IReL and Open Book Collective are pleased to announce an agreement allowing IReL members to support the work of diamond open access (OA) book publisher via the Open Book Collective.
The Open Book Collective (OBC) is a charity bringing together publishers, publishing service providers, and scholarly libraries to secure the diversity and financial futures of open access book production and dissemination.
Diamond open access book publishers publish OA books without charging libraries or users to read the book and without charging authors to publish them. They depend on funding from institutional sources, so IReL and OBC are working together to facilitate connections between publishers and supporting libraries.
To date, two libraries are supporting OBC member publishers via IReL: Trinity College Dublin library supporting Open Book Publishers, and IADT library supporting OBC’s Scholar Led publishers.
OBC are delighted to have established this agreement for IReL members and hope that it will help to make it easier for IReL members to plan, manage, and demonstrate their strategic support of an innovative, inclusive, and sustainable open research environment by supporting open access Diamond book publishers and the infrastructures that support them as collective endeavour.
“At IADT Library, we believe in the importance of diamond open access in supporting bibliodiversity and epistemic justice. We recognise that OA should not present barriers to authors’ participation so we are very happy to support the Open Book Collective’s inclusive and sustainable model for Diamond OA”
– Jane Buggle, Institute Librarian, IADT
“IReL is committed to supporting diversity and inclusivity in our pursuit of realising the national target of a path to 100% OA by 2030. It’s very exciting to work with our members to now provide support for open book publishing.”
– Susan Reilly, Director, IReL
About OBC: https://www.openbookcollective.org/