Funding Support for Open Access Book Publishing

Five years ago, the UC Davis Library began offering faculty authors up to $15,000 in funding support to publish books with open access. The pilot program, called the TOME Initiative (the acronym stands for Towards an Open Monograph Ecosystem), was created by a group of academic libraries and university publishers to enable authors to make their books open access with participating presses.

Open access book publishing is becoming increasingly popular in academia. Making a scholarly monograph available to the world for free increases the impact of the author’s research, providing access for researchers around the world as well as interested readers in industry, policy and other fields outside of academia.

UC Davis authors, primarily from the social sciences and humanities, have published 13 open access books under our TOME program so far, with four additional titles in the pipeline. The authors are enthusiastic about the opportunity to have their work more widely distributed and read.

There were two main reasons I wanted an open access version of my book. One is that my book moves across a range of fields, some of which do not overlap much. I hope to reach new and diverse audiences.

My other interest is socially driven. Given the changing landscape of higher education, it is more important than ever to grapple with the inequities in access to research materials. To my mind, open access is the best way forward.

—Gina Bloom, UC Davis Department of English

The TOME Initiative is currently transitioning from a pilot to mainstream open access support — and we at the UC Davis Library are committed to continuing our support. We have set aside a fund that will allow us to cover the book processing charges (BPC) for three to four books per year by UC Davis authors.

Now, how does it work?

If you are interested in publishing a monograph open access with one of the eligible publishers, just complete an application once you have signed a publishing agreement. Our Scholarly Communication Officer will arrange a consultation with you to guide you through the steps.

Not that there are many steps —

1. You simply provide a copy of the publishing agreement and the book proposal.
2. Then you and the publisher sign an amendment to the publishing agreement (known as the TOME amendment) in which you confirm the institution’s funding of up to $15,000.
3. In exchange, the publisher commits to publish an open access version of your book at the time of its release, make this version clearly visible on the book’s webpage, and send a copy to selected repositories.

Many of the participating publishers are already familiar with the process — the TOME initiative has supported about 175 titles so far nationwide — so everything typically runs smoothly.

Only one more thing you have to do — you need to write the book. 🙂

Contact

For more information about the TOME Initiative or related programs to support open access books, please contact the library’s Scholarly Communication Officer Michael Ladisch (mladisch@ucdavis.edu).