Authors : Judith Fathallah, Joe Deville, Izabella Penier, Francesca Corazza
This report seeks to understand librarians’ experiences of collective funding models for open access books, especially barriers to joining organisations like the Open Book Collective (OBC).
The OBC is one of an increasing number of organisations that are using a collective ‘Diamond’ funding model for open access, wherein libraries commit to financially support open access book publishers, and/or open infrastructure providers for a set period of time to fund their work.
The report aims to learn from differing experiences in countries with different open access policies and institutional contexts. It focuses its research on six countries in continental Europe: Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. The research includes interviews with 20 participants. Most are librarians, alongside a selection of publishers and open access experts.
It provides particular insight into how librarians understand collective funding models and their ability to become involved in them, within their national and institutional settings. This is supplemented by an analysis of existing research on collective funding models and a profile of each country’s current open access publishing context, based on an extensive literature review.
The report will be of interest to librarians seeking to build further capacity to support collective Diamond open access funding models within their institutions, as well as publishers, infrastructure providers and collaborative endeavours seeking to build collective support for the development of open access programmes.