Peer into the Crystal Ball: Finding a Place for Open Access Monographs

Sponsored by MIT Press

Recorded on 04/27/2020
Posted in The Authority File

Episode 121

Publishers, librarians, and scholarly market experts have debated the future of open access publishing for decades now. What have they found? That it’s difficult to enact far-reaching, equitable, and sustainable change across an entire market. However, MIT Press hopes to make waves by creating an OA monograph publishing model usable for all presses, currently in the works thanks to a three-year $850,000 Arcadia grant.

Raym Crow, Senior Consultant at SPARC and researcher on the project, explains that to publish more OA monographs, replicable frameworks need to be introduced. If more institutions successfully adopt these models, “then other presses that have different risk profiles and maybe aren’t as deeply funded also would be willing to try.”

In this final episode, Terry Ehling, Director for Strategic Initiatives at MIT Press, offers background on the press’ commitment to open access, and how OA could affect the dynamic between presses and their institutions. Ehling and Crow also take a bold look ahead at the future of the OA monograph market and the potential change MIT Press’ model could make for other presses.

About the guests:

Terry Ehling
Director for Strategic Initiatives
MIT Press

Raym Crow
Senior Consultant
SPARC

Enjoy the conversation? Check out the rest of the series:

Keep up with the conversation in our recent series, MIT Press’s Direct to Open:

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