Our membership is diverse, but what we share is a commitment to building an open knowledge- and resource-sharing ecosystem for open access book publishing.

The OBC has a variety of members, including many who fall into more than one category. They comprise:

• Born Open Access Presses (and collectives of such) whose entire catalogues are open access, and who either don’t levy Book Processing Charges (BPCs) or are aiming to lessen their reliance on such. Open Access presses included in this category could be independent, scholar-led, library-based, and university-based publishers, including New University Publishers as well as more established university publishers, whose entire catalogues of books are OA;

• Hybrid presses (university-based or not) who have catalogues that combine open access and non-OA books (frontlist and/or backlist) and who want to transition their frontlist to a minimum of 75% OA while also lessening their reliance on BPCs;

• Open Publishing Service Providers (and collectives of such) who build open infrastructures for repositories, discovery channels, catalogues, indexes, usage metrics, metadata management, preservation, and the like for integrating Open Access books with global knowledge systems, and who also develop software and platforms for the creation and dissemination of Open Access books; and

• Libraries (and consortia of such), Library Membership Organisations, and other Knowledge Institutions who have vested interests in growing and helping to sustain the landscape of open access initiatives as part of their commitment to public service-oriented knowledge production and who help to support the publishers and publishing service providers of the OBC.

Membership Criteria

Born Open Access Book Publishers & Book Publishing Collectives

• will follow and adhere to the mission and principles of the OBC;

• have published at least two books (long-form works which include monographs, edited collections, textbooks, critical editions, and experimental books)

• will commit to increasing the proportion of open access books published without BPCs

• publish their books under open licences;

• make all of their books accessible immediately upon publication with no barriers or embargos;

• have developed protocols for reviewing and developing open access books that support community and follow the highest standards for the evaluation of academic books, as agreed upon within research communities;

• are dedicated to providing transparency around their mission and values, business model (including costs and revenue for book production and any alternative revenue sources that are available), governance, and any author-facing charges (such as BPCs); and

• are committed to sharing their knowledge and expertise with the larger community of open access book publishers as a form of mutual support.

Hybrid Presses

• will follow and adhere to the mission and principles of the OBC;

• have published at least 10 books (long-form works which include monographs, edited collections, textbooks, critical editions, and experimental books);

• will provide evidence of their commitment to publishing open access books;

• will commit to consistently increasing the proportion of open access books published without author-facing charges (such as BPCs);

• will publish their open access books under open licences;

• will make their open access books accessible immediately upon publication without barriers or embargos;

• will provide transparency around their mission and values, governance, and business model, including costs and revenue for open access book production and any alternative revenue sources for producing open access books that are available;

• will only use the income received through the OBC to fund fully open access books without author-facing charges or embargoes;

• will commit to transitioning a minimum of 75% of their frontlist catalogue to open access, if not already doing so, and will provide a roadmap for this transition, including business model strategies that would enable a systematic growth in the proportion of open access books to reach that target (with the understanding that moving toward a frontlist that is 100% OA, if possible, is a shared goal); and

• are committed to sharing their knowledge and expertise with the larger community of open access book publishers as a form of mutual support.

Open Book Publishing Service Providers

• will follow and adhere to the mission and principles of the OBC;

• are committed to working toward modular, open source infrastructure and software solutions that contribute to overcoming the fragmentation of the open access book publishing service provision landscape, including enabling open data exchange and facilitating interoperability between alternative and associated infrastructures and software solutions;

• are dedicated to providing transparency around their mission and values, business model (including costs and revenue sources), ownership, governance, and any fees levied to their users;

• will be transparent about how OBC funding is used and integrated with other existing revenue streams (e.g., via annual reports);

• will demonstrate how they support and contribute to​​ good practises of openness regarding scholarly infrastructures, with special attention to the use of open-source software, provision of open data, enabling data availability, and non-assertion of patents;

• will guarantee a high level of reliability and availability of the services provided;

• are invested in furthering open research and innovation around the use/management of information in open access book publishing; and

• are committed to sharing their knowledge and expertise with the larger community of open access book publishers and publishing service providers as a form of mutual support.

Knowledge Institutions

• have financial and values-driven stakes in growing the non-commercial open knowledge commons;

• support the idea that research financed by public funds is a public good and should be freely and immediately available without charge or unjustified restrictions;

• are helping to develop open access policies at their institution that include books;

• want to work together with open access book publishers and publishing service providers to ensure that open access book content is widely discoverable in a variety of discovery and distribution systems;

• are committed to bibliodiversity, including new or innovative publishing formats, whether digital or print;

• want to have the opportunity to participate in the shared governance of the OBC; and

• are invested in allocating financial and other resources to support the operations of OA book publishers and service providers. 

If you wish to participate in funding the OBC initiatives via various offers and membership programmes as a library or other knowledge institution, you can start building your membership here.

Apply for Membership

If you are interested in joining the OBC as an open access book publisher or open publishing service provider, please download our application form here and send it to info@openbookcollective.org.

Banner Photo by Riccardo Maria Mantero on Flickr