What is the Open Book Collective?
Het Open Book Collective is a UK foundation that brings together Open Access book publishers, publishing services and knowledge institutions. The foundation includes book publishers that has transitioned to ‘Diamond Open Access’ or are in the process of doing so. Authors publishing with these publishers do not have to pay any fees for Open Access, even though the costs with traditional publishers typically range from €10,000 to €15,000. With the OBC publishers, these costs are collectively covered by the institutions that support the OBC, including VU. Currently, VU supports the following publishers:
- Mattering Press
- Meson Press
- Open Book Publishers
- White Horse Press
Why should you publish here?
The book publishers supported by the Open Book Collective allow you to publish open even if you lack the resources to pay a costly Open Access fee. The affiliated publishers primarily operate within STS and Humanitities.
Despite being small publishers, quality is paramount: “We work with a production model that is based on cooperation and shared scholarship while ensuring the high quality of the resulting work through systematic peer-review.”
By publishing here, you also indirectly contribute to crating a more equitable publishing landscape. As Joe Deville, founder of Mattering Press and Managing Director of OBC, stated: “Presses like Mattering Press face a continual struggle for survival, in the face of a scholarly publishing system which privileges large, for-profit presses. OBC provides essential new funding sources for these smaller publishers, offering hope for a future where local and global academic inequalities are minimized.”
Why an Innovation Fund?
Since 2023, the VU Open Access Innovation Fund supports journals, publishers, and infrastructure that are that are committed to ‘Diamond Open Access’, allowing researchers to publish without having to pay. This is a fairer and more open alternative to journals from large commercial publishers that charge high fees for Open Access. However, choosing ‘Diamond Open Access’is not yet evident for all researchers: the journals and platforms are often smaller, making them harder to find, and there are often questions about the quality, susutainability, and prestige of publishing ‘Diamond Open Access’. The VU Open Access Innovation Fund was established to show researchers that there are high-quality, equitable, Diamond publication alternatives available that allow them to contribute to more inclusive (open) science.
