News from the Open Access Books Network: forthcoming events, a new look for the website and more

September is over, the leaves are turning and the OABN coordinators can no longer pretend that it’s still summer – so we write with updates and announcements for the autumn! These include forthcoming events on OA usage data, the Gutenberg Project, and OA books on climate change, as well as a refreshed website to better showcase the resources that the OABN has to offer, and plans for a forthcoming blog post series on the platforms publishers use to share their OA books.

Events

First, we warmly invite you to the following events that the OABN will be hosting over the next couple of months, which as always are free and open to all:

25th October, 3pm BST, ‘Lowering the Barriers to Climate Research: Climate Change and OA Books’: during Open Access Week, we’ll bring together a panel including authors, publishers and campaigners to discuss the impact of open access books related to the climate and the environment. Sign up here!
9th November, 1pm GMT, ‘Open Access Usage Data: Present Knowledge, Future Developments’: we talk to Christina Drummond and Lucy Montgomery to discuss the OAeBU Usage Data project and the new developments the work will take over the coming years. Sign up here!
17th November, 3pm GMT, ‘Lessons from Project Gutenberg: OG OA’: we talk to Eric Hellman about his work with Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders, and how these experiences have informed his perspectives on the early days of open access and more recent developments in OA books. Sign up here!

We also recommend taking a look at three workshops that Jisc are running in November on ‘OA Mythbusting’ (details of the first session are available) as well as the new ‘Open Chat’ series from the OPERAS Advocacy SIG on ‘How-to-advocacy’, which starts on Friday 21st October. Keep an eye out for any other OA book events or resources during International Open Access Week (October 24-30, 2022) when the theme is ‘Open for Climate Justice’ and tag us on Twitter @OAbooksnetwork if you would like to boost any OA book activities during this time.

Website

If you visit our website, you’ll notice a few differences! Much has happened since we first started the OABN, so we decided to give the site a new look. We have streamlined the homepage to make it easier for those unfamiliar with the OABN and with open access books to see what we do, how to engage with the OABN and whether what we offer may be relevant to them. We have also created a new Resources section presently aimed at four different user groups: publishers, librarians, authors, and funders. These pages share resources that we have created at the OABN, as well as trusted resources from the wider community, helping stakeholders find useful OA-book related tools, guidance and more. If you have any feedback about these changes, or any suggestions about things we could add to the resources pages, please contact us.

New blog series: OA publisher platforms

We are planning to release a series of blog posts focusing on the different platforms that publishers are using to showcase their OA books, such as PubPub, Manifold, OMP, and more. We hope that this will highlight some of the options that are available for publishers and how they are being used in practice, as well as being useful reading for anyone who is starting – or thinking about starting – their own OA press. If you are interested in contributing to the series, please contact us.

Mythbusters series complete

We are delighted to release the final video in the Mythbusters series! Jill Claassen from the University of Cape Town busts the myth: ‘Open Access for books is only affordable for funded authors from rich institutions’. This video rounds off our Mythbusters series, which are now all available to view on our website as one of our key resources.

We hope that your autumn has begun well, and we look forward to seeing you at an OABN event soon!

Lucy, Tom, and Agata

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.