The conversation about OA has largely centered on journal literature, for a variety of reasons including unsustainable increases in journal subscription rates and OA requirements for articles resulting from research funded by certain agencies/organizations. But OA books are increasingly common as well. Quite a few scholarly presses make some of their books OA, and some presses publish all of their titles OA.

As with journal literature, there are multiple ways of achieving open access to scholarly books:

• Author-facing fees: Many book publishers are willing to make a book OA if the author or their institution pays a fee. This fee is often called a “book processing charge” (BPC) — similar to an article processing charge (APC) for a journal article — or an “open access subvention.” (A book subvention more generally is a fee paid, typically to a university or nonprofit press, to cover some portion of the cost of publishing a book or to lower its sales price.)
   
• Consortial funding models: Some university presses and other nonprofit publishers crowdsource funds, typically from libraries, to enable them to make some or all of their catalog OA, with no author-facing fees.
   
• Permission to share online: Although it is not common, some publishers allow authors to post their entire book online (e.g., in an institutional or disciplinary repository), typically after an embargo period of one or more years. And many publishers allow authors to post the first chapter of their book or an individual contribution to an edited volume.
   

Curious about OA books?

Explore the Directory of Open Access Books, which includes over 90,000 peer-reviewed academic books.