Lidia Uziel
Associate University Librarian for Research Resources & Scholarly Communication and Chair of the Open Book Collective
University of California, Santa Barbara
Livy Snyder
Outreach Associate for the Open Book Collective
Open Book Collective
Built on the successes of the COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs) project (2019-23) and established in May 2022, the Open Book Collective (OBC) is an international partnership and a collective of open access (OA) publishers, infrastructure providers, libraries, and other non-profit organizations. The OBC’s mission is to create a new OA book publishing ecosystem that is equitable, community-governed, and built on sustainable business models and community-owned infrastructures. The OBC is part of a larger holistic vision for the OA book ecosystem supported by Arcadia and Research England, who have together committed up to $7 million to continue the work of the COPIM project, including financial support for the OBC and Thoth, under the remit of the Open Book Futures (OBF) project (2023-26). By pioneering new community-owned OA business models—including new funding and publishing models, a new collaborative platform, and collaboration with open, community-led infrastructures—the OBC charts a new collective path toward an open and sustainable monograph future. The session will include discussion of the OBC’s community-led governance structure and will highlight the project’s principal challenges in reshaping the larger open knowledge ecosystem. It will also include discussion of a strategic partnership focused on amplifying bibliodiverse and equitable community-led approaches and expanding critical infrastructures for OA book publishing. The principles of ‘scaling small’ will be discussed, as well as the importance of seeking strategic partnerships with publishers, universities, and infrastructure providers in diverse national and linguistic contexts beyond the existing networks in the UK and North America and, more particularly, in Africa, Australasia, Europe, and Latin America.