Book Processing Charges (BPCs) are the most common way to fund open access books and are employed by large commercial publishers, as well as by small non-profit ones.
In Book Publishing Charges (BPC) models (i.e., the Gold open access route), an open access fee is charged by the publisher to the author or their institution in order for the book to be made open access immediately on publication. In 2024, the low-end of BPC costs ranges between €5,000 and €10,000 per book.
However, new financing models that do not involve BPCs are emerging. These models take many shapes, e.g. library memberships or freemium, library consortia/institutional crowdsourcing, subscribe to open, and the like (read more about the existing models and their funding mechanisms).
Many of these funding models rely on the financial support of academic libraries and other knowledge organizations. As the number of non-BPC initiatives rapidly increases, libraries are faced with the task of evaluating these initiatives and deciding which ones are worth supporting. Considering that funding to support diamond open access is often limited, these choices are difficult to make.
In a recent blogpost, COPIM provides a set of evaluation criteria for open book models in the form of an evaluation template for prospective library members. The criteria are divided into subcategories:
- Financial benefits (e.g., Are savings to be made from open content?)
- Value to the institution (e.g., Is there a disciplinary/subject match between the initiative and the institution? Does the initiative align with the institution’s values and policy?)
- Value to the scholarly community (e.g., Can the model lead to a transformation of academic book publishing?)
- Transparency of model, cost, and process (e.g., Is there transparency about the business model? What about the governance of the initiative?)
- Measuring (and maximizing) impact (e.g., Have authors at the institution benefitted or are they going to benefit from this initiative directly? Have they published with the press, or will they do so during the supported period?). It is important to mention that the current rewards and recognition system plays a key role here, as researchers are often incentivized to choose legacy publishers, as opposed to new non-profit, scholar-led initiatives. This aspect might discourage authors, especially early career ones, from choosing a new open model for their book, despite the financial advantage of not having to pay a BPC to publish open access. Libraries should therefore reflect on how they evaluate the impact and the success of their open model sponsorships.
Read more about COPIM’s evaluation template and see their extended list of useful resources.
Are there other considerations that your library makes when assessing non-BPC initiatives?
Do you take into account whether affiliated researchers published with a certain publisher or platform when evaluating a diamond open access initiative?
How do you measure the success or impact of the sponsorship?
