Negotiations between libraries and Open Access books: Towards a more open future?

While Open Access (OA) has become an established option for articles, closed formats continue to be the norm in academic book publishing. One consequence is that the workflows and conventions that dominate scholarly libraries tend to be poorly equipped for the proportionally small but increasing number of books that are being published on an OA basis. 

This paper provides an early insight into ongoing research as part of the COPIM (Community-led Publication Infrastructures for Monographs) project, which looks to understand how libraries might better support Open Access (OA) monograph publishing, especially for those disciplines – notably Humanities and Social Sciences – for which the book remains central. Drawing on interviews and workshops with librarians from a wide range of university libraries in the US and the UK, it maps the issues libraries and other relevant actors are facing in ongoing efforts to better integrate open access books into academic libraries. The presentation also offers some reflections on the impact of Covid-19 on libraries and the potential effects on their ability to support open access projects in future.