Put simply, open access publications provide content that is free for consumers to access. The concept of open access is one that is fast making headway, particularly in scholarly journal publishing, where research funders are forcing more content to be made freely available. This content is not free, of course. New models are emerging for paying for the costs of production – some involve packaging publishing costs into research budgets, others require authors to pay a one off fee to have their article or book published.

Open access is less advanced in the world of book publishing, but there are already several large publishers, and some new entrants, experimenting with open access books. Of note are Open Book Publishers and Bloomsbury Academic,  both of whom provide full-text of their books online. Readers can still pay for more user friendly formats – ePub, Kindle, Adobe ebook and even print.

Why is open access happening now and why is it such a big deal?

Consumers and institutions are demanding more free content; there has been outrage in recent years at the perceived profiteering by many of the large scholarly publishers. We all know that well crafted content isn’t free to produce, but with budgets everywhere under pressure, scrutiny of the business models of scholarly publishers will continue. Critically, research founders are now demanding that the research findings they support are available for free, at least for a limited period. The Welcome Trust has been at the forefront of this, and has even helped fund new life sciences journal publisher eLife.

Although this trend will wreak most disruption on journal publishers, it would be naive to think that the world of books is immune. As the research community continues to work up an appetite for “free”, pressure will mount for content of all kinds to be open in some form. Indeed, publishers may find that open access in some user unfriendly format like HTML drives sales of more popular formats like ePub and print. This ‘try before you buy’ approach is similar to the ‘look inside’ feature from Amazon, and enables publishers to simulate bookstore browsing online. Such an approach will do wonders for discoverability and SEO (surely a monograph delivers keywords in droves).

So, whilst many in the publishing industry see open access as a major threat, there are opportunities on the horizon. New entrants will pop up, experimenting with new funding models, new workflows for production and new methods for disseminating content.  Revenues for the incumbent big publishers may well be under threat, but there are opportunities here for publishers to embrace degrees of openness, and in so doing to open up new markets.

Out of House Publishing is well placed to support moves towards open access publishing. Our XML first workflows facilitate simultaneous multi-channel publication, and our broad editorial expertise across the full range of scholarly subjects helps us respond to the diverse needs of the academic community.