5 Reasons to Publish Your Next Book Open Access

Posted on: November 16, 2021

As the conversation around open access books increases, take a look at the benefits to publishing your next book open access. Read through our top 5 highlights to publishing your work open access and how we can help.

When you publish your book or chapter open access, you retain the copyright of your work. Through the creative commons licence of your choice, you can clearly state how your work can be reused. At Taylor & Francis we want to give you the flexibility to publish your work how you want, so we can adapt to the creative commons licence that you and your funder prefer.

Your research is discoverable to a wider group of researchers as the content is made publicly available online without barriers to access from the day it published and kept freely available. OA books on average achieve ten times more downloads and 2.4 times more citations than non-OA books. It opens the readership of your work as your book or chapter will be more discoverable and can be found online without barriers. It means that the general public will be able to access and explore your research allowing lifelong learners to upskill in the areas that interest them without the financial constraints that may hold some back.

Pay it forward. Open access books are created through payment of book processing charge (usually by a funder). Because the cost of producing and hosting the eBook is already covered, it means that researchers are able to discover and access the work online straight away and not be barred by subscription fees or download costs. This equalises the research landscape and enables collaboration, allowing independent researchers and those affiliated at different institutions to access your work. They are not dependant on the subscriptions that the institutions pay for, or one party paying to access research that may not be relevant as the payment for access that is covered by the book processing charge.

As research can be accessed across the globe, it allows more opportunities for collaboration and learning for researchers and students in the global research process, increasing your works impact.

Research on altmetrics has found “Both OA books and chapters have significantly higher use on social networks, higher coverage in the mass media and blogs, and evidence of higher rates of social impact in policy documents. OA chapters have higher rates of coverage on Wikipedia than their non-OA equivalents, and are more likely to be shared on Mendeley.” (Taylor, 2020) 

Longevity - Once a piece of research is published open access, a fundamental part of our work as Taylor & Francis is to safeguard the scholarly record and keep the research available and accessible long term. This means that the open access version online will always be available to access through archives at CLOCKSS and Portico.

At Taylor & Francis, we also produce a print copy of the work which is available to be sold in bookshops and to libraries, with royalties being paid back to you, the author. This gives readers the benefit of the format they prefer and allowing your work to be found by communities that may prefer print. This dual format keeps your research present in the hands of the research communities that need it most.