Delivering the closed Backlist & OA Frontlist content

Delivery of the closed backlist subscription content

The final part of the membership workflow is the delivery of subscription content to participating libraries.

This is a process that will be familiar to libraries via their ordinary subscriptions and other forms of collections access. As detailed in the previous section on Organisational Partnerships, there are multiple options (listed are Project MUSE, Fulcrum and Sciendo), with whom you may already have a relationship. 

The conditions of access must be made clear in your offering. It is important that the content is hosted on a reputable platform that delivers appropriate metadata in standards-compliant formats (e.g. COUNTER) and that the content is indexed in order to appear in library discoverability services. The platform hosts we suggest are able to provide this. Additionally, you must make clear the licensing terms under which the libraries will have access to the backlist package.

See the later section on licensing and the Shared E-Resource Understanding (SERU) for the easiest path towards licensing of subscription content.

Delivery of the OA frontlist content funded by OtF

It is imperative that the selection process for open access books be transparent and trustworthy. Libraries fear that publishers will select books for the open access route that they believe will not sell, thereby implicitly devaluing open access.

We recommend that Opening the Future presses adopt a strict chronological hierarchy for the selection of the next open access monograph. In other words, at the moment when sufficient funds have accumulated to make another book open access, the chosen volume should be the book that is next scheduled in the current production schedule, but which hasn’t yet been announced as OA vs. non-OA. 

The diagram below demonstrates the gradual nature of accruing funds before publishing the next book in the production pipeline. As more members join, frontlist books can gradually be published OA:

If multiple books are on the same production schedule, the Press has latitude to select which book will be OA, but we would urge transparency around this process and for the Press to issue a justificatory statement of the title’s worth in such instances.

Avoid 'Double Dipping'

Your new frontlist titles will likely be at first planned as traditionally-sold ‘closed’ books. But as soon as you have accrued enough library support through OtF to fund an OA book, you should change the metadata before any sales are made and move the book to an OA status with any distributors too. This needs to happens well before the book is published: we’ve estimated between 2-3 months is workable. Again, transparency and trust is at the heart of this: if libraries are asked to pay twice through buying a 'closed' copy before it then flips to OA then they will perceive this as double-dipping.   

Many OA publishers continue to sell print editions and digital retail editions of their OA books and indeed the Ithaka S+R Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs Report from September 2023 (written in collaboration with the Association of University Presses) suggests that "OA titles can generate significant print revenue [and] OA titles can generate meaningful digital revenue".

• You can read the Ithaka S+R report here 👉 https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.319642

Take a look at the Organisational Partnerships section of this toolkit for details on where you can host and promote your OA books.

The contents of your backlist packages should not change

Don't be tempted to bait and switch with the backlist package: library members need assurance that they are getting what they originally paid for. Once they have access to a package, don't change its contents or withdraw it unless they cancel. There are also technical considerations around ensuring consistent metadata is delivered to and from Project MUSE.