Open Access Monographs
Publishing your book open access enables unrestricted access and distribution to anyone interested in your research.
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Open Access Monograph publishing
Open Access publishing removes the need for purchasing or borrowing copies. It facilitates a diverse and increased readership, enabling impact and public engagement.
Funders such as UKRI and the Wellcome Trust now have open access policies for monographs. The next REF open access policy is likely to include an open access monographs requirement. See Funder Open Access for more.
The University is keen to support authors to make their monographs open access and meet funder requirements. Support for Open Access has advice for authors considering publishing their monograph open access.
Library commitment to open access monographs
We embrace the transformative power of Open Access (OA) monographs in academia to enable worldwide collaboration, knowledge sharing, and research progress.
Our Principles
Cost: We support sustainable, equitable and cost-effective OA monograph business models over costly Book Processing Charges (BPC).
Equitable Access: We champion universal access to knowledge, removing geographical and financial barriers. OA monographs embody this by providing unrestricted global access to scholarly content.
Academic Excellence: Our commitment to academic excellence fosters rigorous research, collaboration, and innovation. We advocate for diverse, quality-driven scholarship through OA monographs that encourage interdisciplinary cooperation and wider scholarly engagement.
Transparency and Accountability: By openly sharing research outputs, we contribute to a transparent research environment that encourages peer review, accountability, collaboration, and public engagement.
Our Commitment
Advocacy and Education: We are committed to advocating for OA monographs within our academic community.
Content Development: We will financially support sustainable OA monograph initiatives and publishing formats.
Collection Enrichment: Our library actively curates and boosts the visibility of OA monographs, ensuring they are accessible to researchers and students.
Author Support: We provide extensive support to authors aiming to publish Open Access monographs.
Advocating for Change: We collaborate with publishers, academic institutions, and policymakers to drive sustainable OA monograph publishing models.
Community Collaboration: We actively engage with academic libraries, consortia, publishers, and stakeholders to exchange best practices, insights, and resources.
How Salford is supporting open access monographs
The Library is providing financial support to these collective support initiatives:
- Direct to Open
- Knowledge Unlatched
- Open Book Collective
- Open Book Publishers
- Opening the Future
- OpenUP ECR Initiative
These schemes offer equitable and sustainable business models. They allow authors to publish without the payment of a fee. They align with our teaching and research strategy.
We are keen to provide publishing opportunities for early career researchers at Salford. We are having conversations with libraries and progressive publishers to develop alternative OA monograph publishing models. We would like to have conversations with other organisations committed to developing new open access monograph publishing models.
Here are some examples of open access monographs we have supported through our institutional open access fund. For more information, or to arrange a conversation, contact library-research@salford.ac.uk.