview of funding sources by type of publisher. Across all types of publishers (surprisingly, even among commercial ones), the dominant funding sources are direct grants from funders, which indicates a currently substantial reliance of OA book publishing on grants (funding not mediated by libraries or authors).
Among the commercial publishers, BPCs are used by most, followed by direct grants from funders and then library crowdfunding. In a future study, it would be of interest to investigate in which cases grants are given to commercial publishers. On the other hand, institutional publishers, besides direct grants from funders, rely heavily on the subsidy model (financial or in-kind support by a parent institution or its library). Other well represented options are freemium (print), BPCs, and embargoed access. Numbers for other types of publishers are too small to be conclusive.
Figure 14. Funding or income sources by publisher type.
Some sources of revenue are present in only specific regions and almost absent from others (see Figure 15). We find membership programmes, freemium (digital), library crowdfunding and BPCs dominantly in Southern and Western Europe. The Northern European sample is very small, and all sources besides crowdfunding and freemium (digital) are represented. The Central and Eastern European group of publishers (all but one institutional publishers) relies mostly on direct grants, followed by subsidies and then freemium (where digital is free and print is sold).
Figure 15. Funding or income sources and region.
6.2 FUNDING SOURCES BY SIZE OF PUBLISHER (IN FTEs)
It could be expected that the size of the publishing organisations and the number of their employees will have some effect on the way they are funded (Figure 16). However, there are no contrasting differences among those categories, and it appears that publishers of all sizes are likely to rely on direct grants from funders. That is another indicator showing us that book publishing is rarely independent of public funding.
BPCs as a source of revenue are used by the majority of very large publishers (five out of six), but even they are rarely used as a sole funding mechanism, rather complementing direct grants, freemium or library crowdfunding.
Figure 16. Funding or income sources by FTE.
6.3 TOTAL ANNUAL REVENUE FOR OPEN ACCESS BOOKS
Respondents were asked about their total annual revenue for open access books in 2020. Of the 74 publishers that responded to the survey 19 reported that this figure was unknown and eight replied that they did not publish open access books (see limitations to the methodology).
The 45 responses that stated a figure does not give us enough data to draw any meaningful conclusion. 14 publishers reported revenue of €0–999, 10 reported €1,000–9,999, nine reported €10,000–49,999, and six each reported €50,000-99,999 or €100,000+.
10 out of 14 commercial publishers reported revenue, and this was split across all options. 18 institutional publishers reported revenue of less than €10,000, but four reported revenue of over €100,000.
We do not know how this revenue was calculated by the publishers. For example, we do not know at a glance if print or freemium revenue has been included and this is a flaw in the survey and therefore limits analysis. However, when making a simple comparison between OA revenue with funding sources, it appears that all six publishers that reported revenue of over €100,000 also received “direct grants from funders (including European/ministerial grants) where a funder subsidises OA publications, in whole or part (i.e. for the press as a whole or for individual publications)”. Furthermore, five charged BPCs, four sold print copies (two of these also embargoed open access), three were subsidised by the institution and/or received donations, and two of the publishers had membership models and/or library crowdfunding. Essentially, it appears that the publishers with high revenue have diversified their revenue models.
In contrast, those publishers that reported revenue of less than €999 tended to rely on direct grants from funders and/or subsidies from institutions.
6.4 EFFECT OF OPEN ACCESS ON PRINT SALES
Publishers were asked about their experience of the effect on print sales/revenue when there are open access digital editions. 36 of the 74 respondents answered that they did not know, 13 thought there was no impact, 10 saw a decrease, six saw an increase and three selected the option that they expected initial discovery-related increases in print sales/revenue to diminish as the open access cataloguing problem is solved by libraries and digital becomes more discoverable.
Of those that left comments, a number were ‘born-OA’ publishers so had no data, one saw a decline in sales of 50%, another thought that the global pandemic might be responsible for a decline in print sales after an initial increase. However, the results are probably best summed up by publishers who commented that there were various cases depending on the book and that it was unpredictable or there was no correlation. Finally, one publisher commented that it was worth moving to open access even if print sales declined.
6.5 TOTAL ANNUAL COSTS
We asked respondents to estimate their total annual costs for all publications (journals and books). This figure included staff, operational and in-kind institutional contributions. We asked publishers to split this by open access and non-open access publications. Unfortunately, the data we received was inconclusive. Of the 52 institutional publishers that responded to the open access part of the question, 14 could not estimate costs and four skipped the question. For non open access titles, 12 did not know the costs and 21 skipped the question. Costs varied across the full range provided from €0–999 to €100,000+ with the majority reporting costs of over €50,000.
Of the 11 commercial publishers that responded to the open access question, costs were fairly evenly distributed across the bands, with the median amount being in the €10,000–49,999 band. However, for non open access most commercial publishers reported costs of over €100,000.
We also asked publishers for the ratio of journals/books published in order to delve deeper into the whole question. However, only 48 publishers responded and some of the responses were not clear. Due to the sparsity of the responses, and the high number of ‘unknown’ responses it is difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from this particular question. For example, some publishers gave us a ratio but were unable to provide costs and others indicated that they did not publish books, but we know from comments elsewhere in the data that at least one publisher intends to.
7. COLLABORATIVE MODELS FOR FUNDING AND INFRASTRUCTURE
The survey included two sections on collaborative models, The first set of questions looked at existing collaborative funding models for books. Following this, respondents were asked a further set of questions focused on collaboration in the domain of infrastructure (primarily, but not limited to, technical infrastructure).
7.1 COLLABORATIVE FUNDING MODELS
Collaborative models for open access books are based on the idea of sharing: funds, information, and infrastructure. Below we explore familiarity with the collaborative business models, current engagement (asking which presses are involved and the challenges they have faced) and reasons for not engaging.
7.1.1 Familiarity with collaborative funding models
Before exploring their actual experiences with collaborative funding, it was important to establish how familiar the responding publishers were with certain examples of such models. Respondents were offered a choice of five explicitly listed models (with an option to name other known examples):
- Open Book Publishers’ (OBP) Library Membership Programme 1
- Knowledge Unlatched ‘KU Select programme’ 2
- ScholarLed 3
- Lever Press Platinum OA model 4
- OpenEdition Freemium 5
Mentioned examples represent different organisational models of collaborative funding: two of the above are services that are open to any publisher willing to participate (KU Select and OpenEdition), one is a consortium of scholar-led presses, and two are publisher-led library membership programmes (OBP and Lever Press).
Results presented in Figure 17 show that the majority of respondents are not familiar with the collaborative funding models mentioned in the survey. There are several possible reasons for that. Firstly, at the time of the survey, some of the examples were more mature and widely used, and therefore better known among publishers. Other possible reasons have more to do with the type of participating publishers, or the place of origin and the geographical reach of certain collaborative models. In general, publishers were expectedly most familiar with services that are open for them to join (OpenEdition and Knowledge Unlatched) and least familiar with Lever Press (US-based collaboration, less relevant to our dominantly European sample).
Figure 17. Familiarity of presses with certain existing collaborative funding models for OA books by region.
Further analysis by region shows that presses based in Western Europe have far more awareness of these collaborative funding models than other regions. The exception is OpenEdition, which shows similar awareness in the West and South. This is unsurprising, given that OpenEdition is based in France and also has an Italian platform. It is also not surprising that collaborations based in Western or Southern Europe are less known among Northern or Eastern European publishers.
When looking at the same data by publisher type (Figure 18), it can be observed that institutional publishers are most aware of OpenEdition while commercial ones are more aware of Knowledge Unlatched. Of the three scholar-led publishers that completed the survey, only one was familiar with the ScholarLed Collective; this publisher was the only publisher that was not based in Europe.
Figure 18. Familiarity of presses with some of the existing collaborative funding models for OA books by publisher type.
There was a possibility to list other known examples of collaborative funding in an effort to gain more insight into current initiatives (possibly including examples based in East or North Europe). However, only six respondents selected ‘other’ and provided additional information. Some of their answers reveal that there was some level of misunderstanding of the definitions. The survey was clear in setting a specific set of questions dedicated to collaborative funding, and another set dedicated to collaborative infrastructures, and there was a definition of each at the beginning of each section of the questionnaire. Despite this, most of these additions can be viewed more as shared infrastructures, rather than collaborative funding models. Mentioned examples were the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)6, Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project7, Open Library of Humanities (OLH)8, and Language Science Press9.
Further research is required to follow up on the lack of familiarity with these collaborative models. Collaborative arrangements can take many forms, and understanding the precise nature of each one and its potential application to an individual press can be time-consuming and confusing. OPERAS could therefore engage further with the OA book publishing community in Europe to encourage a broader understanding of the models available and potentially play a role in providing resources that list and describe different models and how presses can make use of them.
7.1.2 Who engages in collaborative funding models for open access books?
Respondents were then asked whether they are currently engaged in collaborative models for open access books. Of the 74 respondents to the survey, 20 reported that they did engage in collaborative models for OA books. Of these, twelve are institutional publishers from a range of countries and five were commercial publishers (Figure 19). Examples of publishers who engage are found among organisations of different sizes, from the smallest one with less than 1 FTE to the largest (Figure 20). 51 did not currently engage and three skipped the question. Of those that did engage, 14 gave further information on the nature of a collaborative model that they employed. Not all responses cited examples, the majority (seven) reported working with Knowledge Unlatched. OpenEdition was mentioned twice and Kriterium once.
Probably the most interesting finding is the absolute absence of collaborative funding models in Central and Eastern Europe (and only one example in Northern Europe) (see Figure 21). Although the sample is too small for generalisation, this finding is consistent with the already described lack of awareness about collaborative funding (see Figure 17), and gives additional confirmation to the previous findings from OPERAS-P project and its research into regional support for OA books (Morka and Gatti 2021; Morka 2020b; 2020d). OPERAS-P reports offered some possible explanations: insufficient funding, libraries lacking autonomy in budget allocations, absence of widespread OA mandates, the traditional reliance on central state funding etc. Rather than looking at these regions as slow adopters of universally beneficial models, it is useful to continue the research into the regional specifics and consider innovative models crafted for different social and economic contexts.
Figure 19. Engagement in collaborative funding by publisher type.
Figure 20. Engagement in collaborative funding by size (in FTEs).
Figure 21. Engagement in collaborative funding by EU region.
We also asked those that had engaged in collaborative models, whether they were in touch with other presses that operate a similar model. 15 of the presses that engaged in collaboration were sharing best practices, and four were not. Those that went on to expand on this question highlighted the role of professional associations, such as the Association of European University Presses (AEUP 2022) and AG Universitätsverlage, the working group of German‐language university presses (“Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Universitätsverlage” n.d.), and other networks such as ScholarLed (ScholarLed n.d.) for sharing best practices in the sector, even when more formal collaborative funding or infrastructure models are not being used. It is also interesting to note that informal discussions with publishers that are seen to play a model role in the community are also important, as well as informal groups i.e. presses in Italy.
In hindsight, the survey should have asked the same question of presses that indicated that they did not engage in collaboration as many presses who are not extensively engaged in formal collaborative models share practice with a wide range of other presses and membership organisations on a regular basis.
7.1.3 Engaging with collaborative funding models and perceived challenges
Presses that indicated engagement with collaborative models for open access books were asked a follow-up question about the challenges they faced in a number of areas. Not every respondent answered each section, the total responses are shown in Figure 22. Three respondents selected ‘don’t know’ for the option ‘other’, their responses have not been shown in the figure.
We asked the same question of the 51 presses who did not engage with collaborative models (Figure 22). Five selected ‘other’, of these two selected ‘don’t know’ and only two responded with further information.
Figure 22. Rating of areas for publishers that did/did not pursue collaborative models for open access books.
For presses that engaged in collaborative models, eight respondents shared some of their challenges with this model. One respondent noted that there was a high reliance on funding from open access policies. Another complained that there was a lack of choice in models. New processes and ways of working are required for collaborative funding models with a particular reference made to the challenge in administering contracts with supporting libraries, payment schedules and invoicing. More “legal criteria” was also mentioned as a challenge. Comments were also received regarding the problems in awareness. For example, it was stated that staff would need to be educated about how collaborative programmes work in addition to staff and authors in some cases still need to be informed of the benefits of open access publishing since authors were sometimes sceptical about agreeing to participate in these models.
Challenges for those who do not yet engage in collaborative OA book models amongst commercial publishers include having diverse and uncoordinated funding capacity for OA books, the need for increased funding for more administrative tasks and the challenge of managing rights in OA.
Institutional publishers, on the other hand, primarily mention the complexity of funding OA books or its infrastructure: the lack, the access and the fear of lower revenues resulting in less funding available. More personnel and new skills were mentioned by three institutional publishers as barriers to change as was a lack of information or knowledge to be able to make the right decisions mentioned by two. Legal challenges were also mentioned by two institutional publishers. Increased monitoring and invoicing and “academic capitalism” was mentioned as unintended consequence by one respondent.
Issues around collaborative funding models could be an area for further enquiry by OPERAS in order to better understand what the challenges are and how to address them. Furthermore, an interesting question for future research would be how challenging the administrative and financial aspects of these models are for stakeholders such as libraries who may wish to investigate support for these models.
7.1.4 Reasons for not engaging in collaborative models for open access books
A significant majority of presses (51 out of 74 respondents) reported that they did not use collaborative models for OA books. For those who do not engage with collaborative models for open access books, there are a range of reasons that publishers report for not engaging. The most frequent of the 25 reasons is due to a lack of awareness, information or knowledge (7). This was mentioned by all types of publishers although more by institutional publishers (4). Of the eighteen institutional publishers who shared their reasons for not engaging in collaborative models, five did not consider them relevant. Two commercial and two institutional publishers expressed doubts about the value of OA book publishing in general and two institutional publishers doubted the value of the collaborative model to them, e.g. “at the moment, the academic grant process is working well and is sufficient to pay our costs”. Three institutional publishers, on the other hand, felt it too early for them to consider this model and two others felt that their limited capacity got in the way of proceeding. Two institutions felt that this was linked to having an OA policy or strategy, which was not yet there. One commercial publisher was concerned about the increased costs that a collaborative model might bring with it although this was not expressed by any other kind of publisher.
Dissatisfaction was expressed by one respondent with a particular collaborative model concerned with increased costs and slow processes, “the admin increased costs & the decision on whether funding would be provided far too late in the project.” Another respondent expressed concern about the sustainability and transparency of existing models, “there is concern about the sustainability of models based on the assumptions being made, as well as the impact on value to the funding source, transparency and cost”.
Attitudes varied significantly, from the presses that were sceptical about the very idea of open access book publishing or did not feel it was relevant to their model, e.g. “We believe that [our national publishing environment] does not represent an area that could significantly use open access”, to those that were very interested and are already working toward developing collaborative models.
7.2 COLLABORATIVE MODELS FOR SHARED INFRASTRUCTURE
Collaborative models for shared infrastructure could include unions of small/independent presses, or of publishing communities providing mutual aid and logistical support, shared services and best practices where all the members participate in decision-making processes. For example, in some models the books all have a shared technical infrastructure and publishing organisations support one another and share knowledge and skills (Adema and Moore 2018).
7.2.1 Who engages in collaborative models for shared infrastructure?
When asked if they engaged in collaborative models for shared infrastructure, 17 respondents replied that they did, 55 said no and two did not respond to the question (see Figure 23).
Figure 23. Engagement in collaborative infrastructure by publisher type.
Of the 17 who engaged with collaborative shared infrastructure, 13 are institutional publishers with four of these from Portugal, which indicates a structured and shared approach to OA book publishing. Three commercial publishers use shared infrastructure. It would be interesting to understand what kinds of infrastructure are used in the future.
The distribution of engagement in collaborative infrastructure in publishers of different sizes is similar to engagement in collaborative funding (Figure 24). We do, however, see that very small and very large publishers do not seem to engage with collaborative infrastructure as much.
Figure 24. Engagement in collaborative infrastructure by size (in FTEs).
The presence of collaborative infrastructure in different European regions shows a similar pattern as with collaborative funding: it is again much more likely to be found in Western and Southern Europe than in Central and Eastern or Northern Europe (see Figure 25).
Figure 25. Engagement in collaborative infrastructure by EU region.
7.2.2 Nature of collaborative models for shared infrastructure
Regarding partnering in collaborative infrastructures, respondents were asked to elaborate on the nature of collaboration that they engaged in. Based on responses, it was possible to discern three groups of potential collaboration.
Collaboration with services providers in book publishing, where those services could be free or offered for a fee. Such collaboration could also be accompanied by an “exchange of knowledge and skills in both directions”. Examples of providers offering services for a cost from commercial and not-for-profit organisations are OAPEN, OpenEdition, Knowledge Unlatched or transcript. Among free services, most often mentioned were specific production tools, such as PKP products and Métopes.
Collaboration with other players in the area of scholarly communication. Besides mentioning OPERAS (and its project HIRMEOS) as an organisation where members have different roles in the scholarly communication landscape, a few respondents also mentioned that they collaborated with libraries, university or national, or more specifically, with institutional repositories.
Collaboration with other presses. Several respondents answered that they worked together with other similar presses, whether through smaller consortia as ScholarLed, or in publishers associations, like AG Universitätsverlage. In one case, co-publishing with a commercial publisher was mentioned as an example of collaboration.
Another point to note is that the collaboration, according to our respondents, takes place in the context of different aspects and at varying stages of the publishing cycle, solving a range of problems and providing value in many areas. The fields of collaboration that were mostly mentioned included hosting, production and dissemination of content and metadata (for instance, through joint catalogue of a publishing association, or in collaboration with libraries), as well as using open source software. Others were mentioned only once: author support, open source metrics platform for books, technical dashboard for peer review or co-publishing. Respondents recognised knowledge and expertise as another important infrastructural area worthy of collaboration as it was mentioned several times (“exchange of knowledge and skills in both directions”, “sharing of knowledge across publishers”, “joint quality standards”).
We then asked respondents how they felt about the importance of a series of statements when considering a collaborative model for shared infrastructure for open access books. This question was posed both to respondents who had engaged in collaborative infrastructures, and to those that did not.
From the distribution of answers (Figure 26) we can identify the aspects of collaborative infrastructure that are perceived as most important: having publicly available and transparent governance procedures followed by being community-led or governed and the fact that the organisation has some ownership or control over the infrastructure provided. When asked about the importance of having a for-profit vs. non-profit, or centralised vs. decentralised infrastructure, a slight majority voted for non-profit and centralised options, but overall these issues were not considered as significant. It is worth mentioning that in the matter of having publicly available and transparent governance procedures, no respondents were indecisive or neutral. All who answered considered this issue as very or at least somewhat important.
The much larger group of respondents that had not previously engaged in collaborative infrastructure answered the same question (Figure 26). In this group, many more answers fell into the category “Don’t know” or “Neutral”, which is understandable, given the fact that they had no previous experience (and in many cases no knowledge either) with the shared infrastructure. Still, the aspects perceived as most important were similar within both groups: publicly available and transparent governance procedures, community governance and having some ownership or control over the infrastructure. However, within this group, slightly more importance was placed on the non-profit character of the infrastructure.
Figure 26. The distribution of answers from the group that previously reported engagement in collaborative infrastructure vs. the distribution of answers from the group that previously reported lack of engagement in collaborative infrastructure.
The group of respondents that did not engage in collaborative models for shared infrastructure for open access books were asked to substantiate this. The answers varied, but the main reasons could be summarised as lack of:
- Perceived need, generally, since local solutions suffice or are optimal. One commercial publisher stated “Per now, we are able to offer more flexible solutions, better and quicker innovation, and higher quality in tailor-made infrastructure” (9/26)
- Knowledge and information (7/26)
- Policy or strategy (2/26)
- Time and resources (to explore possible options and get involved in them) (2/26)
- Convincing or appropriate options (for a given region or for specific publication types, for instance). It was noted that it is not easy to adopt models developed in different environments “It would be much easier to share infrastructure within groups that are more locally or regionally oriented or similar in some other way.” (1/26)
A number of respondents answered that they were not opposed to shared infrastructure models, and would actually be willing to engage although they had not done so yet. Some were even in the process of setting up a shared infrastructure (“We hope to do this in the united University […] Press which was just established.” or “we are also building a network of Italian OA-oriented publishers to share skills and practices”). Interestingly though, among the responses presented for not engaging in collaborative infrastructure, some of the answers were actually examples of using community resources (using open source infrastructure by PKP OMP), but not recognised as such.
7.3 SUSTAINABILITY OF CURRENT PUBLISHING MODELS
Respondents who both engaged and did not engage (Figure 27) in collaborative funding models were asked about the sustainability of the models they currently use. Of the 74 respondents who completed the survey, 66 answered this question (with five ‘Don’t know’ answers). Additionally, four of those answering this question were not publishing OA books. This leaves 57 OA book publishers who actually assessed their sustainability.
Of those publishers who indicated that they were engaged in collaborative funding models, and within this group, of the 20 who answered to what extent they perceived themselves to be sustainable, four indicated that they were very sustainable. Of these, one was a commercial publisher, two were university presses and one was from an academic dept in an institution. The majority, however, considered themselves to be “somewhat sustainable”.
Figure 27: Sustainability of current publishing models (engaged in collaborative funding models) vs. sustainability of current publishing models (non engaged in collaborative funding models).
For the publishers who do not yet engage in collaborative funding, 46 shared opinions on their sustainability. Four confirmed that they were very sustainable (all university presses) compared to 26 that were somewhat sustainable. Seven saw themselves as neutral and five indicated that they were somewhat unsustainable. Only one publisher indicated that they were not sustainable at all, a publishing department in an academic institution.
Given the high number of respondents who felt their model was sustainable, or at least somewhat, this represents an interesting area for further exploration in order to identify in greater detail what is working well for OA publishers and whether those success stories can be shared for wider use by the community, since a large number of publishers are not completely confident with the sustainability of their models. However, any conclusions should be drawn with caution as ‘sustainability’ may be perceived differently from different perspectives and there might be gaps between the way respondents self-assess their own sustainability and the way they could be assessed by other stakeholders. It is also interesting to note that whether the respondents are engaged in collaborative models or not, it doesn’t seem to change their perceived sustainability. This is a very counterintuitive indication that should be explored further in the future.
Additional insights into the understanding of publishers’ self-perceived financial sustainability can be gained by looking at their sources of revenue. Only one press assessed itself as not sustainable (a Central and Eastern European mid-sized institutional publisher, relying solely on subsidies).
Of the group of five ‘somewhat unsustainable’ publishers, one very small Western European scholar-led publisher is diversifying its income on freemium and crowdfunding from individuals, another is a larger commercial textbook (not dominantly OA) publisher. The other three are smaller institutional (Central and Eastern and Southern European) publishers relying on only one source of revenue (direct grants or subsidies).
The eight publishers that stated they were ‘neutral’ with regard to sustainability are very diverse in their sources of revenue (some of them relying on a single source, some combining up to six sources), as well as in their size (in FTEs) and other characteristics.
The largest group (36) self-assessed as ‘somewhat sustainable’. 10 of them rely on only one source of funding (generally, grants or subsidies, with exception of one very large commercial relying solely on BPCs and one very small institutional publisher relying on volunteers). Others combine up to nine different sources to achieve a sustainable financial scheme: most often direct grants (19) and subsidies (16), freemium (print) where the digital version is available on open access and the print version is available to purchase (13) and BPCs (13).
The group of ‘very sustainable publishers’ is again small and diverse, showing us that a sustainable OA press can be a very large commercial using only BPCs and library memberships, a large institutional publisher deploying seven different sources of income, as well as a very small institutional publisher relying solely on subsidies.
Although it would be interesting to better understand the effect of the revenue associated to OA books (especially for publishers with mixed portfolios of OA and non-OA editions) on the self-perceived sustainability, this is not possible to assess based on the data that we have, since the complex matrix of costs and revenues across different editions wasn’t captured in the survey responses.
8. FURTHER SUPPORT
One of the key aims of the survey was to prepare OPERAS for further action. We set out to see the ways in which the presses could be helped in transitioning to open access through collaborative models. Our objective was to see both the tools that could be used and the areas that such support should cover. The following two sections summarise our findings in both these fields.
8.1 Tools supporting presses transition to open access through collaborative models
We proposed three potential tools that would help support transition to open access, with particular reference to collaborative models:
● a toolkit with advice on transition;
● a workshop advising on transition;
● a one-to-one session with an expert.
When asked about them specifically, 67 respondents answered, with 64 responding to all three parts of the question. Nine of these respondents also chose ‘other’, six responded with further details. In addition, a tenth response was received for the ‘other’ section; this ‘born open access press’ did not answer the other questions in this section.
The survey showed that all three options were viewed as helpful by respondents. Both a toolkit and a workshop were seen as the most useful, with 51 ‘helpful’ responses each, although a toolkit had more ‘very helpful’ votes (one respondent that selected ‘very helpful’, also noted that useful toolkits already exist).
A one-to-one session with an expert was ranked the lowest of the three possibilities with 42 respondents finding it either ‘very helpful’ or ‘helpful’. Significantly, 16 were neutral on its usefulness. We investigated these responses further to see the countries they represented (also bearing in mind the total number of responses from these countries) and the types of presses they represented. The presses who selected ‘neutral’ were from Estonia (1 out of 1 Estonian respondents), France (3 out of 8 French respondents), Germany (2 out of 7 German respondents), Italy (4 out of 10 Italian respondents), Netherlands (1 out of 1 Dutch respondents), Portugal (1 out of 11 Portuguese respondents), Sweden (3 out of 8 Swedish), the UK (1 out of 5 British respondents). In terms of the types of publishers, 8 were institutional publishers (these included 7 university presses and 1 publishing department), 5 were commercial presses, 1 was a scholar-led independent publisher, 1 was ‘other not-for-profit publisher’, and 1 was ‘other’.
While it could indeed be useful to explore the existing support options that these presses have access to, the variety of countries they are based in and the types of presses they represent suggests that perhaps there may be few links between the country and publisher type and being neutral on the topic of one-to-one session with an expert. In the cases where all of the publishers from a certain country chose this option (Estonia, Netherlands), they were the only ones answering the survey so no conclusions may be drawn. The opportunities provided within specific countries in terms of supporting publisher’s engagement in OA collaborative business models could be explored further in the context of the DIAMAS. PALOMERA and OPERAS-PLUS projects.
Furthermore, for those that selected ‘not helpful at all’ we analysed the responses by publisher type and country. Four presses chose this response for all three suggested forms of support. They were from Austria, Germany, Italy, and the UK. Thus, again, the regional specifics varied. Interestingly, however, all of these were institutional publishers, more specifically, university presses. Although four is too small a number to formulate significant conclusions, it could be useful to explore this further in the context of DIAMAS, a project that specifically targets institutional publishers.
Of the respondents that commented on the ‘other’ option, three stated that they were ‘born open access’ and did not require support for transition. We explore this further in section 8.2. However, it was noted that more information on how to implement and professionalise such a process was welcome.
Other support considered ‘very helpful’ in transitioning towards collaborative models included: a broader discussion and critique of collaborative models, lobbying at top level funding organisations and high-level decision makers in politics and higher education politics, increased funding, and technical support. Advice on how to apply for grants financing open infrastructure for books was also suggested. However, it is uncertain whether this refers to collaborative models. Nevertheless, this analysis could be useful for the PALOMERA project to take forward in its work on aligning funder policy for OA books in the European Research Area.
One respondent called for specific advice for non-established library or university-based publishers to develop revenue-raising capacities, joining others in collaborative financial support schemes, and needing materials to engage and convert key university managers in seeing the virtues of funding publishing. It should be noted that in this case, a toolkit to support new university and library-led presses was launched by Jisc in March 2021 (Jisc 2021).
8.2 Areas in which presses need support
Presses helpfully listed a number of areas that they might find useful in a toolkit or workshop. We have themed these comments and also investigated further through exploration of other answers that were provided in different sections of the survey (see Table 1). The aim was to map the important areas where support was most needed and formulate directions in which further action could be taken to help the presses transition. The ratings of helpfulness of particular tools and some discussion of the suggested topics are already presented in the previous section (8.1 Tools supporting presses transition to open access through collaborative models).
| Area | Explanation |
| Summarising collaborative models with concrete applications, advantages and disadvantages | One of the primary needs identified in the survey was to provide presses with an explanation of the different collaborative models that are currently available. Presses highlighted different aspects that were important to them but our conclusion is that a summary of options already available could be of advantage. More details of possible implementation also ought to be provided, for instance through a toolkit approach to be implemented in the DIAMAS project. Apart from sketching the different models such a resource or training programme should also clearly show how they respond to different needs that publishers may have (as well as their shortcomings). It appears that some presses already have a negative experience of the attempts to adapt collaborative models – there should also be a platform to discuss these together with identifying lessons learnt and possible solutions. It appears that building a publishing community (on national, regional, or indeed by publisher type) would allow presses to do that. In our survey confusion seemed to surround not just specifics of possible solutions but also the very nature of what collaborative models are and this should be a starting point to more complex discussions. |
| Financing – providing a grant or advice on how to gain additional resources (e.g. grant application tutorial) | In the responses numerous presses presented resource-related needs and worries related to finances, understaffing, and lack of time. Moreover, a resource summarising collaborative models outlined above could help presses to save time and resources that would otherwise need to be spent to gather and analyse the relevant information. Financial aspects were also most often listed as ‘very challenging’ in the context of collaborative models for open access books. |
| Incentivising involvement | Inertia was an issue that was evident in the data, several presses indicated that they waited for others to invite them or wished to see how others got involved in collaborative models before making the decision to engage. Support could be provided by incentivising involvement so the stakeholders could become proactive, rather than reactive in experimenting with possible sustainability models. One of the presses listed technical support as something of value – perhaps such services could encourage engagement but differences in practices should be taken into account. For example, presses proved to have varying peer review and quality assurance procedures (with many having more than one implemented) so technical help should take this into consideration. The PALOMERA project could explore this further to investigate how open science policies could incentivise the publishers’ move to OA. The lack of clear OA policy was, interestingly, listed as one of the reasons for ‘not engaging in collaborative models for shared infrastructure for open access books’. |
| Showing that “the open access paradox” does not need to apply i.e. presses who already publish in OA might still benefit from engaging in collaborative models | Some of the respondents who were not interested in support explained that they already published books in open access. Sometimes they referred to an argument that they would not have benefited from engaging in extra initiatives. This could indicate that reaching out to presses who already publish in OA with customised support would be of use, such as the advantages of the ‘scaling small’ approach of the COPIM project. Some respondents indicated that the existing solutions they had were sufficiently meeting their needs – advantages of engagement in collaborative models should be clearly presented to them. |
| Help to those who already started engaging in collaborative models | Several presses had already begun their engagement with collaborative models. Any further work in this area should treat these presses as priority partners and dedicated support should be provided for them to ensure that they find the ways for models to meet their needs. |
| Dedicated customised support to meet different needs depending on the country | Similarly to the level of engagement in existing collaborative models (from no knowledge to prior involvement), the country of each press should be considered when preparing customised tools and training. As mentioned before, although we grouped the countries into regions there are big differences between policies and practices implemented by countries on the state level as well as in terms of the size of the readership in national languages, infrastructural opportunities etc. For example, some presses in the survey indicated that OA was not needed or an attractive notion because of their locality or the use of national languages – they could learn about benefits of publishing in OA before getting more specific support. |
Table 1: Areas to cover and suggestions of concrete forms of support for presses
9. KEY FINDINGS
There are several key findings from the survey that ought to be highlighted. We have grouped these findings into three main areas: collaboration, funding, and support. It should be noted that these are insights from 74 responses from European presses, but we cannot say whether they represent larger trends as due to the size of the dataset, further analysis of survey answers was only possible for publisher type or region, not both.
9.1 Collaboration
- The functions that were regarded as potentially the most beneficial aspects of the publication workflow for a shared infrastructure were: distribution, metadata creation and distribution, technical/software development, marketing/social media, hosting, preservation, and technical/software support. Publishers saw fewer benefits from collaboration in the functions that are inherited from print tradition, despite the reliance on outsourcing and importance on expenditure
- A large majority do not currently engage in collaborative models for shared infrastructure. Those who do it are more likely to be found in Western and Southern Europe
- The main reasons for not engaging with shared infrastructure were either not seeing the need for it or due to a lack of knowledge or information. A number of respondents answered that they were not opposed to shared infrastructure models, and would actually be willing to engage, although they had not done so yet
- We discerned three types of collaborative models for shared infrastructure: 1) collaboration with services providers in book publishing; 2) collaboration with other players in the area of scholarly communication; and 3) collaboration with other presses
- The most popular fields of collaboration were hosting, production and dissemination of content, metadata, and open source software
- Three aspects are considered particularly important by all respondents: 1) having publicly available and transparent governance procedures; 2) that infrastructures are community-led or governed; and 3) that participants have some ownership or control over the infrastructure provided.
9.2 Funding
- Perceptions of ‘sustainability’ are context dependent, and there may be differences in the way respondents self-assess their own sustainability and the way they could be assessed by other stakeholders. With this in mind, the majority of publishers consider themselves to be “somewhat sustainable” regardless of whether they engage in collaborative funding or not. Only a minority indicated that they were very sustainable. These publishers can be of varying sizes, commercial or institutional, and use different funding mechanisms. Without concrete indicators to measure what sustainability means, these merely show perceptions
- The large majority of respondents rely on more than one funding source, and this is also the case for very small publishers, who are likely to have limited resources for fundraising as. The majority of OA book publishers – large and small and both for commercial and not-for-profit – make use of grants from funders. Institutional publishers also rely heavily on financial or in-kind support by a parent institution or its library
- Regarding funding streams, certain sources seem to be more specific to certain regions, e.g. membership programmes and freemium models, crowdfunding and BPCs are mainly present in Southern and Western Europe whereas Central and Eastern Europe mostly relies on grants from funders
- Publishers with higher revenues and costs tend to use BPCs. However, they only make up part of the total revenue for most commercial publishers studied since we see them using a range of revenue streams. Publishers with revenues dedicated to OA books under €1000 on the other hand, tend to rely on direct grants from funders or subsidies from institutions
- There seems to be a lack of familiarity with collaborative funding and the terminology used and limited engagement with them
- While presses in Western Europe are more aware of collaborative funding models, publishers in Central and Eastern Europe seem to engage less with them
- Generally, those who engage in collaborative models also liaise and share best practices and share these with other presses that operate a similar model. This demonstrates that certain presses see the practical value in collaboration and embrace it in various forms. Professional publishing associations have a role to play here.
9.3 Support
- Regarding the three possible tools that would help support transition to open access for books, with particular reference to collaborative models, all three suggested options (workshop, toolkit, face-to-face sessions) were viewed as helpful by respondents
- In addition, born OA presses and those who already engage in collaborative models still need to be supported
- Publishers listed a number of areas that they might find useful in a toolkit or workshop:
- Summarising collaborative models with concrete applications, advantages and disadvantages;
- Funding;
- Incentivising involvement in collaborative models;
- Customised support to meet different national needs and specific publisher type needs.
10. COMPARISON WITH OPERAS-P REPORT ON INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS IN PUBLISHING
The survey and first version of this white paper coincided with the final stages of the OPERAS-P Innovative Business Models task (Gatti and Morka 2021; Avanço et al. 2021), which was conducted as part of the work package focused on innovation in scholarly communication. OPERAS-P made a number of recommendations, which we consider in the context of the findings in this white paper (in bold below). Furthermore, we have made some observations combining and comparing the OPERAS-P recommendations with our findings that we hope will be useful for the DIAMAS, PALOMERA, OPERAS PLUS and other projects:
- Regarding the creation of policies pertaining to OA books, OPERAS-P recommended that the diversity of business models should be recognised. Our survey indicates that there is a potential lack of awareness and confusion about what constitutes collaborative models and several presses wished to learn more about different models and their traits. Further research is required into collaborative models, including demystifying and aligning on terminology and definitions. OPERAS could play a role in providing resources that list and describe different models advising how presses can make use of them
- OPERAS-P recommended that publishers should pick, choose, and experiment, by staying informed about innovative business models in the OA book landscape by combining different approaches and creating hybrids to find the ones models that will best suit particular needs. However, this survey found that many publishers were reluctant to experiment and that creating hybrid models and trying to fit options to the publisher’s individual circumstances need to be incentivised.
- Publishers were asked to learn to speak fluent digital by seeking opportunities to develop skills in digital publishing and look for partners who might assist in this process. However, a series of three workshops also held as part of the OPERAS-P project on innovative business models for OA books in 2021 revealed that moving beyond the PDF format remains one of the most frequently raised challenges by small academic presses, next to the distribution processes10. This survey concurs that the PDF continues to be the dominant model.
- Finally, OPERAS-P recommended that publishers support knowledge exchange by facilitating best-practice exchanges in the form of workshops, open databases with case studies, and toolkits in order to create a dialogue within the OA books community and allow stakeholders to learn from each other, especially in particularly challenging areas. There appears to be widespread support for this approach from the publishers in this survey
11. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
Since the beginning of this survey, a number of relevant projects have received funding. We believe that the insights from this white paper may be interesting to these projects for further research and more data collection. We present areas for further work, dividing them into general recommendations for further research and more specific actionable points for DIAMAS, OPERAS-PLUS, and Palomera projects, based on their proposals.
11.1 General suggestions for further research
- Further research is required to measure and understand the lack of familiarity with collaborative funding models and shared infrastructure amongst OA book publishers in Europe
- In order to better understand differences between countries and regions, it would be important to investigate the national and regional specifics of OA book publishing before promoting or designing innovative funding models in different social and economic contexts
- Publishers that have already begun their engagement with collaborative models for OA books should be treated as priority partners and dedicated support should be provided for them to ensure that they find the ways for models to meet their needs
- Any conclusions regarding sustainability should be drawn with caution as the term can be perceived differently depending on perspective and there might be gaps between the way respondents self-assess their own sustainability and the way they could be assessed by other stakeholders. Further analysis of the data may shed further light on this.
11.2 Suggestions for the DIAMAS project
- While grouping presses into an ‘institutional publisher’ group is useful, differences between other publisher types, such as small and large commercial presses should be considered in a European context
- There should be a better understand what types of revenue are received by publishers and to what extent they make up the annual revenue, i.e. which are more dominant
- It would be interesting to investigate what kinds of infrastructure are used by the OA books community
- Issues or inhibitors around collaborative funding models is an area for further enquiry in order to better understand what the challenges are and how to address them. For example, how challenging are the administrative and financial aspects of these models for those who may wish to financially contribute to them
- It would be valuable to gain a better understanding of what the building blocks are to sustainability by talking to publishers
- The DIAMAS sustainability work package may want to consider the call from one respondent for specific advice for non-established library or university-based publishers to develop revenue-raising capacities, joining others in collaborative financial support schemes, and needing materials to engage and convert key university managers in seeing the virtues of funding publishing
- Presses require an information resource, which will explain the different types of collaborative models that are currently available, including pros and cons, financial aspects, and other implications for different types of publisher. This could be included as part of the tool suite being developed by the DIAMAS project.
11.3 Suggestions for OPERAS-PLUS
- Further research into a definition of ‘commercial’ publisher would be beneficial. Definitions would need to take into account factors such as FTE, turnover and output.
- More effort should be invested in gathering information on commercial publishers (especially smaller and specialised ones). OPERAS national nodes may wish to identify the needs of all publisher types in their countries, particularly commercial publishers based on the results of this survey
- OPERAS should seek to offer publishers opportunities for collaborative services to gauge interest in areas that publishers may not be aware of. For example, potential development of collaborative translation services within the OPERAS-PLUS project
- There may be a role for OPERAS in helping to promote different methods of open access book discovery/distribution. This could form part of a publisher toolkit
- The country of each press should be considered when preparing customised tools and training. For example, some presses in the survey indicated that OA was not needed or an attractive notion because of their locality or the use of national languages – they could learn about benefits of publishing in OA before getting more specific support
- OPERAS could engage further with the OA book publishing community in Europe to encourage a broader understanding of existing collaborative funding models and shared infrastructure. For example, collaborative arrangements can take many forms, and understanding the precise nature of each one and its potential application to an individual press can be time-consuming and confusing. As part of advocating for these models, OPERAS could provide resources that list and describe different models and how presses can make use of them
- Support should take publisher type into consideration. For instance, commercial publishers have not been provided much support through the existing projects – the training or workshops for them could focus on sales on print copies once OA is introduced (the answers suggest that the experiences vary).
11.4 Suggestion for the PALOMERA project
- To proactively engage publishers (with the lack of clear OA policy being one of the reasons for ‘not engaging in collaborative models for shared infrastructure for open access books’), the PALOMERA project could investigate how open science policies could incentivise publishers’ move to OA.
- Grants from funders are recognised as a main source of funding for the majority of publishers. It would therefore be important to investigate which funders, allocate what types of grants to whom and based on which criteria. And do grants cover publishing operations and/or development activities? It would also be of interest to investigate in which cases grants are given to commercial publishers.
- Although it is uncertain whether the request for advice on how to apply for grants financing open infrastructure for books was also suggested refers to collaborative models, this analysis could be useful for the Palomera project to take forward in its work on aligning funder policy for OA books in the European Research Area.
12. CONCLUSION
The aims of the survey were: 1) to further better or improve our understanding of the scholarly publishing landscape and of the challenges that publishers face in the context of publishing OA monographs; and 2) to identify main trends (including opportunities and challenges) and the knowledge of collaborative funding and infrastructure models in OA publishing in SSH.
While the survey served its purpose in terms of deepening our understanding of the challenges faced by European publishers in the context of open access and collaborative models, the limited number of responses means that no strong trends ought to be discussed. However, several insights were drawn and should be considered important directions for the future. Key findings have been identified and can be grouped into three main areas: collaboration, funding, and support. While innovation in OA business models is still at a very experimental phase, projects such as DIAMAS, PALOMERA, and OPERAS-PLUS can make a difference to raise awareness, inform, inspire and provide further trust in a more sustainable OA books future.
The survey found that a majority of presses do not engage in collaboration, specifically collaborative models for shared infrastructure, mainly due to the lack of knowledge and information, or perceived lack of need. There is no established channel of communication for publishers, no united publishing community, or strong collaborative group where there could be an exchange of experience. However, presses were not opposed to participating in collaborative models. This indicates that, for OA books, we are still at the early stage of the adoption curve for collaborative shared infrastructure.
Where there are infrastructures in place that are sufficiently known to publishers, they seem to be eagerly applied. Respondents are more familiar with services that are more mature, widely used, accessible to them and represented in their region. So the challenge is in building and offering shared infrastructures that will be equally available across Europe. The European context reveals a great deal of fragmentation and diversity: there were regional differences in the answers reflecting the different characteristics of scholarly book publishing traditions throughout Europe, rooted in different economic contexts and traditions.
The survey helped to draft areas for shared infrastructure. Here, OA book publishers require an infrastructure that is transparent and community-led and where they have some ownership and control. Potential areas for further shared infrastructure development could be hosting, production and dissemination of content, metadata, and open source software.
In terms of funding, publishers perceive themselves to be somewhat sustainable. However, the term ‘sustainability’ can be interpreted differently by book publishers depending on their contexts. Parent organisations are crucial as funders of OA books as providers of financial or non-monetary support and this needs to continue. In addition, most publishers stress the need to have more resources and rely on more than one funding source, including grants and subsidies. Western European publishers put more effort in earning revenue on the academic market, whereas Central and Eastern European publishers have traditionally had a stronger reliance on public funding and still do. Collaborative funding models, one of the newer options, could be scaled up to mobilise more collective funding for publishers in all regions of Europe. Costs could also be more contained by looking into utilising more shared infrastructure.
While the report has found that awareness-raising and key support and training activities (such as workshop, toolkit, face-to-face sessions) could be used to engage the presses, further incentivisation may be required to encourage publishers to collaborate more widely. Presenting the key principles behind collaborative models may be a good initial step in terms of providing support that will result in increased engagement.
13. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The writing team would like to thank all members of the OPERAS OA Business Models Special Interest Group for their contribution and comments on the survey draft and for their assistance in distributing and encouraging completion of the survey. Thanks are also due to Kira Brayman, Library Data Analyst at Jisc for the data visualisation figures.
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Mosterd, Tom. 2021a. “OPERAS-P and OASPA Workshop Report: Innovative Business Models for OA Books.” OPERAS (blog). 2021. https://operas.hypotheses.org/4651.
———. 2021b. “The Holy Grail Does Not Exist: OPERAS-P and OASPA’s Workshops for Publishers on Innovative Business Models for Books.” OAPEN – Supporting the Transition to Open Access for Academic Books (blog). July 15, 2021. https://oapen.hypotheses.org/197.
Mournier, Pierre, Jeroen Sondervan, and Graham Stone. 2021. “Investing in the Open Access Book Infrastructure – A Call for Action,” May. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4768388.
OAPEN. 2022a. “Directory of Open Access Books.” 2022. https://www.doabooks.org/.
———. 2022b. “OA Books Toolkit.” 2022. https://www.oabooks-toolkit.org/about-oa/14727343-oa-mythbusting.
Open Book Publishers. 2022. “Library Membership.” 2022. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/libraries.
OpenEdition. n.d. “The OpenEdition Freemium Programme.” Accessed December 6, 2022. https://www.openedition.org/14043.
OPERAS. 2023. “PALOMERA.” January 10, 2023. https://operas-eu.org/projects/palomera/.
———. n.d. “OA Business Models Special Interest Group.” Accessed December 6, 2022. https://operas.hypotheses.org/aboutoperas/working-groups/business-models-wg.
Penier, Izabella, Martin Paul Eve, and Tom Grady. 2020. “COPIM – Revenue Models for Open Access Monographs 2020.” Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4455511.
ScholarLed. n.d. “Scaling Small.” Accessed December 6, 2022. https://scholarled.org/.
Schulte, Judith. 2021. “For a Change: Let’s Make a Change! OPERAS Survey on Collaborative Models for Open Access Books.” OPERAS (blog). 2021. https://operas.hypotheses.org/4571.
Sherer, John. 2020. “Making OA Monographs More Discoverable, Usable, and Sustainable.” August 12, 2020. https://longleafservices.org/blog/the-sustainable-history-monograph-pilot/.
Speicher, Lara, Lorenzo Armando, Margo Bargheer, Martin Paul Eve, Sven Fund, Delfim Leão, Max Mosterd, Frances Pinter, and Irakleitos Souyioultzoglou. 2018. “OPERAS Open Access Business Models White Paper,” July. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1323708.
Stone, Graham, Marta Błaszczyńska, Chloé Lebon, Agata Morka, Tom Mosterd, Pierre Mounier, Vanessa Proudman, Lara Speicher, and Iva Melinščak Zlodi. 2021. “Collaborative Models for OA Book Publishers.” https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5494731.
Tóth-Czifra, Erzsébet. 2021. “Open Science in the Horizon Europe Funding Programme: What to Expect?” DARIAH Open (blog). 2021. https://dariahopen.hypotheses.org/968.
UKRI. 2022. “UKRI Open Access Policy.” 2022. https://www.ukri.org/publications/ukri-open-access-policy/.
APPENDIX 1. OPERAS business models survey on open access books
OPERAS is conducting a survey of publishing organisations throughout Europe to identify and better understand existing and potential business models to support the Open Access publication of research monographs. The results of the survey will be used to inform the formulation recommendations about how to create a sustainable open access book publishing ecosystem within Europe. In addition, the survey will produce a snapshot of European open access publishing in humanities and the social sciences, and help us to gain a more comprehensive insight on how OPERAS can support the community and build sustainable paths of transition towards collaborative models for open access books.
OPERAS is the European Research Infrastructure for the development of open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities. In 2018 the OPERAS Business Models Special Interest Group published a white paper on Business Models for Open Access. The report described the current landscape in which there are multiple approaches to open access publishing. It looked at the business models adopted by OPERAS members at the time as well as emerging models in the USA and at a national level in some European countries.
Monographs remain the crucial publishing output in humanities and social sciences (HSS). Therefore, the OPERAS Business Models Special Interest Group is now compiling a second white paper in which we hope to shed light on publishing practices around open access books specifically. A recent report from the COPIM project identified a variety of models used for open access books. Alongside these models, this survey puts a special emphasis on the idea of collaboration. The rise of collaborative approaches, relying on sharing of information, funds, and infrastructures has been noted in recent years, especially in the UK.
OPERAS would like to understand more about how the HSS publishing community applies or could apply collaborative models for open access books, and what issues it encounters when dealing with them.
The survey should take a maximum of 50 minutes to complete, but may be significantly shorter. Please complete the survey by 25 March 2021. For reference, you can find the whole survey as a PDF document here
Privacy notice.
OPERAS and the OPERAS-P project, value your privacy and process your personal data in compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation.
Any personal data you supply (i.e. information related to you) will be held on a secure server initially at Jisc and then by OPERAS. Furthermore, the following special categories of personal data related to you are also processed: your past experiences with and personal opinion regarding business models for open access books.
Your personal data will be stored on a secured spreadsheet until the 30th of June 2026. Your data is processed on the basis of your consent (Article 6.1(a) of the General Data Protection Regulation) which you give by accepting this Notice.
Exceptionally, where consent is not an appropriate legal basis, your personal data can also be processed on the basis of our legitimate interest in carrying out the project, or further research in the field of Digital Humanities, Digital Humanities meta-research. Then, the processing is based on Article 6.1(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Names of participants will not be used in any project outputs or communication; instead a unique code will be applied to pseudonymise the details when used in any publications and outputs from this project.
Survey
1. Please select your choice below. Clicking “agree” indicates that:
You have read and understood the above information
You voluntarily agree to participate
If you do not wish to participate in the survey, please decline participation by clicking “disagree”.
2. Name of your publishing organisation (Press)
3. In which country are you based?
- Albania
- Armenia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Republic of Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Faroe Islands
- Finland
- France
- Georgia
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- North Macedonia
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- Other
3.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
4. In general terms, which one of the following ‘publisher types’ would you classify yourself as? (Tick all that apply)
- University press
- Publishing department in an academic institution
- Library-based publisher
- Scholar-led publisher (independent, not connected to the academic institution, non-profit publisher run by scholars)
- Scholarly society
- Other not-for-profit publisher (museum, archive or other non-academic institution with publishing activities relevant to HSS)
- Commercial publisher
- Other
4.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
4.b. If you have a web page that describes the aims and scope of your press, can you provide the URL?
5. What subjects do you publish in? (Tick all that apply)
- Science, technology, engineering and medicine
- Law
- History
- Archaeology and Prehistory
- Sociology
- Economics and Finance
- Geography
- Literature
- Linguistics
- Business administration
- Political science
- Education
- Social Anthropology and ethnology
- Library and information sciences
- Art and art history
- Architecture, space management
- Philosophy
- History, Philosophy and Sociology of Sciences
- Psychology
- Musicology and performing arts
- Religions
- Classical studies
- Environmental studies
- Cultural heritage and museology
- Gender studies
- Methods and statistics
- Biological anthropology
- Demography
- Multidisciplinary
6. Could you describe the governance structure of the press? Please include a URL if you have one.
7. What peer review processes and quality assurance do you have in place? (Tick all that apply)
- Editorial review
- Author and reviewer identities known to each other
- Blind peer review (reviewers know the identity of authors, but authors identity concealed for reviewers)
- Double blind peer review (Reviewer and author identifies concealed for both)
- Open-identity peer reviews (Reviewers identities published)
- Open peer review (Texts of the reviews published)
- Post publication peer reviews
- Post publication comments
- None of the above
- Other
7.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
8. How many paid staff are directly employed by the press (i.e.acquisitions, editorial, production and operational staff) in Full-Time Equivalent (FTE))?
- Less than 1 FTE
- 1–2 FTE
- 3–5 FTE
- 6–9 FTE
- 10–20 FTE
- Over 20 FTE
9. Do you outsource any publishing processes to third parties?
9.a. If you outsource publishing processes, what functions are outsourced and how much do you rely on them?
High level of reliance Medium level of reliance Low level of reliance No reliance Do not outsourc
(Tick all that apply)
9.a.1. Copyediting
9.a.2. Design
9.a.3. Determining if the submission fit the publisher’s scope
9.a.4. Dissemination of print copies
9.a.5. Editing
9.a.6. Hosting
9.a.7. Legal advice on copyright
9.a.8. Marketing /social media
9.a.9. Online dissemination
9.a.10. Peer review process
9.a.11. Print-on-demand
9.a.12. Printing
9.a.13. ProofreadingTechnical / software development
9.a.14. Submissions system Technical / software support
9.a.15. Training
9.a.16. Translation
9.a.17. Typesetting
9.a.18. Other (please specify)
9.a.i. If you selected Other, please specify:
9.a.ii. For the options you selected, what type of service do you rely on, e.g. services from freelance/small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs)/large companies?
10. Do you use volunteers?
10.a. If you have volunteers, what functions do they perform and how much do you rely on them? (Tick all that apply) Note: we have excluded peer reviewing and editorial board membership in this question
High level of reliance Medium level of reliance Low level of reliance No reliance Do not use volunteers
10.a.1. Copyediting
10.a.2. Design
10.a.3. Determining if the submission fit the publisher’s scope
10.a.4. Dissemination of print copies
10.a.5. Editing
10.a.6. Hosting
10.a.7. Legal advice on copyright
10.a.8. Marketing /social media
10.a.9. Online dissemination
10.a.10. Peer review process
10.a.11. Print-on-demand
10.a.12. Printing
10.a.13. ProofreadingTechnical / software development
10.a.14. Submissions system Technical / software support
10.a.15. Training
10.a.16. Translation
10.a.17. Typesetting
10.a.18. Other (please specify)
10.a.i. If you selected Other, please specify:
Book publishing
In this survey we define books as long form scholarly monographs typically written by one of two authors, edited collections featuring chapters written by a number of authors (including an edited book collection of chapters arising from a conference and published as a book in its own right) and scholarly editions (the critical representation of historic documents).
Textbooks (i.e. books written specifically for the undergraduate students market), Conference proceedings (i.e. reproduction of the proceedings). and trade books (i.e. written specifically for the non-academic market) are out of scope of this survey.
11. Approximately how many book titles do you publish annually in the social sciences and humanities?
1-5 6-10 11-15 15-20 21-25 26+
11.a. Looking at the options below, approximately what percentage do you publish in each format within each area (e.g. what percentage of fully open access material is published in each PDF/XML/… format)?
11.a.1.a. No open access – Print (if you publish a print version of open access content for sale)
11.a.1.b. No open access – PDF
11.a.1.c. No open access – EPUB
11.a.1.d. No open access – MOBI
11.a.1.e. No open access – HTML
11.a.1.f. No open access – XML
11.a.1.g. No open access – TXT
11.a.1.h. No open access – Other
11.a.1.i. No open access – If you selected Other, please specify:
11.a.2.a. Embargoed open access – Print (if you publish a print version of open access content for sale)
11.a.2.b. Embargoed open access – PDF
11.a.2.c. Embargoed open access – EPUB
11.a.2.d. Embargoed open access – MOBI
11.a.2.e. Embargoed open access – HTML
11.a.2.f. Embargoed open access – XML
11.a.2.g. Embargoed open access – TXT
11.a.2.h. Embargoed open access – Other
11.a.2.i. Embargoed open access – If you selected Other, please specify:
11.a.3.a. Fully open access – Print (if you publish a print version of open access content for sale)
11.a.3.b. Fully open access – PDF
11.a.3.c. Fully open access – EPUB
11.a.3.d. Fully open access – MOBI
11.a.3.e. Fully open access – HTML
11.a.3.f. Fully open access – XML
11.a.3.g. Fully open access – TXT
11.a.3.h. Fully open access – Other
11.a.3.i. Fully open access – If you selected Other, please specify:
12. If you publish open access formats, could you tell us a little more about their availability (tick all the apply)
- EPUB
- MOBI
- HTML
- XML
- TXT
- Other
12.1.a. Downloadable – Please tick all that apply
12.1.b. Downloadable – If you selected Other, please specify:
12.2.a. Digital rights management applies – Please tick all that apply
12.2.b. Digital rights management applies – If you selected Other, please specify:
12.3.a. No digital right management – Please tick all that apply
12.3.b. No digital right management – If you selected Other, please specify:
13. Where are your OA books hosted? (Tick all that apply)
13.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
Cairn
Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL)
EBSCO
FULCRUM
Hathitrust
Internet Archive
JSTOR Books
MUSE Open
OAPEN
Open Edition
Own platform (with standardized metadata dissemination functionalities)
Own platform (without standardized metadata dissemination functionalities)
Self-archiving by the authors (institutional, subject, national repository)
SharePress
Ubiquity Press
UC Digitalis
Other
14. If you publish open access books, do you use any of the following Creative Commons license types for OA books? (Tick all that apply).
- Attribution CC BY
- Attribution ShareAlike CC BY-SA
- Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND
- Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA
- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
- No Rights Reserved CC0
- None of the above
- Other
14.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
15. Do you allow the author to choose the licence?
- Yes
- No
15.a. Could you expand your answer (i.e. do authors choose from a limited list)?
16. What funding/income sources do you currently use for open access book publishing? (Tick all that apply).
- Direct grants from funders (including European/ministerial grants) where a funder subsidises OA publications, in whole or part (i.e. for the press as a whole or for individual publications)
- Membership programs where libraries, library consortia etc. support the cost of publishing of OA books.
- Sales from embargoed/delayed OA in which a monograph becomes OA only after a delay or embargo
- Freemium (digital) where an OA edition is in one digital format (e.g. HTML) and the priced edition in other digital formats (e.g. EPUB, PDF, MOBI)
- Freemium (print) where the digital version is available on open access and the print version is available to purchase
- Subscribe-to-Open where libraries subscribe to have access to some content, and when subscriptions reach a certain threshold they pay to create new OA monographs.
- Crowdfunding from individuals where crowdfunding campaigns are organised to pitch monographs online to readers, usually using a crowd-funding platform like IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, Patreon or GoFundMe
- Cross-subsidized by other (publishing) activities of the organization
- Library crowdfunding where an intermediating platform connects many purchasers with the option to ‘unlock’ or ‘unlatch’ a title. For example, Knowledge Unlatched
- Subsidy model where a university/faculty/research centre and/or library subsidise a university press directly or indirectly (financially or through facilities, equipment, or personnel, i.e. in-kind institutional support) either as a ‘library press’ or separate entity
- Book Processing Charge (BPC) where the author or his/her employer/funder are charged a fee upon acceptance of the book for publication
- Donations, gifts or endowment
- Voluntary labour, work (excluding scientific)
- We do not publish OA books
- Other
16.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
16.b. If you do not publish open access books, would you like to receive support in changing the revenue models to make more of your content open access?
- Yes
- No
16.b.i. If yes, what kind of support would you find useful?
17. What was your total annual revenue for open access books last year?
- €0 – 999
- €1,000 – 9,999
- €10,000 – 49,999
- €50,000 – 99,999
- €100,000+
- Unknown
- We do not publish open access books
18. Do you have your own experience about what happens to print sales/revenue when there are open access digital editions?
- No impact; sales are basically the same
- Decline in print sales/revenue
- Increase in print sales/revenue; readers discover digitally but pivot to print for immersive reading
- Expect initial discovery-related increases in print sales/revenue to diminish as the open access cataloging problem is solved by libraries and digital becomes more discoverable
- Don’t know
18.a. Please add any further comments:
19. What were your total annual costs for all publications (journals and books) last year? Please also include staff, operational and in-kind institutional contributions.
19.1.a. Open access
19.2.a. Non open access
€0 – 999, €1,000 – 9,999, €10,000 – 49,999, €50,000 – 99,999, €100,000+, Unknown
19.a. If you publish both journals and books, what is the ratio of costs relating to open access between the two activities? e.g 50:50, 20:80
19.a.1.a. Journals
19.a.2.a. Books
20. Could you tell us about your main expenses regarding book production and publishing. Looking at the options below, please rank them in order of importance
Very important Somewhat important Neither important not unimportant Somewhat unimportant Very unimportant Do not use Don’t know
20.1. Copyediting
20.2. Design
20.3. Editing
20.4. Editorial Board support
20.5. Hosting
20.6. Marketing
20.7. Peer Review
20.8. Proofreading
20.9. Technical / software development
20.10. Technical / software support
20.11. Translation
20.12. Typesetting
20.13. Other, please specify
20.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
20.b. Could you tell us how a transition to open access might impact upon these processes?
Collaborative models for open access books
This section of the survey looks in detail at collaborative models for open access books.
Collaborative models for open access books are based on the idea of sharing: funds, information, and infrastructure. They may involve membership programmes, where libraries, library consortia, etc support the cost of publishing OA books (for example Open Book Publishers), they may operate on the idea of a library crowdfunding where an intermediating platform connects many purchasers with the option to ‘unlock’ or ‘unlatch’ a title (for example, Knowledge Unlatched), or be based on the idea of a coalition of publishers, working collaboratively (for example ScholarLed).
21. Is your press familiar with some of the existing collaborative funding models for OA books?
- Yes
- No
21.1.a. Open Book Publishers’ Library Membership Programme
21.2.a. Knowledge Unlatched KU Select programme
21.3.a. ScholarLed collective
21.4.a. Lever Press Platinum OA model
21.5.a. OpenEdition Freemium
21.6.a. Others (Please specify)
21.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
22. Does your press currently engage in collaborative models for open access books?
- Yes
- No
22.a. Could you describe the nature of a collaborative model that you employ?
22.b. How would you rate the following when pursuing collaborative models for open access books?
Very challenging Somewhat challenging Neutral Somewhat unchallenging Not challenging at all Don’t know
22.b.1. Legal aspects
22.b.2. Administrative aspects
22.b.3. Infrastructure
22.b.4. Financial aspects
22.b.5. Internal skillset / competencies
22.b.6. Competition
22.b.7. Familiarity with best practices
22.b.8. Other (please specify)
22.b.i. If you selected Other, please specify:
22.b.ii. Could you explain your answer in more detail, especially for those factors that you find challenging? How do you address these challenges?
22.c. Are you in contact with other presses operating on a model similar to yours? Do you share best practices?
- Yes
- No
22.c.i. Could you provide us with more details?
22.d. Thinking about the model(s) you currently employ, how sustainable do you think it is?
- Very sustainable
- Somewhat sustainable
- Neutral
- Somewhat unsustainable
- Not sustainable at all
- Don’t know
22.e. Could you tell us about your reasons for not engaging in collaborative models for open access books?
22.f. When thinking about the challenges of collaborative models for open access books, how would you rate the following aspects?
Very challenging Somewhat challenging Neutral Somewhat unchallenging Not challenging at all Don’t know
22.f.1. Legal aspects
22.f.2. Administrative aspects
22.f.3. Infrastructure
22.f.4. Financial aspects
22.f.5. Internal skillset / competencies
22.f.6. Competition
22.f.7. Familiarity with best practices
22.f.8. Other (please specify)
22.f.i. If you selected Other, please specify:
22.f.ii. Could you explain your answer in more detail, especially for those factors that you find most challenging? How do you address these challenges?
22.g. Thinking about the model(s) you currently employ, how sustainable do you think it is?
- Very sustainable
- Somewhat sustainable
- Neutral
- Somewhat unsustainable
- Not sustainable at all
- Don’t know
23. Thinking about the transition to open access with particular reference to a collaborative model for open access books, how helpful would you find the following support?
Very helpful Somewhat helpful Neutral Somewhat unhelpful Not helpful at all Don’t know
- A toolkit with advice on transition
- A workshop advising on transition
- A one-to-one session with an expert
- Other (please specify)
23.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
Collaborative models for shared infrastructure
Regarding collaborative models for shared technical infrastructure, these could include unions of small/independent presses, or of publishing communities providing mutual aid and logistical support, shared services and best practices where all the members participate in decision-making processes. For example, where the books published all have a shared technical infrastructure and publishing organisations support one another and share knowledge and skills (See Adema & Moore).
24. Does your press currently engage in collaborative models for shared infrastructure?
- Yes
- No
24.a. Could you describe the nature of the collaborative model for shared infrastructure for open access books that you employ?
24.b. When considering a collaborative model for shared infrastructure for open access books, how do you feel about the importance of the following statements?
Very important Somewhat important Neutral Somewhat unimportant Very unimportant Don’t Know
24.b.1. If the infrastructure is for profit
24.b.2. The infrastructure in nonprofit
24.b.3. The infrastructure has publicly available/transparent governance procedures
24.b.4. The infrastructure is community-led or governed
24.b.5. Your organization has some ownership/control over the infrastructure provided
24.b.6. The infrastructure is centralised
24.b.7. The infrastructure is decentralised
24.c. What are your reasons for not engaging in collaborative models for shared infrastructure for open access books?
24.d. When considering a collaborative model for shared infrastructure for open access books, how do you feel about the importance of the following statements?
Very important Somewhat important Neutral Somewhat unimportant Very unimportant Don’t Know
24.d.1. The infrastructure is for profit
24.d.2. The infrastructure in nonprofit
24.d.3. The infrastructure has publicly available/transparent governance procedures
24.d.4. The infrastructure is community-led or governed
24.d.5. Your organization has some ownership/control over the infrastructure provided
24.d.6. The infrastructure is centralised
24.d.7. The infrastructure is decentralised
25. Looking at the options below, which parts of the open access book publishing process would benefit most from having shared infrastructure? (Tick all that apply)
- Copyediting
- Design
- Distribution
- Editing
- Financial transaction handling
- Hosting
- Marketing / social media
- Metadata creation and distribution
- Peer review
- Preservation
- Proofreading
- Technical / software development
- Technical / software support
- Translation
- Typesetting
- Other
25.a. If you selected Other, please specify:
26. In recent times, has a national funder, European policy or Plan S altered how your press thinks about Open Access for books?
Yes No
26.1.a. National funder
26.2.a. European policy
26.3.a. Plan S
26.a. If yes, could you explain how?
27. If your authors have questions about open access, what support do you offer?
28. Would you be happy for OPERAS and the OPERAS-P project to contact you further to follow up on questions in this survey?
- Yes
- No
28.a. If yes, please provide an email address
29. Do you have any other comments you would like to make?
- The OBP Library Membership Programme helps to support OA publishing. Membership includes discounts on print purchases (Open Book Publishers 2022).
- Publishers are invited to submit frontlist and backlist titles that they would like to publish in OA. Titles for KU Select are then chosen through the KU Selection Committee. Libraries are encouraged to pledge to collectively fund the unlatching process. The 8th round of pledging started in 2022 (Knowledge Unlatched 2022).
- ScholarLed is a consortium of five scholar-led, not-for-profit, OA book publishers. Formed in 2018, it comprises Mattering Press, meson press, Open Book Publishers, Open Humanities Press and punctum books. It seeks to “develop powerful, practical ways for small-scale, scholar-led Open Access presses to grow and flourish in a publishing landscape that is changing rapidly” (ScholarLed n.d.)).
- Formed in 2015, Lever Press was born out of an initiative of the Oberlin Group to study how the libraries of liberal arts colleges could offer a new way for authors to publish (Lever Press 2022).
- Launched in 2011 by OpenEdition, a French public infrastructure dedicated to open scholarly communication in the SSH, OpenEdition Freemium aims to support OA journals and books publishing financial sustainability through a combination of free access to content and licensing premium services to libraries. The programme includes 8,749 OA books from 120 publishers, 128 libraries and generates revenue of around Euro 600,000 per year. (OpenEdition n.d.).
- DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers (OAPEN 2022a).
- COPIM is an international partnership of researchers, universities, librarians, open access book publishers and infrastructure providers. It is building community-owned, open systems and infrastructures to enable open access book publishing to flourish. Funded by Research England and Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, it is currently piloting and researching a number of different collaborative models (COPIM n.d.).
- OLH is an open access journals publishing platform that is funded and governed by a library membership model that it operates itself. It is therefore a good example of a publisher that uses one of the varieties of collaborative publishing. However, OLH does not publish books (Birkbeck, University of London n.d.)
- An open access scholar-led publisher. It represents a good example of a single publisher whose activities have been supported by a third-party collaborative funding model (“Language Science Press” n.d.).
- As stated in the report from one of the workshops: “Some publishers expressed a certain anxiety when it comes to dealing with “all things digital”, starting from offering formats other than PDF, to assigning DOIs and creating high quality metadata.” (Mosterd 2021b). At the same time, participants of these workshops expressed a strong desire to collaborate in this problematic area and exchange experiences. The same challenge became evident in the research performed for the OPERAS-P report on innovative business models for OA books. Out of nine examined European academic presses, three reported PDF as the only digital format they offered, and two focused on PDF only with rare experimentation with EPUB. Only one of the examined presses published its books in more than three digital formats: Open Book Publishers: PDF, EPUB, MOBI, HTML, XML (Gatti and Morka 2021).