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Copim Compass. A guide

This toolkit is the output of one of Copim's Open Book Futures project deliverables: to establish a knowledge base to provide comprehensive resources on alternative funding models and modes of publishing, acquiring and archiving open access books, alongside new training and guidance on archiving and preservation best practice.

The aim was to:

  • develop resources for stakeholders,
  • consolidate existing resources,
  • promote business models best practice, 
  • showcase project work on metadata, experimental publishing and archiving.

By providing a comprehensive tool suite of resources we will accelerate outreach to libraries, publishers, academics and the wider public, to advocate for, advise on and encourage open access publishing and initiatives. Scroll down for the table of contents.

Expand to read more background on why & how we developed this resource

In the course of our scoping research and gap analysis, we discovered that a great many resources, guidelines, and toolkits have been developed in the last few years, many of which are regularly maintained and updated, and that many others are currently under development. We therefore developed Copim Compass with the following aims:

  1. That a valuable exercise would be in collating these existing resources, categorising them, and providing a central signposting location for external resources; aiming to complement rather than re-develop.
  2. One of the major existing lacunae we identified was one which was well within our project competency: a resource on transitioning publishers from closed to open access.  
  3. An opportunity to provide a project wide resource for all areas of Copim's Open Book Futures project to use.

The Copim Compass is, therefore, a resource of several parts. The first component details the Opening the Future revenue model, tools and experiences at Copim on transitioning publishers from closed to open access. Other books signpost to different components of the Open Book Futures project. The final sections feature success stories from author, library and press perspectives and contain the collated external resources on OA for books more generally.

Table of Contents
1

About Copim Compass

 Introduction to Copim Compass: Background to the toolkit, how and why we developed the resource, acknowledgements and license information.
2

Key resources and sources

Coming soon (mid 2025). Signposting to other resources on OA for books. 

 

Collates and summarises a number of existing resources that provide insights about how to start and/or run an Open Access publisher, covering different areas of the publishing workflow. As far as possible, we have aimed to include non-UK and non-Anglophone resources to make it as broadly useful a resource as possible.
3

Author case studies

Coming soon (mid 2025).

 

Collates open access author stories, to indicate the viability of OA publishing and the positive experiences that authors have with the process. These are generally produced by individual publishers and hosted on their own pages, so we felt that collating them could be widely valuable as a resource to support OA publishing.
4

Library case studies

Coming soon (mid 2025).

 

Collates library stories. We felt that it would be valuable to collate evidence from libraries trying to direct their funding to OA; demonstrating the processes this entailed internally, and the perceived value of doing so. 
5

 Publisher case studies

Coming soon (mid 2025).

 

Collates publisher stories. 
6

Opening the Future

Opening the Future: Introduction and Description. Background of, and context for, this particular model, as well as why we believe that collective funding is equitable and sustainable for publishers, authors, and libraries.

 

Describes the model in detail and explains how it differs from other similar models. It also provides some direct feedback from those who have already implemented the model. 
7

Opening the Future

Opening the Future: Financial Modelling. Provides the detailed financial modelling spreadsheets and other tools that our participating presses have used, in order for you to make your own calculations. 
8

Opening the Future

Opening the Future: workflows, partners & marketing. Provides information about the relevant workflows for using Opening the Future, including details of relevant third party services, licence templates, and a lengthy FAQ that we have built up over several years of outreach and troubleshooting to authors, libraries, and publishers. 
9

Open Accessibility

Coming soon (mid 2025).
10

Open Book Collective

The Open Book Collective (OBC) are a UK registered charity (charity number: 1206287) that brings together publishers, publishing service providers, and scholarly libraries to secure the diversity and  financial futures of open access book production and dissemination. 

 

Provides information about the OBC and signposting to other sources. 
11

Thoth Open Metadata

 Thoth Open Metadata is a non-profit UK community interest company (CIC) providing innovative metadata management and distribution solutions tailored to tackle the multiple issues faced by publishers of getting open access works into the book supply chain, ensuring their long-term sustainability and accessibility.
12

Archiving and Preservation

Coming soon (mid 2025).
13

Experimental Publishing Compendium

 The Experimental Publishing Group are researching ways to more closely align existing software, tools and technologies, workflows and infrastructures for experimental publishing with the workflows of open access book publishers.

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