UKRI, in partnership with the Association of Learned Society Publishers (ALPSP), the British Academy, and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), has commissioned a project from Information Power. The project is to support book publishers in their transition to sustainable open access models, with a particular focus on learned society, subject association, and smaller specialist publishers.

The overall objective of this project is to develop advice, options, and a toolkit for learned society, subject associations, and smaller specialist publishers to help them explore and embrace open access for academic book publishing. The project deliverables will include a report and a practical toolkit. Over the course of 2024 the project team will engage with a wide range of stakeholders including publishers, libraries, funders, researchers, and supply chain partners.

Smaller publishers face challenges of scale whenever transitioning to open access, but the challenges facing book publishers extend well beyond this. Challenges can include business models, copyright, global markets, list building, payments and pricing, print, retrospective conversion, supply chain transformation, and more. 

The project team is an exciting one. Gathered together specially for this project, under the Information Power umbrella, is an experienced team of consultants including:

Lorraine Estelle – with broad experience of global library and consortial licensing, and a deep understanding of book usage metrics

Dave Jago – former Director of Publications at the Royal College of Psychiatrists  

Ruth Jones – a book supply chain expert with special expertise in digital services sales 

Dr Mikael Laakso – Associate Professor in Information Systems Science at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and well known for his research on open access books.  

Dr Ronald Snijder – CTO and Head of Research at the OAPEN Foundation. 

Dr Alicia Wise – Director of Information Power and with deep experience of OA business models, digital preservation, and a global network of librarians and publishers.

The project will engage widely with stakeholders through interviews, focus groups, workshops, and surveys. To get involved, please email info@informationpower.co.uk

ENDS

About UKRI

Launched in April 2018, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

UKRI brings together the seven disciplinary research councils, Research England, which is responsible for supporting research and knowledge exchange at higher education institutions in England, and the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK.

About ALPSP

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) is the international trade association which supports and represents not-for-profit organizations that publish scholarly and professional content and those that collaborate with them.  ALPSP has over 320 member organizations across 35 countries.  Our diverse membership encompasses society, university, and traditional publishers, alongside their associated communities, thereby representing those who uphold the principles of accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness in information dissemination. 

About British Academy

The British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It represents the interests of the humanities and social sciences, including those of the many learned societies and subject associations in those disciplines. The Academy is also a funder of research, and provides opportunities for dissemination of outputs from that research through its own publishing programme (including some open access options).

About OASPA
OASPA is a diverse network of organisations engaged in open scholarship. Our membership includes scholar-led and professional publishers of books and journals, across varied geographies and disciplines, as well as infrastructure and other services. To fulfil our mission of encouraging and enabling equitable open access for scholarly outputs, our focus is on collaboration – sharing experiences, helping to develop industry standards and collectively discussing and enabling solutions to support a sustainable path for open access publishing.