Introduction: What will I find here?
In this section, you will find a myriad of resources to support OA book publishing ranging from blog posts to practical experiences. This includes toolkits, websites sign-posting to resources, directories and case studies.
The resources are grouped in what we hope is a logical order! But users can also dip in and out to the sections they are most interested in. Resources may be found in multiple sections if they cover more than one topic. Additionally, there is a search bar at the top of the page which you can use to search for key terms/organisations etc. that are of interest to you.
We hope there is something for everyone, whatever stage of their journey users are at. And while Copim Compass is primarily aimed at publishers, we know that it will also be useful to authors and libraries.
This Book lists all the resources we found as part of our Open Book Futures InfoHub scoping report, which included an overview of existing assets and guidance for OA book publishing, a gap analysis, and our initial recommendations to scope the direction and final format of Copim Compass.
| Name | Description |
| Reports on the Open Access Landscape |
This section includes reports on the current OA landscape in the UK and further afield. |
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This section contains a variety of resources including reports and toolkits about the processes of OA publishing. It is divided into two sections: 'born-OA' publishing, where the publisher has only ever published OA books/journals, and transitioning to open, which has resources for traditional publishers aiming to move into OA. Where the resources relate to both, they are in both sections. |
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This section signposts to other parts of the Copim Compass that collate case studies about OA publishing success from the perspective of various stakeholders: authors, libraries, and publishers. |
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This section provides links to information about OA business models. These largely focus on the different types available, how they work, their pros and cons, and some other relevant information about funding such as UKRI's OA policy and implementation of OA book funding. Other resources, such as Open policy finder (Jisc) and the Open Book Environment, collate publisher policies around OA and BPC costs. |
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Dissemination: Metadata, Archiving, Platforms
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This section provides some standards, reporting, and service providers for OA book metadata and archiving. |
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Standards: Accessibility, Equity, Diversity
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This section contains guidance on accessibility standards, and then on EDIB guidelines within scholarly publishing. Copim Open Book Futures is producing its own resource on Accessibility in OA books; this will be launching later in 2025 and will also be part of the Copim Compass. |
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Legalities: Contracts and Copyright
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This section provides resources on OA contracts and on copyright; both third-party copyright in OA book, and the copyright requirements of the UK funding body. |
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Useful Organisations, Projects and Platforms
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This section includes organisations, projects and platforms / tools relevant to OA book publishing. |
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This section contains guidelines, reports and other resources, across a broad range of subjects, which pertain to specific geographic areas. These are roughly divided into the UK, the ERA, and the rest of the world. The compilers of this resource acknowledge unreservedly that the disproportionate weighting given to the UK and the ERA are a reflection of our own experience, despite some attempts to mitigate this. |
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Glossaries and Knowledge Bases
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This section gathers together two broad types of informational resources. The first is glossaries, providing definitions of OA terms and translations into other languages; the second is a range of, compendiums of information about OA, policy finders, and some others. |
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This section contains toolkits already available which cover different aspects of open access. As such, they are thematically very varied. There is a lot of discussion about what actually constitutes a toolkit, its aim and purpose but for simplicity's sake, we have kept it to self-identified toolkits, and or tools/guides that provide highly practical guidance to implement. |
This 'guide of guides' has been made within the following parameters: resources included were made specifically in support of OA, that they related to long-form publication, and that they provided guidance and information that was broadly applicable, rather than, e.g. being the guidelines for an individual publisher (except where they have been adopted more widely as a standard in lieu of more generic resources).
We know that as the OA landscape develops, new resources are constantly coming online. Additionally, we acknowledge that our collection here, while expansive, is undoubtedly biased in language and region, as the two principle creators of this ‘guide of guides’ are UK-based. However, we have tried to mitigate this to an extent by seeking input to our list of resources from the US, EU, Middle East and Africa.
If you know of any other resources that would be suitable for this overview of resources, please email us: info@copim.ac.uk
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