2019 Charleston Library Conference

2019 has been a momentous year for Open Access book publishing as evidenced by the publication of several noteworthy reports and white papers—e.g. by the Universities UK Open Access Monographs Group, BISG, Digital Science, and Springer Nature. Taken together, these reports suggest that open access in scholarly book publishing is here to stay, but crucial challenges remain if we are to achieve a truly sustainable ecology for open access books. There is growing consensus that books have unique problems associated with (a) sustainable funding, (b) recognizing impact, (c) metadata, and (d) usage. But what do we do about it and how to best go about it? First we need some of the community in the room and then we can start to work on action points.

This session brings together speakers with a wide array of expertise in all aspects of book publishing as well as library workflows to facilitate a discussion of the larger issues at hand and start moving toward open dialogue and resolutions. One possible outcome of this discussion would be the formation of an "Open Monographs Action Group" that brings together diverse representation from across the scholarly publishing community. Likely discussion topics include:

a) scripting book ONIX into Crossref ONIX in a useable interface;
b) constructing terms-and-conditions and effective price point for open access books;
c) sustainability and evaluation;
d) Is a data trust possible and can it deliver what's needed to understand OA usage?
e) How can we better work with libraries to make these books discoverable and engage readers?