1 00:00:01,250 --> 00:00:04,610 Hello and thank you for having me here today. 2 00:00:04,610 --> 00:00:10,910 My name is Martin Paul Eve and I'm Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck University of London, 3 00:00:10,910 --> 00:00:14,450 and I'm here to talk about ways in which we can make open access, 4 00:00:14,450 --> 00:00:26,690 book funding, work fairly - thinking in particular about the emergence of library membership funding models for open access monographs. 5 00:00:26,690 --> 00:00:36,590 The COVID 19 pandemic has exposed how important open access and digital access is for the humanities and social scientific disciplines. 6 00:00:36,590 --> 00:00:44,780 During the pandemic period, when we saw massive shutdowns of research libraries, it suddenly became incredibly difficult for researchers, 7 00:00:44,780 --> 00:00:53,180 especially those in clinically vulnerable categories, to access the trove of knowledge that exists solely in print forms. 8 00:00:53,180 --> 00:01:01,730 Furthermore, institutional disparities of access widened the inequalities that already exist in the infrastructure space of research 9 00:01:01,730 --> 00:01:03,380 publishing in the humanities, 10 00:01:03,380 --> 00:01:11,630 meaning that some institutions have plentiful digital access while others struggle to provide what was needed for their researchers. 11 00:01:11,630 --> 00:01:18,770 In this sense, the traditional publishing model appeared somewhat broken to many people over this period. 12 00:01:18,770 --> 00:01:19,850 At the same time, 13 00:01:19,850 --> 00:01:28,790 we've seen a situation over the past few decades where university presses are seeing a decline in the number of copies of books they've they've sold. 14 00:01:28,790 --> 00:01:36,530 But we're still working in the same way as though we're in an era when 500 copies of a text would be produced and sold. 15 00:01:36,530 --> 00:01:42,380 Open access clearly offers increased readership, usage and citation in every form that it delivers, 16 00:01:42,380 --> 00:01:46,460 including long-form writing, monographs. And a set of funding. 17 00:01:46,460 --> 00:01:54,340 mandates are now creating pressures for us to move towards open access monographs. 18 00:01:54,340 --> 00:01:59,170 The problem, though, is that the economics of our monographs are not straightforward. 19 00:01:59,170 --> 00:02:05,860 Book processing charges tend to scale incredibly badly because they have poor distributional characteristics. 20 00:02:05,860 --> 00:02:15,250 That is, when you sell books to 250 libraries, you can spread the cost that the press incurred in producing the book between 250 institutions. 21 00:02:15,250 --> 00:02:19,570 When you're looking at putting that all on one author for book processing charge, 22 00:02:19,570 --> 00:02:24,910 suddenly you've concentrated those costs in a way that may not be affordable or sustainable. 23 00:02:24,910 --> 00:02:31,600 Again, big institutions may be able to afford £11,000 of book processing charges. 24 00:02:31,600 --> 00:02:40,690 Smaller universities probably will not. And it's in this light that we've seen the emergence of the past few years of several types of membership 25 00:02:40,690 --> 00:02:47,590 as a model for open access to scholarly born open access presses like Open Book Publishers and punctum 26 00:02:47,590 --> 00:02:52,390 books have membership schemes where institutions can sign up to support 27 00:02:52,390 --> 00:02:58,540 them and ensure their continued operations. At the other end of the spectrum 28 00:02:58,540 --> 00:03:01,150 MIT Press has its Direct 2 Open model, 29 00:03:01,150 --> 00:03:07,210 which is a subscription threshold system where universities subscribe to the front list of books for that year. 30 00:03:07,210 --> 00:03:14,630 And if enough institutions subscribe, the titles for that year are all made open access. 31 00:03:14,630 --> 00:03:21,860 However, this leaves a large number of small to medium sized university presses without an obvious model. 32 00:03:21,860 --> 00:03:31,380 And that's why the work that I've been conducting on the COPIM project comes in with the model that we designed called Opening the Future. 33 00:03:31,380 --> 00:03:39,240 Opening the Future is a library backlist subscription model for funding open access. The way it works is a little bit like this. 34 00:03:39,240 --> 00:03:48,520 Presses form packages of books. So the Central European University press has four packages with 50 books in each and libraries 35 00:03:48,520 --> 00:03:52,980 subscribe to those packages. There's nothing open access about that. 36 00:03:52,980 --> 00:04:00,500 It's just a subscription for the library from the illustrious backlist of the presses that are participating. 37 00:04:00,500 --> 00:04:02,360 Where this gets different, though, 38 00:04:02,360 --> 00:04:10,700 is that the publisher uses the revenue from that subscription to the backlist to make books in the front list open access. 39 00:04:10,700 --> 00:04:20,280 So what we do is we use the revenue from the backlist to make the front list openly accessible one book at a time. 40 00:04:20,280 --> 00:04:26,820 And the economics of this are tailored to the understanding of library pressures in the humanities in particular. 41 00:04:26,820 --> 00:04:31,410 So we've been working with LYRASIS and Jisc to produce bindings that are fair to 42 00:04:31,410 --> 00:04:36,990 institutions and that range from just 1000 pounds to the most expensive institutions, 43 00:04:36,990 --> 00:04:41,900 down to 300 pounds for the smallest. And what do you get for that? 44 00:04:41,900 --> 00:04:53,700 So the access to the 50 titles subscription is completely DRM free, is concurrent access, and after three years of membership, it's perpetual. 45 00:04:53,700 --> 00:05:02,130 So these books are owned by the library. After a three year period with no restrictions on the digital re-use. 46 00:05:02,130 --> 00:05:08,820 Metadata is provided in KBART and Marc formats and counter compliance statistics are also available. 47 00:05:08,820 --> 00:05:16,710 We're working with partners like Project MUSE and Liverpool University Press's own platform for our monographs. 48 00:05:16,710 --> 00:05:22,740 Now, what's exciting about this is that if we can reach our target number of libraries and produce 25 new 49 00:05:22,740 --> 00:05:28,650 open access titles to the press every year on top of the 50 titles that libraries are subscribing to, 50 00:05:28,650 --> 00:05:39,580 the value for money is incredibly good, looking at just £10 per library per book if we reach that threshold. 51 00:05:39,580 --> 00:05:48,730 What's also appealing about these types of library membership model is that as more libraries join, the cost of our books per library comes down. 52 00:05:48,730 --> 00:05:54,820 So when a press reaches the number of libraries, they need to fund their entire frontlist, this being open access and by the way, 53 00:05:54,820 --> 00:06:00,250 that's what the Central European University press is trying to do is to convert its entire 54 00:06:00,250 --> 00:06:07,360 front list of open access research monographs into an open access format using this model, 55 00:06:07,360 --> 00:06:13,910 they can either publish more books openly or they can reduce the cost to libraries every year. 56 00:06:13,910 --> 00:06:21,630 That's how we'll achieve scalability amongst many presses here. 57 00:06:21,630 --> 00:06:29,100 Two presses are currently piloting Opening the Future: Liverpool University Press and the Central European University press. 58 00:06:29,100 --> 00:06:34,220 They're each trying to do something a little bit different. 59 00:06:34,220 --> 00:06:40,990 The first thing to say is that the Central European University press was a real success story of the pandemic. 60 00:06:40,990 --> 00:06:48,160 This press specialises in post-Soviet reconstruction in eastern European history and Slavic studies, 61 00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:57,280 and has an extremely strong reputation in those spaces. During the March to June 2020 period, just a very narrow sliver of the early pandemic, 62 00:06:57,280 --> 00:07:02,260 they made 279 of their titles openly accessible on Project MUSE. 63 00:07:02,260 --> 00:07:13,600 These titles were downloaded 350,000 times from 129 countries and seven of the top 10 downloads in that period of titles that were over 10 years old. 64 00:07:13,600 --> 00:07:20,930 So there's a real draw to the back list here. 65 00:07:20,930 --> 00:07:26,120 Liverpool University Press, by contrast, is piloting at the series Level for Opening the Future. 66 00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:32,540 They described themselves as falling somewhat in the Goldilocks zone with reference to the fairy tale believing 67 00:07:32,540 --> 00:07:39,680 that they're not a large publisher with a diverse and really profitable portfolio or any significant endowment. 68 00:07:39,680 --> 00:07:43,940 But they're not a smaller publisher with literary or academic subsidy. 69 00:07:43,940 --> 00:07:52,850 They're medium ish sized, mission driven publisher with no institutional support and sit squarely in the middle of everything with no safety net. 70 00:07:52,850 --> 00:07:59,290 And so they say to us, if this model works here, it should work pretty much anywhere in the humanities 71 00:07:59,290 --> 00:08:04,640 and the social sciences. And Liverpool are piloting this on a series in modern languages, 72 00:08:04,640 --> 00:08:10,220 which is a subject area that's been under increasing threat in recent years. 73 00:08:10,220 --> 00:08:20,940 And that really needs to see sustainable support if research to continue in this vital area of humanistic enquiry. 74 00:08:20,940 --> 00:08:26,140 Now, Opening the Future is an incremental model for open access monographs. 75 00:08:26,140 --> 00:08:31,600 Lots of library membership models and other non book processing charge models 76 00:08:31,600 --> 00:08:36,970 for open access books rely on a certain number of institutions participating, 77 00:08:36,970 --> 00:08:42,700 and then you either hit your threshold and everything goes open or you don't make it, and nothing does. 78 00:08:42,700 --> 00:08:48,970 We think there's a better way of doing this, which is to work incrementally on the revenue that you get from memberships. 79 00:08:48,970 --> 00:08:54,340 So once you reach a certain point, we know how much it costs the press to produce a book. 80 00:08:54,340 --> 00:09:02,470 Once that revenue threshold has been met, the next book that is going to be open access at the press will be the next one going through production. 81 00:09:02,470 --> 00:09:06,790 And in this way, we have a rolling process where with approximately 10 members, 82 00:09:06,790 --> 00:09:13,060 the first book becomes OA and approximately 20 members, the second book becomes OA. 83 00:09:13,060 --> 00:09:19,330 We also get around the challenge of selection that we've seen in some of the other membership like systems. 84 00:09:19,330 --> 00:09:27,100 So one of the worries that libraries have often had is that publishers will simply put their worst books into open access programmes, 85 00:09:27,100 --> 00:09:32,530 and that's simply not the case here in the model that we're piloting. As a book 86 00:09:32,530 --> 00:09:37,330 comes through the production process and the money is in place to make it open access 87 00:09:37,330 --> 00:09:41,950 we're simply making the next book in line openly accessible. 88 00:09:41,950 --> 00:09:48,160 Admittedly, if two books were precisely coming through production at the same time, we might need to make a selection decision. 89 00:09:48,160 --> 00:09:53,290 But we're trying to open up the entire front list of research, monographs say at CEU Press. 90 00:09:53,290 --> 00:09:57,610 And so the selection process is really just a rolling production line of the next book 91 00:09:57,610 --> 00:10:04,350 that's ready, and eventually we'll get to the point where all the books are open access. 92 00:10:04,350 --> 00:10:07,200 The other point I should say is that there's no double dipping in this model. 93 00:10:07,200 --> 00:10:14,520 So if researchers come to the press with a book processing charge because they've got a grant, for example, a press can take that. 94 00:10:14,520 --> 00:10:18,360 But that revenue won't count towards the Opening the Future programme and we will keep those 95 00:10:18,360 --> 00:10:23,880 two streams separate. So libraries will not end up paying for the same book multiple times. 96 00:10:23,880 --> 00:10:29,100 Although I should say that all of the open access books produced on this programme also have print copies, 97 00:10:29,100 --> 00:10:38,030 and there's no unfavourable treatment as a result of the openly accessible edition. 98 00:10:38,030 --> 00:10:43,580 I should also stress that this model is not a read and published deal. In the journal space, 99 00:10:43,580 --> 00:10:47,480 we've seen a lot of talk about transformative agreements and thinking about how we're going to 100 00:10:47,480 --> 00:10:54,600 transition a general model to an openly accessible model without article processing charges. 101 00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:56,780 And that's why the read and publish deals have come in, 102 00:10:56,780 --> 00:11:03,740 with the idea being that an institutional membership entitles your researchers to publish openly. 103 00:11:03,740 --> 00:11:08,180 Instead of that, we're trying to convert entire presses to be open access. 104 00:11:08,180 --> 00:11:14,510 So there's not this question of can your institution afford a membership? Can your institution afford the processing charge? 105 00:11:14,510 --> 00:11:23,870 If we can sustain presses to just be open access by default, whenever any researcher comes to the press, they'll be able to publish publish openly. 106 00:11:23,870 --> 00:11:27,800 This works well for authors who can't find book pricing charges, 107 00:11:27,800 --> 00:11:34,970 but it also works well for library collections: instead of building our own collections individually at every library 108 00:11:34,970 --> 00:11:43,940 what we're trying to do is to build one global collection once for everybody. 109 00:11:43,940 --> 00:11:48,140 I just want to put in a closing word as to why this is so important. 110 00:11:48,140 --> 00:11:54,830 The directory of Open Access Books vs the directory of Open Access Journals, shows a very different landscape between the spaces. 111 00:11:54,830 --> 00:12:06,460 The OA Books market has many smaller players, with publications in multiple languages across a broad spectrum of subject areas compared to journals. 112 00:12:06,460 --> 00:12:13,240 And the challenge is that people often say, well, can't we just buy the good books, buy the ones that we want? 113 00:12:13,240 --> 00:12:17,680 But the problem is that presses can't tell you in advance of them commissioning these books, 114 00:12:17,680 --> 00:12:22,540 which are going to be the really successful ones which are going to be the ones that have strong academic merit. 115 00:12:22,540 --> 00:12:29,620 What are the future classics? If we knew that in advance, we could simply select and there wouldn't be a problem. 116 00:12:29,620 --> 00:12:35,020 But the basic answer is that you can't have the cream without the milk and we need to treat presses as 117 00:12:35,020 --> 00:12:39,850 infrastructures that need to be sustained so they can try to make the selection calls, 118 00:12:39,850 --> 00:12:51,960 but also experiment with the work they're commissioning rather than just going for popular appeal seems vital for academic enquiry academic freedom. 119 00:12:51,960 --> 00:12:54,150 I mentioned briefly at the beginning the COPIM project, 120 00:12:54,150 --> 00:13:01,440 and this is all part of our scaling infrastructure project and this funded initiative of Research England and the Arcadia Trust. 121 00:13:01,440 --> 00:13:05,130 So Opening the Future is our outreach to university presses. 122 00:13:05,130 --> 00:13:14,370 Open Book Collective is a single platform where libraries can find, assess and sign up support book programmes that's coming later in 2022, 123 00:13:14,370 --> 00:13:21,780 and TOTH is our open metadata and dissemination programme, and we're collaborating with initiatives around the world on this project. 124 00:13:21,780 --> 00:13:30,040 So please do have a look at the COPIM website to learn more about what we're doing at copim.ac.uk. 125 00:13:30,040 --> 00:13:36,010 And that's where I will close up. You can find more at opening the future dot net or you can send me an email. 126 00:13:36,010 --> 00:13:44,020 The thing I'd stress is that without library support for these pilots, they won't work and we won't see the open access future that we want. 127 00:13:44,020 --> 00:13:51,940 Really, this is the time when we need to see library investment if we're really going to have an open future and open access monographs, 128 00:13:51,940 --> 00:13:56,590 the core currency of humanities and social science disciplines. 129 00:13:56,590 --> 00:14:01,840 So is it going to work? This is the time when we need to see these experiments come to fruition. 130 00:14:01,840 --> 00:14:03,605 Thank you very much.