Open Access Books

Open access for books and book chapters is gaining momentum, and major funders like Wellcome Trust and UKRI now require books and chapters arising from their grants to be open access.  

This page is your guide to understanding how open access works for books, what models are available, and how you can get started. 

Many university presses and commercial publishers now offer open access options, and there are also new open access publishers emerging that only publish open access content. 

As book publishing is expensive and requires significant upfront investment, open access for books is evolving more slowly than for journals. Open access for books is funded through:

• Book processing charges (BPCs), which can be around £12,000 for a commercial publisher, and chapter processing charges (CPCs), which can be around £1,500.  Many funders allow you to charge these fees to your grant or include them in the original budget proposal. 
• Library memberships, print sales, or collective funding models. Examples include Cambridge University Press's Flip it Open, and Knowledge Unlatched.

Funders that require open access for books and chapters usually provide funds to cover the cost. Please see our page on applying for UKRI Open Access monograph funding. 

Embargo periods are common; your book might not be openly available right away

Gold open access 

The final published version of your book is made freely available by the publisher.

Green open access 

Green open access, where an accepted manuscript is uploaded to a repository, is not generally allowed for entire books. However, many publishers will allow a single chapter to be made available in this way. They should detail their policy on their website, or you can email outputs@soas.ac.uk for further information. 

• OA Books Toolkit: a trusted resource for open access books including an introduction to the various business models. 
• Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) lists thousands of academic, peer-reviewed, open access books. Use filters for subject and language to find publishers who work with authors in your area.  
• COPIM is a community initially funded by Research England and committed to advancing non-commercial models of Open Access book publishing. Their current project, Open Book Futures, aims to initiate a step-change in the ambition, scope and impact of community-led Open Access book publishing. 
• OAPEN lists publishers that meet the open access requirements of European research funders like ERC, Wellcome, and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).