Focus on monographs used for UC instruction using publisher open access programs
The Libraries are launching a two-year pilot of a program to support UC Irvine authors who are publishing monographs with commercial, university, or society publishers that will be used as course materials either at UC Irvine and/or elsewhere within the University of California. The initial pilot program period will be July 1, 2023 through June 2025.
During this pilot, the Libraries will provide partial or full support for OA fees for monographs accepted by publishers that offer OA programs. It is important to note that the costs incurred by monograph authors in publishing OA vary widely. For example, the OA fee through the University of California Press Luminos program is $5,000 whereas other publishers charge more than $10,000 for a monograph to be available OA.
A goal of this pilot will be to support the maximum number of books possible, with the understanding that it may not be possible to fully fund every request. A key outcome will be learning the amount of the average request from UC Irvine authors over the pilot period. This will help us determine the ongoing sustainability of the pilot program.
Other important metrics will be estimating how many students will be served by having access to the content OA and the resulting cost savings for students.
Additional Benefits for Participating UC Irvine Authors
There will be additional benefits for UC Irvine authors as well. Open access publishing enhances discoverability and citation of the work by making the full text of a book available to search engines and discovery services as well as providing immediate, friction-free access to the content without requiring institutional authentication. Some studies have shown that open access books are 2.5 times more likely to be cited than non-OA books and are downloaded 10 times more frequently.
For more information, contact
John Renaud
Associate University Librarian for Research Resources
UC Irvine Libraries
jrenaud@uci.edu
Or
Mitchell Brown
Scholarly Communication Coordinator
UC Irvine Libraries
mcbrown@uci.edu