While green and gold open access publishing models are well established for journals, the scholarly book market is more complex. There is no single model for publishing a book open access.
Author payment
Traditional publishers such as Springer, Palgrave and Cambridge University Press facilitate open access through a gold publishing program. Under this model, the author pays a book processing charge (BPC) to the publisher. Typically, the open access version will be available for download on the publisher site and the publisher may also sell a printed version.
Institutionally supported
These open access publishers are most common to university presses. The majority of university and scholarly presses that publish open access monographs do not charge authors a publication fee.
Collaborative
This model uses the library acquisition budget as a source of support. Knowledge Unlatched is an example of a consortia approach, whereby multiple university libraries share open access publication costs for selected titles.
Self-archiving
Some publishers allow author self-archiving of book chapters. Publishers may allow authors to upload a single chapter, which will usually be the post-peer-review, pre-production version. Contacting publishers directly is the best method of determining a publisher's self-archiving policy for books and chapters.
Looking for an open access book? The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a centralised service for discovering OA books and publishers.
Contact your Outreach Librarian.