What does it mean for my University of Michigan Press book to be open access?

A University of Michigan Press open-access book will be, at minimum, published openly as part of the University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection (UMP EBC), usually under a Creative-Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license. We also distribute OA books widely through channels such as JSTOR, Project Muse, OAPEN/DOAB, and Amazon Kindle. We publish some "multimodal" projects that are more like websites and are not easily "containerized." However, in all other cases, a complete PDF and fully accessible EPUB of the book will also be made available for downloading, reading offline, printing, and the other forms of re-use specified by the CC license. We will sell print copies of the book as well.

Is open access appropriate for my book?

Your acquiring editor will always be glad to discuss whether open access makes sense for your book. You can expect such a conversation to introduce questions like these:

• Do you have a mandate from your funder, home institution, government, etc., to make the book OA, and if so, what are the specific requirements? (Example: Your research was funded by a US federal grant that requires the results to be published under a CC BY license.)
• Does the content of your book suggest open-access distribution for ethical reasons? Is there a case to be made that the book must or should be freely available to populations that otherwise might not be able to obtain it? (Example: The subjects of your fieldwork in urban schools should be able to access your work for free.)
• Does the primary intended audience for your book include those who are unlikely to be able to access the book through academic libraries? (Example: Your study of mental health in teenagers will help practice social workers and guidance counselors, who are unlikely to access the book through a research library.)
• Do you seek to include digital affordances in your published work that would function best if the work was made OA? (Example: You aim to solicit public comments on your work or expose supporting data for reuse by other researchers.)
• In general, what are your expectations and goals for this book? What are you hoping to achieve with an open-access version?

It is best to discuss with your editor as early as possible whether the book will have an open-access version. Planning from the start for open-access distribution makes the production and marketing process smoother for all involved. 

Open Access can be achieved in various ways, using different business models, distribution methods, and licensing schemes. The University of Michigan Press can accommodate several strategic approaches to open access, described in more detail below.

What are the OA options for UM Press authors?

• Diamond (or Platinum) open access (basically, publisher open access at no cost to the author) is available thanks to the Press's internal resources or our participation in third-party programs and initiatives that provide financial support to presses to offset the cost of producing open-access monographs (Example: the NEH Fellowships Open Book Program). After publication, the published version can be used for whatever the CC license allows. However, we encourage non-profit repository managers to consider linking via the DOI to our version of record in UMP EBC rather than redepositing a copy so we can record as much usage information as possible and let our funders and authors know how much impact OA is having.
• Gold open access (basically, publisher open access with author-side financial support) occurs when the press and the author decide together to make the book open access immediately upon publication, and the author can obtain a subsidy, subvention, or funding from a grant agency, home institution, or other source. Rather than framing this as a Book Publishing Charge (BPC) and being inflexible on the amount, we think of this as a contribution to costs. After publication, the published version can be used for whatever the CC license allows. As with Diamond OA, we encourage non-profit repository managers to consider linking via the DOI to our version of record in UMP EBC rather than redepositing a copy so we can record as much usage information as possible and let our funders and authors know how much impact OA is having.
• Green open access (or author self-archiving) is an option for all authors publishing monographs with the University of Michigan Press. In this approach, authors typically deposit a version of their work in an institutional or disciplinary repository. We allow author-accepted manuscripts (i.e., the version that has gone through peer review, developmental editing, and revision and is ready to be submitted in its final form to the publisher for copyediting and typesetting) to be made available in institutional and funder repositories after 12 months have elapsed since publication. A link to the published version, including the digital object identifier (DOI), which you can find on our website catalog record, is required. We do not allow the published version to be made available through a repository unless there is a contractual requirement to do so.

Our repository-deposit policies relate to non-profit repositories (for example, institutional, disciplinary, or funder repositories). Sharing full texts through commercial sites in ways that go beyond what is allowed under the CC license is discouraged, but please contact your acquiring editor if you need to do more than include a bibliographic link.

Is there a book publishing charge (BPC) or other required subsidy to make my book open access?

Since 2021, the University of Michigan Press has been developing a business model we call "Fund to Mission." This model aims to reduce dependence on Book Publishing Charges (BPCs) for open-access book publishing by spreading the costs of producing books across a wide range of institutions and libraries. The promising result of this initiative is that we never require authors to pay BPCs to publish open access. Still, we always request a contribution to our costs if it is available from the parent institution or other funder of the author's work.  

It is worth noting that presses invest considerable resources in producing and publishing any monograph. In 2016, we participated in creating a report from ITHAKA S&R on “first copy” costs for academic monographs and also conducted a check study in collaboration with Indiana University Press. We calculated the average cost of producing an academic monograph (including all associated staff activities) for our university press at around $27,000. Traditionally, the press would hope to recover that investment through sales alone. When a book is published using open-access distribution models, the press must consider how those costs will be covered, usually through a combination of print sales revenue, subvention from the author’s institution or a third-party funder, and other sources of support such as our internal funds. In our publishing model, the press will have spent substantial staff time and paid honoraria to peer reviewers while developing an author's work to be its best. This is why we ask for a 12-month embargo on the Author Accepted Manuscript even before it has been copyedited and typeset.

Which open licenses does the University of Michigan Press use?

Our standard author contract for open-access books allows the author to select which CC license to use. Because this is the license most usually requested by our authors, our default practice is to assign the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license. However, other licenses may be considered if appropriate. We encourage you to discuss the appropriate license with your editor as early as possible. Irrespective of the license adopted, today's U-M Press authors retain copyright in their works but transfer a broad bundle of common publishing rights exclusively to the Press. Because we are an invested partner in the book's success, not just a service provider, this arrangement gives us an explicit stake in its success. 

How does open access affect the peer review of my book?

It doesn't. Open access has no bearing on the peer review and editorial selection process. Regardless of how your book will be distributed, your manuscript will be reviewed by external readers, and feedback will be provided to you along with other assistance from your acquiring editor. The University of Michigan Press Faculty Executive Committee must ultimately approve your manuscript and the review process.

Discuss your wishes and goals with your editor as early as possible if you are interested in experimental modes of peer review, such as open, web-based, or post-publication peer review. In some cases, we are willing to consider these options in addition to our other rigorous peer review processes.

How does open access affect the production of my book?

The existence of an open-access version will not significantly influence production decisions: all monographs will be professionally copyedited, typeset, and have a unique cover design. Unlike many other publishers, we don’t separate OA books in how we present them on our website, in our catalogs, at conference displays, etc. Any University of Michigan Press book has the same guarantee of quality that readers have come to expect since our foundation in 1930, whatever the business model used.

How does open access affect the risk of piracy of my book?

Open access does not permit abuse or misuse of a book, nor is an open-access book at any greater risk of misuse online than any other digitally available book (which includes unauthorized scans of print books). Making the book easy to find, search, and view in full on a trustworthy web platform may indeed undermine piracy because it is easier to trace any excerpt from the work back to the original publication. Also, making a copy of the book freely available to read reduces the financial incentive of piracy.

How will open access affect sales of my book?

We create and sell print versions of every open-access monograph (except web-native projects that aren't "containerizable"). The University of Michigan Press has been publishing (and selling) open-access monographs for more than a decade, and our experience is that offering freely available versions of monographs has variable effects on sales, depending on the discipline and subject. Making the book more readily accessible online certainly increases awareness and visibility. Whether this translates into a positive effect on sales depends on the price and format of the print book, the author's online following and network, and the sort of book it is. That said, most monographs made open access seem to sell fewer print copies, but we believe that the reduction in print sales is more than compensated for by the exponentially greater reach of the author's scholarship.

What about my royalties?

You will still receive royalties on sales of print copies following the terms of your contract.

How will I know if people are reading and using my OA book?

We track the usage of online open-access books in several ways, trying to capture as much standardized information as possible from platforms including JSTOR, OAPEN, and Google Books, as well as our own UMP EBC ebook collection. We make this information publicly available on an Open Access Book Usage Dashboard.

Authors of both open and closed-access titles can use the Altmetric badge on the book’s product detail page to explore how, where, and when the book has been mentioned on social media, in the news, in a policy document, or elsewhere on the web. The badge also offers information about citations tracked by the Dimensions indexing service. For example, from the UM Press product detail page for the 2016 open access title, Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good, anyone can click on the Altmetric badge under the cover image to see the details of engagement with the book.

My research is funded by a grant requiring my book to be freely available. What now?

Talk to your editor about your requirements as early in the publication process as possible so that everyone can understand, agree on, and commit to a plan for working together to meet the funder’s requirements. We try to keep up with funder policies and can comply with most of them. As an English-language book publisher focused on the humanities and social sciences, the most common funder open/public access policies we encounter are from UKRI (UKRI classifies U-M Press as a Diamond Open Access publisher) and NEH (which focuses on data associated with books).

What can I do with my OA book that I might not be able to do with a print book?

For all University of Michigan Press monographs (regardless of whether open access or not), authors may use, reproduce, distribute, perform, and display the work in connection with their teaching, conference presentations, and lectures without permission or notice to the press. Open-access monographs published under a Creative Commons license may have more flexible terms, as determined by their license. We particularly encourage authors to spread the word about their open-access books using the DOI link shown on our website's catalog page for their book using social media channels. The more use, the better.

Can the University of Michigan Press comply with our mandate that the research we fund be published on an open-access basis?

Yes! We are eager to work with authors to ensure compliance with funders' requirements. The author publishing contract is where we prefer to articulate our commitments to both the author and the funder. We were a partner in developing the Model Publishing Contract for Digital Scholarship and use a derivative version.

What does it cost to fund the publication of an open-access monograph with the University of Michigan Press?

The term “first copy cost” refers to what it costs a press to process a manuscript from the initial proposal to printing the first copy. It includes all overhead related to development, contracting, review, communications, copyediting, design, layout, proofreading, etc. It does not include the costs of printing, shipping, or warehousing copies of the book.

The first copy cost for any given monograph can vary widely depending on the discipline, length, and complexity of the work, as well as the practices of individual presses. A 2016 study of monograph publishing costs put the first-copy costs for university press monographs anywhere from $15,000 to $129,000. At the University of Michigan, this cost typically falls somewhere in the range of $27,000, a number reinforced by a parallel study that we conducted in collaboration with Indiana University.

Since we consider publishing an OA monograph a shared risk, the “price” we charge for publishing any OA book will almost always be substantially lower than the actual “first copy cost.” Our standard monograph contract can address funding agency costs and commitments. We don't list a standard book publishing charge (BPC), but as guidance, most of our OA books that receive author-side support receive USD funding between $6,000 and $15,000.

How can we ensure that the research we fund has a measurable influence?

We are committed to providing as much information as possible about how open-access monographs are used. This usage information may take the form of:

• Usage reporting from the University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection (UMP EBC)
• Usage reports from other platforms hosting our OA titles, such as OAPEN, Project Muse, and JSTOR
• COUNTER reports are delivered either directly or via IRUS
• Altmetrics (mentions of the work on social media or in the news) and Dimensions citations
• Reader responses received through a survey tool embedded in the UMP EBC

Custom reports are available upon request via the author's acquiring editor. You can also see summary details on book catalog pages on our website and our open-access book dashboard.

May I deposit a copy of the open-access book into my non-profit repository?

Yes. Please encourage the repository manager to include a link to the press’s website catalog page and DOI in the metadata record to ensure that mentions of your work get picked up in Altmetric measurement. Since the book is hosted in a stable, open-access form on the UMP EBC, some repositories choose to create a metadata-only record that links to the version of the record held by the press. This ensures that the latest version of the book is always used by readers and that the press can gather a more comprehensive picture of usage to report to the funder and author. Further information is available in the For Authors section above.

Can I use this book/chapter in my course? Can I put a copy of this book/chapter on my course management website? Can I post a copy of this book/chapter on my website? Can I email an electronic version of this book to my colleagues?

The best way to share open-access books with your colleagues, students, and network is to share a link to the book. University of Michigan Press books are assigned a permanent URL called a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) that ensures anyone who follows the link will always be able to get back to the authoritative version of the book. This also lets us communicate to authors and funding agencies how frequently the book is used.

Can I re-use this image/video/figure/other media published in this book?

As with non-OA books, if there is third-party material inside an OA title, the author herself likely had to get permission to use that material from whoever holds the rights. This means that a reader seeking to re-use the same material must also seek permission from the rights holder. We include credit line information for third-party material used in our OA titles so a reader can quickly tell if the material would require permission to be reused. When a Creative Commons license is shown, it applies only to the work as a whole, not to the third-party materials included.

Can I include a chapter from this book in an edited volume that I am putting together?

This will depend on the kind of CC license the OA title is published. Our recommended Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC) license does require any use to be properly attributed to the author. It does not permit commercial use unless explicit permission is given. (To request permission to use University of Michigan Press content in a way not explicitly permitted by the license, contact um.press.perms@umich.edu.) Authors may choose other CC licenses if they wish.

Where can I access Open Access titles?

The University of Michigan Press (UMP) publishes an increasing number of open-access books widely available through retailers and platforms, including JSTOR, Project Muse, OAPEN, Amazon Kindle, and Google Books. The definitive list is always on the University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection (UMP EBC) site. UMP also works with its partner platforms and discovery services to ensure libraries are not charged for open-access books. Visit the For Librarians page for more information.

Will the Open Access percentage goal continue to increase each year?

The annual OA goal has increased since the start of Fund to Mission, UMP's OA program. Starting at 25% OA in 2020, the program now converts 75% of Frontlist monographs to Open Access. We recognize that there are system barriers to getting to 100%, such as rightsholders' reticence to allow third-party reproduction of some images or textual inserts. However, there is potential for the percentage of OA titles to increase in future years as the industry works through these hurdles.

Will books become open access only once library funding goals are met?

Multiple funding streams outside of library support allow titles to be OA regardless of library-specific funding goals. Funding is also available through U-M academic leadership, funders supporting authors, and individual title sales. For transparent pricing information, please visit the UMP Ebook Collection site.

Are any Open Access titles course-adoptable?

Yes, a complete list of course-adoptable titles within the UMP eBook Collection can be found here.