(11 Jul 2023) Bloomsbury has announced the launch of a pilot program for a collective-action funding model for open-access books. Bloomsbury Open Collections seeks to spread the cost of open-access publications across multiple organizations while providing private benefits to participating libraries. Bloomsbury is the first commercial publisher to pilot such a model, and aims to reach and engage a more diverse set of authors, bringing their work to a wider global audience.
An alternative to more traditional open-access models, which typically rely on an individual or their funder or institution paying a fee (or ‘book processing charge’) to cover the costs of publishing, this collective-action approach seeks to spread the cost more equitably across multiple institutions. By taking this approach, Bloomsbury hopes to enable open-access publication for research communities that may otherwise have limited, or no, means to access them, and thus to open up important new research and publishing opportunities for these scholars.
In its pilot year, Bloomsbury Open Collections aims to make research from the Global South more widely available, and to make open-access publishing an option for more authors from the region. If the pilot is successful, 20 academic titles in African Studies and International Development will be made open access immediately on publication, thanks to collective funding from institutional libraries. The titles are due to publish between March 2024 and February 2025, and include works from Bloomsbury’s Zed Books imprint.
The press release is here.
