Open Access: Supporting Open Access
Image Credit: BCU Assets
BCU Library & Learning Resources advocates for fair and equitable Open Access (OA) publishing by allocating part of its budget to support non-profit OA service providers like DOAJ, DOAB, and OAPEN. Additionally, the library funds academic-led OA book publishers, punctum books and mediastudies.press, through the Open Book Collective, promoting a sustainable and equitable OA future.
Barriers and Inequity in Open Access Publishing
Most large, for-profit publishers will ask authors for an APC (Article Processing Charge) or BPC (Book Processing Charge) of several thousand pounds to be paid in order to publish their work open access.
There is widespread evidence to suggest that these charges are unaffordable to authors, libraries and institutions and that they drive inequity and harm diversity in Open Access publishing. Authors in certain disciplines, in the global majority, and without access to funding are unable to afford these payments and are denied access to OA Publishing.
Supporting Non-Profit Open Access Publishing for Equitable and Sustainable Research Sharing
We believe that research, where possible, should be shared openly and freely. We have pledged a portion of our resources budget to support Open Access service providers, e.g. DOAJ, DOAB & OAPEN, who help provide the infrastructure and software solutions around non-profit Open Access publishing and ensure OA materials are found, read and engaged with.
We support two academic-led, non-profit, born open access book publishers: punctum books & mediastudies.press via the Open Book Collective. These presses do not charge author-facing fees and fund their operations by asking for contributions from the library community.
By pledging our support for these alternative collective funding models, we are joining a community of libraries who together help to fund an equitable and sustainable future for Open Access publishing. We believe this is a far more effective way of using our library funds to support Open Access than to pay unjustifiably high BPCs and APCs. We will continue to review these agreements and search for other opportunities in this space.
If you are aware of any other Open Access agreements you would like us to support, please contact: Guojin Liu - guojin.liu@bcu.ac.uk
Collaborative Open Access funding models at BCU
BCU Library and Learning Resources currently supports the following collaborative Open Access funding models:
OBC
The Open Books Collective (OBC) is a charity bringing together publishers, publishing service providers, and scholarly libraries to secure the diversity and financial futures of open access book production and dissemination. Through the OBC, we pledge support for two not-for-profit, scholar-led presses.
- punctum books This link opens in a new window
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Search punctum books range of Open Access ebooks by academic and para-academic authors working in any field in the humanities, social sciences, fine arts, and architecture & design. - mediastudies.press This link opens in a new window
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Search the mediastudies.press collection of Open Access ebooks and ejournals for the media, communication, and film studies fields.
DOAJ
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an extensive index of Open Access journals which seeks to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals.
- Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
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Search or browse for Open Access journals on subjects including science, technology, medicine, social science and humanities.
OAPEN
The Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to open access, peer-reviewed books. OAPEN operates three platforms: OAPEN Library - a central repository for hosting and disseminating OA books; OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit - a toolkit on OA book publishing for authors; Directory of Open Access Books - a discovery service indexing OA books.
- OAPEN Library This link opens in a new window
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Search or browse for Open Access books on topics including art, business, education, engineering, law, literature, media studies and the social sciences.
DOAB
The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a discovery service for peer reviewed open access books and book publishers that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed books.
- Directory of Open Access Books This link opens in a new window
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Search for Open Access books on a wide variety of topics.
Humanities
- Open Library of Humanities This link opens in a new window
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A gateway to over 20 Open Access humanities journals on subjects including architecture, art, film languages, literature and visual communication.