The OAPEN Foundation has launched a new open access (OA) books toolkit for researchers and academic book authors. The toolkit is a free-to-access, stakeholder-agnostic resource that aims to help authors better understand OA for books, increase trust in OA book publishing, provide reliable and easy-to-find answers to questions from authors, and to provide guidance on the process of publishing an OA book. 

The toolkit was created in collaboration with Springer Nature and The University of Glasgow and has been written by a global group of stakeholders from the academic community and scholarly communications organisations. “Thanks to the efforts and help of nearly 70 individuals we have been able to create this public resource,” said Eelco Ferwerda, Director at OAPEN Foundation. “We hope this toolkit will prove useful to book authors and the OA books community around the world.”

This toolkit will help book authors to make their work OA, and enable more institutional support teams to identify the right information to help their researchers.

Ros Pyne, Director Open Access Books at Springer Nature, said, “We at Springer Nature are proud to be one of the founding members of the OAPEN OA books toolkit. We hope it will increase awareness and understanding of OA books and encourage more authors to consider this option. OAPEN’s expertise in, and long-term commitment to, OA books makes them the ideal host and curator for this important resource.”

“We were delighted to be part of this initiative to respond to authors’ requests for more support in making their books OA. We hope authors will benefit from it and gain more visibility for their work,” said Valerie McCutcheon, Research Information Manager at The University of Glasgow.

The toolkit will be updated on a regular basis by the Editorial Advisory Board and is open to suggestions for developing this resource further.

Access the toolkit: www.oabooks-toolkit.org 

We are also posting on social media using the hashtag #oabookstoolkit so please do share and join in the conversation over there too. To learn more about the toolkit or get involved, please leave a comment here or contact me per e-mail: t.mosterd@oapen.org. You can also sign up to the toolkit newsletter: http://eepurl.com/g5fuFr.