| Open Access Book Collective |
| Directors' Report |
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| Report of the directors of Open Access Book Collective for the year ended 31 October 2025 |
| 1. Introduction |
| This is the third OBC Directors' report and the second since the OBC was registered as a charity by the Charity Commission of England and Wales on 19 December 2023: |
| https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.caf1d303 |
| This report provides an overview of core OBC activities, as well as its governance and financial position. A fuller report, including details of the work of our Publisher and Service Provider Members, is published annually on a different cycle. The most recent OBC Annual Report is available here: |
| https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/open-book-collective-2024-to-2025-annual-report |
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| 2. 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, there were no changes to the membership of the Board. |
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| The OBC did not convene an Annual General Assembly of Custodians (AGAC) during this financial year. The second AGAC took place on 11 September 2024: |
| https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/tjbb7k24 |
| The third AGAC is scheduled to take place on 3 December 2025. This reflects an updated financial year and our aim eventually to be able to move the AGAC towards the start of a calendar year, while meeting the requirements that these meetings should occur no more than 15 months apart. |
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| During the period, the board met 4 times, as follows: |
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8 January 2025 |
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9 April 2025 |
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25 June 2025 |
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10 September 2025 |
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| The period also saw some staffing changes, with Kevin Sanders leaving the organisation at the end of September and the OBC welcoming Caroline Ball as its new Community Engagement Lead in October. Current OBC employees include: |
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Caroline Ball: Community Engagement Lead |
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Francesca Corazza: Product Manager |
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| Francesca and first Kevin and then Caroline continued to act as the OBC Secretariat, which supports the OBC’s Committees and governance functions. Many thanks to Caroline, Francesca and Kevin 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. Thanks also to Arturo Garduño Magaña who is a contractor who joined the OBC during this period, serving as our Metadata Management Associate. |
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| 3. New Members |
| The OBC ended the 2025 financial year with a total of 18 Publisher and Service Provider Members, with 88 Library Members acting as supporting institutions. During the period, 5 new Publisher Members joined. 17 new library members joined, of which the following 16 have consented to be publicly acknowledged: |
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| New Library Members |
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Francis Crick Institute (01/04/2025) |
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Institute of Arts, Design and Technology (18/12/2024) |
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James Madison University (07/11/2024) |
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London School of Economics & Political Science (06/02/2025) |
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London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (24/03/2025) |
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MIT Libraries (17/03/2025) |
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Trinity College Dublin (18/12/2024) |
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University of Anglia Ruskin (24/06/2025) |
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University of Essex (28/07/2025) |
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University of Exeter (05/02/2025) |
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University of Nottingham (06/02/2025) |
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University of Southampton Solent (28/07/2025) |
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University of the Arts London (01/04/2025) |
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University of Warwick (06/10/2025) |
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University of Wolverhampton (28/07/2025) |
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University of York (06/01/2025) |
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| New Publisher Members |
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Arc Humanities Press (16/05/2025) |
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Edizioni Ca' Foscari (10/01/2025) |
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LSE Press (08/11/2024) |
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Sidestone Press (28/02/2025) |
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Verlag Barbara Budrich (05/02/2025) |
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| 4. Outreach & outputs |
| In this reporting period, the OBC expanded its library outreach, with a focus on strengthening engagement with existing supporters, while also shifting our emphasis from individual institutions to engagement with library consortia. |
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| An important part of this work was a comprehensive Consortia Mapping Project led by OBC staff, which informed a structured approach to engagement across regions. During this period, the OBC was pleased to welcome support from IReL, the consortium of Irish university libraries. IReL became the second consortium to support the OBC, joining California Digital Library (CDL). Additional discussions were held with a number of further consortia, including in Canada, the US, and Scandinavia, with the aim to build support from these organisations in future. |
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| Another key development was the establishment of the General Library Custodian Forum, to function as a regular meeting space for OBC’s library supporters and wider sector stakeholders. The Forum, together with the launch of an OBC listserv mailing list, creates opportunities for information exchange, feedback, and collaboration across the library community. |
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| Regionally, targeted outreach was carried out across the UK and Ireland, Europe, North America, and the Global South. In the UK and Ireland, engagement was strengthened through Research Libraries UK and IReL networks, alongside follow-up work with universities showing high author affiliations with OBC publishers. Across Europe, outreach materials were translated into Italian, Spanish, and French, and new collaborations developed in Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordic region. |
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| In North America, OBC’s work focused primarily on consortial partnerships, with proposals and presentations to a range of library colleagues at US institutions which emphasised the local impacts of the work of OBC Publisher and Service Provider Members and how the OBC’s work aligns with institutional missions, strategies and priorities. OBC also contributed to a series of international events in Africa and the Middle East. This including joining, remotely, the Forum for Open Research in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and co-organising a workshop on sustainable OA book publishing at the University of Cape Town Libraries, as part of the 2nd Global Summit on Diamond OA. |
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| Throughout the year, the OBC has had a strong presence at major sector events, including the Charleston Conference in the US, where OBC was featured in a well-attended panel alongside representatives from punctum books, the American Library Association, and the City University of New York. OBC representatives also spoke at UKSG, RLUK, ACRL, AsSIST, OA Tage, OASPA, and the National Open Access Summit in Nigeria, among others. These events were complemented by workshops co-organised with partners including Thoth Open Metadata, OAPEN, AG Universitätsverlage, and the Association of African Universities, and contributions to webinars hosted by NAG, OIPA/IOAP, and IOAP. |
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| Collaboration with Thoth Open Metadata has enhanced the use of author affiliation and usage data in outreach, providing tailored impact evidence to strengthen the case for support in institutional and consortial contexts. OBC continued to coordinate closely with other partners within the Open Book Futures project, including Lancaster University, punctum books, Open Book Publishers, and Jisc, to align engagement with broader sector initiatives. |
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| International and Regional Conferences |
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Charleston Conference (November 2024) - Panel: Delivering Open Access for Books by Default: The Role of Community-led Funding Models and Infrastructures - speakers: Eileen Joy (punctum books), Emily Drabinski (ALA), Lidia Uziel (UCSB/OBC), Jill Cirasella (CUNY). Poster Presentation by Livy Snyder. |
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2nd Global Summit on Diamond OA (9-10 Dec 2024) - Workshop: Open Monograph Publishing: Towards Sustainable Open Access Book Publishing in the Global South Context - organised by OBC with partners including African Minds, AAU, UCT Libraries, OAPEN, DOAB, punctum books and Thoth Open Metadata. |
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UKSG Annual Conference (31 Mar - 2 Apr 2025) - Scaling Sustainability: The Open Book Collective and Community-led OA - Joe Deville. Part of breakout session: It’s nice, but is it sustainable? Rethinking sustainability for Diamond OA infrastructures. |
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RLUK Annual Conference (Mar & Apr 2025) - Roundtable: Building an Open Monographs Future - Kevin Sanders (with Andrew Barker and Silke Davison [OAPEN/DOAB]). Roundtable: Building an Open Monographs Future: How the Library Community Can Help Create a More Equitable OA Ecosystem - Kevin Sanders with colleagues from York, Oxford, Lancaster and Sussex. |
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ACRL Conference (2-5 Apr 2025) - OBC exhibition stand. |
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Association of European Academic Presses Conference (23 May 2025) - Workshop: Scaling Small - Horizontal Collaboration Based on Open Values and Interoperability to Sustain Open Workflows in OA Book Publishing - Kevin Sanders. |
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Edinburgh Open (4 Jun 2025) - Choosing Open Access for Books: Author Agency and the Open Book Collective - Judith Fathallah & Kevin Sanders. |
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Association of University Presses Annual Meeting (9 Jun 2025) - Panel: Sustaining Open, Community-Governed Infrastructures: Global Reflections and Perspectives - Joe Deville. |
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AsSIST-UK Biennial Conference (18 Jun 2025) - STS and the Practical Politics of Scholarly Publishing: Lessons from Infrastructuring the Open Book Collective - Joe Deville. |
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DIAMAS / Max Weber Institute (June 2025) - Webinar: Open Book Collective: Collectively Funding Diamond OA Books - Joe Deville. |
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Forum for Open Research in MENA (FORM) (July 2025) - Webinar: Making Space on the Shelves: Open Access Books in Open Science - Kevin Sanders and Kira Hopkins. |
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NAG Webinar Series (25 Jun 2025) - Beyond Buying Books: Rethinking Content Acquisition in Unstable Times - Kevin Sanders. |
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Bodleian Libraries Event (25 Jun 2025) - Choosing Open Access for Books: An Author Journey - Judith Fathallah. |
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AFLIA Conference (21 May 2025) - Workshop: Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs - led by Josiline Chigwada (OBC grant recipient). |
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OA Tage (18 Sep 2025) - Barriers to Collective Funding of Diamond Open Access in Six European Countries - Joe Deville. Tending Community-led Diamond OA Ecologies for Books: A Rewilding of the OA Landscape as a Commons - Kevin Sanders & Kira Hopkins. Workshop: Scaling Small in Practice - Horizontal Collaboration on Open Values and Interoperability - OBC with Thoth, OAPEN and AG Universitätsverlage. |
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OASPA Annual Conference (September 2025) - OBC featured in panels and discussions on governance and Diamond OA sustainability. |
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National Open Access Summit (6-7 Oct 2025) - Open Access Books: If Not Now, Then When? - Joe Deville. |
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Mercian Collaboration Conference (10 Sep 2025) - OBC information stand and advocacy activity - Joe Deville and Kevin Sanders. |
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| Articles, reports and publications |
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Deville, J., Findanis, J., & Stern, N. (2024). "How Should We Evaluate Open Access Book Publishing?" KATINA Magazine (A2.3). |
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https://katinamagazine.org/content/article/open-knowledge/2024/how-should-we-evaluate-open-access-book-publishing |
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Collective Funding Models for Open Access Books: Librarians’ Experiences and Barriers to Participation Across Six European Contexts (Oct 2025). Lead author: Judith Fathallah. |
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17339946 |
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Open Book Collective 2024–2025 Annual Report: A Year of Important Progress (Oct 2025). OBC Team. |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/open-book-collective-2024-to-2025-annual-report |
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| 5. Collective Development Fund |
| In late November 2024, the Open Book Collective announced the first recipients of awards from the Collective Development Fund. In early November 2025, the OBC announced some of the awardees from the second round of funding, with additional awardees to be announced shortly. The first and second rounds of funding are based on financial support from our two funders, Arcadia and the Research England Development Fund, as part of the Copim Open Book Futures project. Funds for subsequent awards are funded by an optional 5% fee paid by our publisher and service provider members from revenue received via the OBC. The fund is designed to support projects that build capacity for open access publishing capacity, in line with the OBC's charitable objectives. It supports projects that are able to demonstrate their alignment with one or more of 3 priority areas: |
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| Significant milestones for the Collective Development Fund during the period included: |
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| 1 |
Creating and supporting infrastructures and/or workflows for the distribution, cataloguing and/or preservation of Open Access scholarly books |
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Building and sustaining networks and advocacy for the support of OA scholarly books and infrastructure |
| 3 |
Projects building capacity for scholarly OA book publishing |
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| The Collective Development Fund does not support direct costs associated with publishing individual texts - sometimes referred to as Book Processing Charges. We aim to allocate at least 30% of funding in each round to projects benefitting work in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), as defined by the World Bank. Grant awards assessed via external reviews and the proposals and reviews are assessed by a panel including both our Stewards and Members. |
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| In the first round, we made awards to three projects: |
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| 1 |
Fostering Academic Self-Reliance in Nigeria through Open Access Books: Establishing Bookhub, a sustainable platform to empower Nigerian scholars and educators to create, produce, and disseminate high-quality open access books, as well as fostering new collaborations across Academic Publishing Centres in Nigeria's six geopolitical zones. |
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Awardee: Federal University of Technology, Minna |
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Amount: £15,000 |
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Press release: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/annoucing-obcs-first-collective-development-fund-award-fostering-academic-self-reliance-in-nigeria-through-open-access-books |
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| 2 |
Enhancing Open Access Book Publishing at Chinhoyi University of Technology Library: Establishing Zimbabwe's first open access university press at Chinhoyi University of Technology in Zimbabwe. Building open access publishing capacity, and publishing a series of new high-quality open access books. |
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Awardee: Chinhoyi University of Technology |
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Amount: £15,000 |
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Press release: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/announcing-obcs-second-collective-development-fund-award-enhancing-open-access-book-publishing-at-chinhoyi-university-of-technology-library |
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| 3 |
The Community Publishing Garden: Creating a model of participatory exchange for publishing practitioners and community members to better serve the forms of knowledge emerging from grassroots communities. |
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Awardee: Radish Press |
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Amount: £7,500 |
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Press release: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/annoucing-obcs-third-collective-development-fund-awardthe-community-publishing-garden |
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| We have held reporting calls with all awardees for updates on progress and during this reporting period published interim updates from all awardees. |
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| In January 2025, we launched the second Call. We received 13 full applications, of which 6 were advanced to full review. All 6 were from and/or for projects doing significant work in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). The final decision-making panel met in August 2025. Details of the successful awards were announced after the conclusion of this financial year. Nonetheless, we include the two projects that have so far been announced, at the time of writing; details of the other successful projects will be announced shortly. |
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| 1 |
Empowering Ethiopian Research Universities: A Multifaceted Approach to Overcome Open Access Barriers in Scholarly Publishing: Tackling barriers to OA in Ethiopia via policy development, establishing an open access institutional repository at Haramaya University, and drafting national OA policy guidelines to institutionalize best practices. |
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Awardee: Haramaya University |
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Amount: £7,500 |
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Press release: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/announcing-obcs-second-collective-development-fund-award-for-2025-26-empowering-ethiopian-research-universities-a-multifaceted-approach-to-overcome-open-access-barriers-in-scholarly-publishing |
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| 2 |
Knowledge Accessible to the Community: CLACSO as a Platform to Democratize Scholarly Publishing in Latin America and the Caribbean: Providing structured training opportunities in the fundamentals of Diamond OA, and creating working spaces that allow knowledge dissemination through an easily accessible and sustainable virtual platform. |
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Awardee: CLACSO |
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Amount: £12,000 |
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Press release: |
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https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/announcing-obcs-second-collective-development-fund-award-for-2025-26-knowledge-accessible-to-the-community-clacso-as-a-platform-to-democratize-scholarly-publishing-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean |
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| 6. 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 30 April 2026. |
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| During the period, a major focus has been on developing a clear roadmap for full financial sustainability, independent of grant funding. This included commissioning Research Consulting to undertake research on our value proposition and to develop different sustainability scenarios. This review confirmed that the OBC can readily sustain itself into the near to medium term at current staffing levels (circa 2.5 Full Time Equivalent) without the need for grant funding and is on track for full break-even and sustainability by 2029, if we are able to continue increasing support for our collective offering to approximately 200 libraries regularly supporting our Members. |
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| We have also pursued grant funding opportunities during the period. The OBC was a partner on a submission by the Association of African Universities to the Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) fund for Network Adoption. This bid made it to the final shortlist, but was unfortunately ultimately unsuccessful. |
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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 14 January 2026 |
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