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By Porter Anderson, Editor in Chief | @Porter_Anderson
A “Diamond Open Access” model
TAt the end of the first year of Taylor & Francis’ joint Pledge To Open funding pilot program for 2023 and 2024, 26 new books will be published as Open Access (OA). Each title addresses a key global challenge. Topics include the climate crisis, mental health, women’s rights, populism and racism.
Pledge To Open was designed to provide a new, equitable open access option. It allows new books to maximize their reach and impact without requiring authors to have financial resources to cover OA publishing fees.
The initiative was launched in July 2023 and invites institutions to support one or more of seven interdisciplinary thematic collections.
Taylor & Francis has announced that it now has enough pledges to publish 26 books open access, including new and forthcoming titles on the following topics:
A full track list is available in the Pledge to Open section of the Taylor & Francis website.
Twenty-four institutions in North America, Australasia, and Europe committed to “opening” at least one of the thematic collections, with the majority supporting all seven thematic groups.
The list of Pledge to Open supporters includes both large universities and smaller research institutions, from University College London and Nottingham Trent University in the UK, to the Université de Lausanne in Switzerland, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, the University of Adelaide in Australia, Carnegie Mellon in the US and the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
Nicola Parkin
Nicola Parkin, head of book and editorial services at Taylor & Francis, is quoted in the company’s press release as saying: “We are very grateful to all the institutions that have made it possible to make these books on the crucial issues of our world available.”
These books, she says, “are now available for anyone to read online, download and share. We are particularly encouraged by the number of smaller universities supporting this exciting open access diamond initiative.”
Because most of our Publish perspectives Since the professional readership is more likely to be located in commercial publishing than in academia, we will explain that the use of the term diamond To refer to this new pilot program, Parkin points to a so-called “Diamond Open Access” model for scientific publishing.
It is a publishing program that does not charge authors or readers. While this program is based on books, a Diamond Open Access model for journals would indicate community-driven, academic-led publishing initiatives.
“Pledge To Open” renewed for a second season
Taylor & Francis has confirmed that a second year of the Pledge to Open program – presumably no longer a pilot project – will start in September with an updated model that incorporates the learnings from the first year.
Emily Farrell
Emily Farrell, Global Commercial Director for Open Research at Taylor & Francis, said: “In its first 12 months, Pledge to Open has already become a significant addition to Taylor & Francis’ range of open research options.
“We have also received a lot of helpful feedback on the pilot, both from supporters and from organizations that were unable to participate this time. With the guidance of our partners, we will continue to develop the model so that even more institutions can contribute and many more books on critical topics can be published open access in the coming year.”
The original description of the program stated that the pilot project aimed to “convert 70 leading research book titles to open access. Each collection presented 10 cutting-edge research titles on an important international topic.”
Participating institutions were allowed to select their thematic collections and “pay a one-time fee per collection to support their conversion to open access. In return
would receive perpetual and unlimited multi-user access to the titles of the collections they support, regardless of whether any funding thresholds for this pilot project are met.”
Further details of the pilot’s specifications are available in a PDF here, and a full track list is available in the Pledge to Open section of the Taylor & Francis site here.
Taylor & Francis’ headquarters are in Milton Park, Oxfordshire, with additional offices in New York, Florida and Pennsylvania. The company says it has a presence in at least 15 international markets.
We are asking if there are dates set for the release of various titles in this pilot program and will update them according to the information provided.
For more information from Publishing Perspectives on academic and scholarly publishing, see here, for more on international journal audiences, see here, for more on Taylor & Francis, see here, and for more on the UK international book and publishing industry, both academic and commercial, see here.
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