Open Access Book Collective |
Directors' Report |
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Report of the directors of Open Access Book Collective for the period ended 31 October 2024 |
Introduction |
The period documented by this report covers the period since the confirmation (on 19 December 2023) that the application by the Open Book Collective (OBC) to be registered as a charity by the Charity Commission of England and Wales was accepted: |
https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.caf1d303 |
The 31 October 2024 end date of the period was chosen as it aligns with the reporting requirements for the Copim Open Book Futures project: |
https://copim.pubpub.org/open-book-futures-project |
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Governance & Staffing |
The Open Book Collective remains established as a charitable Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) and a UK registered charity. It is governed by the OBC Board of Stewards, which are elected by members and act as the charity’s Trustees. During the period, two Stewards stepped down from the Board. Cheryl Ball stepped down as one of our OA Expert Stewards due to other work commitments, and Andrea Hacker, another of our OA Expert Stewards, did not renew her term due to her institution, Bern University, becoming an OBC member, meaning she could not have remained an ‘independent’ representative. We offer our sincere thanks to Cheryl and Andrea for their contributions to the OBC. |
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The period saw the OBC convene its second Annual General Assembly of Custodians. This took place on 11 September 2024: |
https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/tjbb7k24 |
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During the meeting, members voted to elect and re-elect Stewards to the board. Results of this election included the following: |
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Holly Limbert (Derby University): Elected, acting as an independent OA Expert |
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Reggie Raju (University of Cape Town Libraries): Re-elected, acting as an independent OA Expert, having previously representing the Service Provider Caucus |
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Amanda Ramalho (SciELO Books): Re-elected, acting as an independent OA Expert |
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During the period, the board met 4 times, as follows: |
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10 January 2024 |
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10 April 2024 |
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26 April 2024 |
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09 October 2024 |
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Staffing remains unchanged during the period. OBC employees include: |
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Francesca Corazza: Product Manager |
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Kevin Sanders: Open Access Engagement Lead |
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Francesca and Kevin continued to act as the OBC Secretariat, which supports the OBC’s Committees and governance functions. Many thanks to both Kevin and Francesca for all their work. |
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Thanks also to our colleagues seconded from partner organisations to the OBC, as part of the Copim Open Book Futures project. This includes Livy Synder (punctum), who leads much of our engagement in North America, Izabella Penier (Lancaster University), who leads our publisher and service provider engagement, and Judith Fathallah (Lancaster University), who leads our research work and work on the Collective Development Fund. |
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New Members |
The OBC ended the 2024 financial year with a total of 79 Library Members, acting as supporting institutions, with a total of 14 Publisher and Service Provider Members. During the period, the following members joined the Open Book Collective: |
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New Library Members |
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Bath Spa University (08/08/24) |
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Bern University (27/11/23) |
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Birmingham City University (11/06/24) |
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Brock University (23/02/24) |
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Flinders University (20/03/24) |
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Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (23/01/24) |
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McMaster University (14/12/23) |
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National Library of Finland (12/05/23) |
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National Library of Scotland (15/07/24) |
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National Library of Sweden (01/02/24) |
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Oxford University, Bodleian Libraries (16/01/24) |
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Philips Universität Marburg (05/12/23) |
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Rollins College (04/04/24) |
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Royal Danish Library (08/11/23) |
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Technische Universität Berlin (07/02/24) |
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Tilburg University (1/12/23) |
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Université de Montreal (25/04/24) |
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University of Basel (04/01/24) |
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University of Bergen (22/11/23) |
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University of Bristol (02/06/23) |
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University College London (10/07/24) |
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CDL (14/06/24) |
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University of California, Berkeley |
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University of California, Davis |
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University of California, Irvine |
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University of California, Los Angeles |
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University of California, Merced |
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University of California, Riverside |
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University of California, San Diego |
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University of California, San Francisco |
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University of California, Santa Cruz |
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University of California, Office of the President (UCOP) |
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University of Edinburgh (08/05/24) |
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University of Groningen (08/08/24) |
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University of Leeds (24/09/24) |
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University of Leicester (27/02/24) |
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University of Loughborough (12/07/23) |
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University of Montreal (24/04/24) |
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University of Southampton (11/09/24) |
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University of St.Gallen (07/11/23) |
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University of Texas at Austin (25/07/24) |
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University of Western Ontario (26/10/23) |
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University of Western Australia (11/05/23) |
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University of Wollongong (12/06/23) |
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Utrecht University (05/07/24) |
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York University, Canada (22/02/24) |
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Villanova University (20/03/24) |
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Vrije Universitait Amsterdam (03/10/23) |
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Zurich University (12/12/23) |
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New Publisher Members |
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University of London Press (24/01/24) |
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Leuven University Press (10/01/24) |
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University of Westminster Press (24/01/24) |
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New Service Provider Members |
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Public Knowledge Project (04/09/24) |
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Outreach & outputs |
A significant part of the OBC’s work is engaging with the scholarly community, with a particular focus on academic publishers and university libraries. As part of the Open Book Futures project, colleagues working to support the OBC contributed to a range of events and outputs, in which they explored issues related to the OBC’s aim to support a fairer, more sustainable future for OA book publishing. We have also refined our social media engagement work, including maintaining our presence on Mastodon, launching on Bluesky, and deprioritising posting on X. |
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A sense of the broad ambitions of this work is provided in the first report to supporters, published on 29 February 2024. We will repeat this report next February. |
https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.3db1e0a1 |
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Since February, the OBC has been involved in numerous other outreach activities. These include: |
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Events & conference papers |
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11 Jan 2024 - Open Access and Global South Scholars: Needs, Experiences, Barriers; Lancaster University, Southern Women Academic Network: |
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https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.b423d75c |
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22 Jan 2024 - OBC Information Hub and Collective Development Fund scoping workshop; punctum, White Horse Press, Mattering Press, African Minds, Westminster University Press, University of London Press, Leuven University Press, DOAB/OAPEN, Thoth, OBP, meson press, mediastudies.press |
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7-9 Feb 2024 - Towards Sustainable Open Access Book Publishing in the African Context; University of Cape Town Library, University of Cape Town Press, African Platform for Open Scholarship, Association of African Universities, Lancaster University, punctum books, DOAB/OAPEN, Thoth, OBC, Mattering Press: |
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https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.c8fbbc53 |
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13 Mar 2024 - Introducing the OBC to IReL members (Irish Library Consortium) |
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17 Apr 2024 - Evaluating Evaluation Criteria for OA Book Publishers. Project Muse, OpenEdition. African Platform for Open Scholarship, SciELO Books, DOAB, Opening the Future, JSTOR, Thoth, AG Universitätsverlage, University of Georgia Press/AUPresses Fulcrum: |
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https://katinamagazine.org/content/article/open-knowledge/2024/how-should-we-evaluate-open-access-book-publishing |
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24 Apr 2024 - How To Facilitate Horizontal Collaboration Between Community-Led Infrastructures for Equitable and Bibliodiverse Futures for Open Access Books? OPERAS conference, Zadar, Croatia. Lucy Barnes, Niels Stern, Rupert Gatti, Toby Steiner, Kevin Sanders. |
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01 May 2024 - Bridging Altruism to Strategy in OA Book Publishing – How Libraries Can Close Funding Gaps to Support a Bibliodiverse Global Shared Collection, University of Delaware Publishing, University of Arizona Libraries, University of Alberta, Iowa State University Digital Press. |
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03 Jul 2024 - Evaluation and Assessment of Diamond Open Access Book Initiatives: Challenges and Opportunities. Deville, Joe; Sanders, Kevin; Stern, Niels; Trentacosti, Giulia. LIBER 2024 Pre-conference workshop: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/liber-2024/release/1 |
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12 Sep 2024 - Sustainable Community-Led Open Access Beyond the BPC, Joe Deville. Association of Learned Society Publishers Annual Conference and Awards 2024 |
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16 Sep 2024 - Can Scaling Small Scale? Lessons Learned From Building Community-led Infrastructures for Open Access Book Publishing; Contributors: Deville, Joe; Adema, Janneke; Barnes, Miranda; Steiner, Toby; Grady, Tom; Hillen, Hannah; Hopkins, Kira; Kiesewetter, Rebekka; Sanders, Kevin |
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OASPA 2024 Conference, Lisbon: |
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https://zenodo.org/records/13694568 |
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17 Sep 2024 - Choosing Open Access for Books as a Precarious Scholar |
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Judith Fathallah, OASPA 2024 Conference, Lisbon |
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17 Sep 2024 - Precarity in scholar-led & marginalized open access publishing |
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Joe Deville, OASPA 2024 Conference, Lisbon |
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19 Sep 2024 - Crisis in HE and the future of Diamond Open Access, LSE, LSE UP, WP3 |
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Other outreach |
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22 Jan 2024 - First Collective Development Funding Call to Open in April 2024: |
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https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.495490c0 |
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12 Feb 2024 - Open Access and Global South Scholars: Needs, Experiences, Barriers. Workshop Report: |
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https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.b423d75c |
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October 2024 (accepted, pending publication) - [Journal article]. Hopkins, K. & Sanders, K. (2024). Open access, open infrastructures, and their funding: learning from histories to more effectively enhance Diamond OA ecologies for books. Journal of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication. 12(2). |
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Collective Development Fund |
Considerable work has focused on launching the OBC Collective Development Fund. This fund is financed in 2024 and 2025 by the Open Book Futures project, with calls from 2026 onwards relying on financial contributions from OBC’s Publisher and Service Provider Members. |
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Significant milestones for the Collective Development Fund during the period included: |
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18 Mar 2024: Publishing the results of further scoping work on the needs and priorities of our stakeholder communities: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/collective-development-fund-grant-programme-scoping-update |
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16 Apr 2024: Launching the first OBC Collective Development Fund Call: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/obc-collective-development-fund-grant-programme-2024-call--guidance |
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23 Sep 2024: Reflecting on the outcomes of the call, for which the OBC received 35 applications in total, of which 8 applications advanced to full review: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/collective-development-fund-update-learning-from-our-first-assessment-process |
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We look forward to including information on the final awards in the next reporting period. |
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Funding & financial position |
The OBC was supported through the present period by the Copim Open Book Futures project. The project covers the large majority of OBC’s current financial costs and will do until the end of the project on the 30th April 2026. During the period, we have begun work to prepare for the post-Open Book Futures period. This includes: |
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Developing post-project funding applications. This work is ongoing, with other Copim colleagues. |
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Developing post-project projections, should funding applications be unsuccessful. This shows that further funding would be required to sustain the OBC at current staffing levels. This could involve increasing our subscriber base and/or increasing the volume of support from existing subscribers. Our work in this respect is focusing particularly on achieving support from US institutions and consortia and on deepening our outreach within EU contexts. |
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Undertaking a full interim evaluation of the OBC model. We will report on this evaluation in the next financial period. |
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We look forward to providing further updates about the development of the OBC in next year’s report. |
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Prof. Joseph Deville |
OBC Managing Director and Trustee |
Approved by the board on 8 January 2025 |
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