Open Book Publishers
 | |
| Founded | 2008 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Rupert Gatti, Alessandra Tosi and William St Clair |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters location | Cambridge, England |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website |
www |
Open Book Publishers (OBP) is an open access academic book publisher. It is a United Kingdom-based, non-profit social enterprise and community interest company (CIC) which promotes open access for full academic monographs in Humanities and Social Science. All OBP books are peer-reviewed.[1][2]
History
Open Book Publishers was founded in 2008 by Rupert Gatti, Alessandra Tosi and William St Clair all of whom were academics from the University of Cambridge. By the spring of 2014, OBP had 41 books in its catalogue, all of which free to read on Google Books.[3]
Business model
As open access monographs, the full text of all books published by OBP is licensed under Creative Commons Licenses, and freely accessible to readers online through their website and Google Books.
About half of OBP's revenue comes from publishing grants and authors' contributions, and half from the sale of printed and e-book editions.[4] Donation, reinvestment and other innovative fundraising practices are also important revenue channels. OBP organized a campaign to republish an out-of-print book by Ruth Finnegan through the crowd source funding platform Unglue.it.[5][6] OBP uses Print on Demand in the production of their paper editions. As a not-for-profit enterprise, all excess revenue of OBP is reinvested and this enables OBP to publish peer-reviewed books by authors with limited funding. Academic merits and public value are the determining factors of publication decisions.[2][4]
Subject areas
Most books published by OBP are in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences. Authors with titles under OBP range from early career academics to prominent scholars such as Amartya Sen, Lionel Gossman and Caroline Humphrey.[3][7]
See also
- Open access monograph
- Knowledge Unlatched
- World Oral Literature Project, which is a partner of OBP
- International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), which OBP is part of.
References
- ↑ Finnegan, Ruth (2011-08-11). "Open Access: taking academic publishing out of ivory tower". The Independent. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
- 1 2 Gatti, Rupert (2011). "CAM Debate: Access All Areas". Cambridge Alumni Magazine, Issue 62, 2011. Retrieved 2012-06-28.
- 1 2 Open Book Publisher (2014). "Catalogue of Open Book Publisher". Open Book Publisher Website. Retrieved 2014-04-16.
- 1 2 Pauli, Michelle (2011). "Open Book Publishers: Cambridge scholars taking monograph publishing into their own hands". Open Access Success Stories. Retrieved 2012-06-17.
- ↑ Turin, Mark (2012-06-19). ""Unglue" a landmark of African cultural studies". Cambridge Research News. Retrieved 2012-07-01.
- ↑ Chen, Angela (2012-06-19). "Start-Up Hopes to Create Free Digital Versions of Published Books". Cambridge Research News. Retrieved 2012-07-01.
- ↑ Andromeda (2012-05-17). "Meet Open Book Publishers". unglue.it. Retrieved 2012-07-03.