An open-access monograph is a scholarly
monograph which is made openly available online with
open license
A free license or open license is a license which allows others to reuse another creator’s work as they wish. Without a special license, these uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or commercial license. Most free licenses are ...
.
Concept
Open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre o ...
is when academic research is made freely available online for anyone to read and re-use. As with
open access journals, there are different
business models for funding open-access books, including
publication charges, institutional support,
library publishing, and consortium models.
Some publishers, like OECD Publishing, uses a
freemium model where the
ebook version is made available for free, but readers have the option to purchase a print copy. Sales of the print version subsidise the cost of producing the book.
There is some evidence that making electronic editions of books open access can increase sales of the print edition.
History
While open access to journal articles has become very common, with 50% of articles published in 2011 available as open access, open access to books has not yet seen as much uptake. However, there are dedicated open-access book publishers such as
Open Book Publishers,
punctum books, and others who publish both books and journals, such as
Open Humanities Press. A report released in 2015 by the UK's main funding body for research, the
Higher Education Funding Council for England, states the importance of open access monographs: "Monographs are a vitally important and distinctive vehicle for research communication, and must be sustained in any moves to open access."
The OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) online library and publication platform provides access to thousands of peer-reviewed academic books, mainly in the humanities and social sciences. The OAPEN Foundation
also provides a directory of open access works via Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).
See also
*