Overview
Open Access (OA) publishing faces many challenges, including misgivings about quality and difficulties with funding and distribution. But we believe that the benefits of sharing knowledge with researchers everywhere, including in low-income nations, far exceed the obstacles. This is why, in line with our mission to expand access to knowledge and education for everyone, we are collaborating with university presses on Path to Open, a new pilot program that supports libraries’ efforts to increase cultural diversity and invest in sustainable OA solutions while reducing financial risk for academic publishers to invest in authors and their scholarship.
Path to Open was developed in partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community. This funding model will provide libraries with affordable access to diverse, high-quality frontlist titles; support small and medium university presses in open access publishing; help authors reach a global audience; and advance equity of access to underserved researchers around the world.
View the first 100 titles featuring peer-reviewed monographs in disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, with an emphasis on works that bring forward diverse perspectives and ideas.
How it works
Now that 30+ university presses are participating, we are working to:
- Secure the first 100 library commitments by June 2023. Fees for unlimited exclusive access to the full set of titles are tiered according to the participating institution’s JSTOR classification
- Launch Path to Open as a multi-year pilot after 150 libraries commit to participate by October 1, 2023
- Release the first 100 titles in fall 2023, with 300 new titles added each year starting in 2024
- Make the books Open Access three years after publication, benefitting readers worldwide