Every Book, Every Format, All at Once: Exploring the Multiverse of eBook Open Access Models By Laura Ricci (Senior Consultant, Clarke & Esposito) <lricci@ce-strategy.com>
Introduction As a research and consulting firm focused on scholarly publishing, Clarke & Esposito serves a range of publishers, libraries, aggregators, university presses, and member societies with strong publishing programs. In recent years, we have helped many clients consider the implications of open access (OA) for journals and books. It is clear that models are increasingly diverging: the terms “gold OA” and “green OA” — standard terminology for journal publishers — are not sufficient to describe the innovative and experimental ways “The primary that publishers are incorporating cause of the open access options into their divergence scholarly book publishing programs. This matters because without a clear between journal understanding of how publishers and book OA are adapting and funding these can be broadly initiatives, it is difficult to articulate summed up the standards and best practices required to scale programs beyond in one word: their experimental stage.
infrastructure.”
Instead, we have come to view open access book publishing through a different framework — beyond the binary of open v. closed, or adherence to a certain Creative Commons license. Specifically, we look at the unique ways that book distribution infrastructure can allow combinations of closed and open formats that can together sustain a book publishing program. As with any new models, there are several challenges for providers in supporting this evolution, but — I would argue — opportunities, too.
Open Access Monograph Models The primary cause of the divergence between journal and book OA can be broadly summed up in one word: infrastructure. Journal publishers exert a great deal of control over the hosting and distribution of their content. Publishers are themselves the primary content distributor, via a single online platform. Additional platforms, like content aggregators, play a secondary or complementary role in extending distribution, often of a subset of content, or after an embargo, to protect the primacy of the core platform. Book publishing, by contrast, is the opposite: book publishers rarely control distribution directly and are instead reliant on a broad network of distributors and intermediaries. This network formed over time for the distribution of print sales (on which many publishers still depend), but it has since grown to accommodate digital formats. Though some publishers and aggregators offer licensed access to bundles of book titles to libraries, most book publishing is supported by nonrecurring revenue, from sales of discrete units sold one at a time. While there are plenty of books that enjoy a substantial long tail of residual sales, the most important time for a publisher to recoup investment in a title is in the first two years. Publishers
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Against the Grain / July 2022 Special Report
have therefore developed a multichannel strategy to reach the broadest possible market and maximize income during this crucial frontlist period.
Many Ways to Be OA Book publishers have taken advantage of the different mix of channels and product types when developing open access programs. In the “Opening the Book” preconference session at the 2021 Charleston Conference, I presented a few common examples that illustrate the complexity of these models: • Born OA. These are books that became open access at the moment of first publication, in all electronic versions. An example scenario would be if an author pays a book processing charge (BPC) to the publisher, which enables publication of the book under a CC BY license via the publisher’s website, eBook aggregators, and consumer channels like the Amazon Kindle. Importantly, print versions of the book may still exist — these are by definition not open access and would have to be purchased. • Selective OA. Some publishers offer open access to their scholarly books through some channels but not all. An example would be if a publisher makes a title available for free on its online platform (again, let’s say funded by a BPC), but then also offers a paid access version through consumer channels (e.g., allowing someone to buy for their Kindle). This is a way to maintain a mix of traditional and OA incomes, by pursuing different models through different channels. • Flipped OA. These are books that were initially published as paid access titles, and at some point were “flipped” to open access. In this scenario, the book has become open access at a point when it has already completed its all-important frontlist sales period, so to be sustainable the publisher only needs to offset its “lost” long tail revenues (if any are anticipated). This comparatively low-risk approach may be one reason why early pioneers of OA books, like Knowledge Unlatched, developed their first collaborative funding initiatives to focus on the flipped OA model. • Anticipated OA. Other collaborative funding initiatives have since emerged that focus on frontlist content. In this model, publishers pledge to publish new titles as open access once they have met a certain funding threshold. The funding threshold is typically set based on how many libraries are purchasing a certain (paywalled) collection. If the funding threshold is not met, participating libraries continue to benefit from access to that content. If the funding threshold is met, the publisher fulfills its pledge to publish some or all of its next year’s frontlist as OA. Examples of this model include MIT Press’s Direct to Open, in which libraries pay a recurring participation fee that goes toward opening all new MIT Press scholarly books and
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