OA book policy landscape

This article is based on interviews with stakeholders conducted for the PALOMERA project. Interviewees highlighted three aspects of open access scholarly book publishing within Humanities and Social Sciences. First, unclear regulations create legal and technological challenges for actors despite their commitment to open access publishing. Second, the focus of open access on English can threaten multilingualism and bibliodiversity. Third, open access books struggle with a perceived lack of prestige compared to printed formats, impacting author incentives and trust in open access systems.

As part of the data collection for the PALOMERA project, a survey was designed and distributed in 2023 on the needs, obstacles and challenges of policymaking for open access books. This article summarises the major findings of the survey analysis.

Open access has changed the way we share and access scholarly research, but its impact on different types of publications varies. While policies for journal publications have been widely adopted and discussed, similar policies for books have received comparatively less attention. Books, particularly monographs, play a crucial role in scholarly communication, especially in the humanities and social sciences. However, their transition to open access has been slower than journals due to their longer format, higher production costs and different publishing models.

The PALOMERA project included an extensive literature review concerning open access policies for both journals and books. The results will be published in a separate publication (which will be added in the ‘Further reading’ section below). This article highlights some of the most useful literature for policymakers: research on open access policy formulation and case studies on open access policy implementation.