[GOAL] Coventry University Researchers to lead £2.8 million Project To Develop Open, Not-For-Profit Community-Owned Ecosystem For Open Access Monographs

[Gary Hall]

Professor Gary Hall and Dr. Janneke Adema, from the Centre for 
Postdigital Cultures (CPC), are to lead on a major new Research England 
funded project. Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for 
Monographs (COPIM) has been awarded £2.2 million[1] <#_ftn1> from the 
Research England Development (RED) Fund, which supports innovation in 
research and knowledge exchange in higher education that offers 
significant public benefits.

COPIM is a strategic international partnership led by Coventry 
University, consisting of world-class universities (Birkbeck, University 
of London, Lancaster University, and Trinity College, Cambridge), 
established scholar-led open access presses (represented through the 
ScholarLed consortium, which consists of Mattering Press, meson press, 
Open Book Publishers, Open Humanities Press, and punctum books), 
libraries (UCSB Library, Loughborough University Library), 
infrastructure providers (DOAB, Jisc) and international membership 
organisations (The Digital Preservation Coalition).

COPIM will develop and build the critical—yet still missing—underlying 
modular components to support the sustainable publication of open access 
books. As such it will develop a significantly enriched not-for-profit 
and open source ecosystem for open access book publishing that will 
support and sustain a diversity of publishing initiatives and models, 
particularly within Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) in the UK but 
also internationally. The project’s key objectives are to:

·Remove hurdles preventing new open access book initiatives to emerge 
and existing publishers to adopt open access workflows

·Develop consortial, institutional, and other funding systems

·Showcase alternative business models for open access books

·Support the creation of, interaction with and reuse of open access 
books in all their variation and complexity

·Conduct knowledge transfer to stakeholders through various pilots

COPIM will benefit the general public, the economy, and the creative 
industriesby maximising the dissemination and impact of world-leading 
research. The adoption of COPIM’s infrastructures, business models, 
preservation structures, re-use strategies, and governance procedures, 
will enable economic sustainability and enhanced capacities, at smaller 
and larger scales, for open access books. It offers HE institutions and 
HSS researchers sustainable publishing models they control, increased 
publishing options, and cost-reductions.

Hosting COPIM is a testament to Coventry University’s thought leadership 
and commitment to open science. The University is currently investing 
over £250m in research staff and infrastructure establishing a robust 
and innovative research portfolio. The Centre for Postdigital Cultures 
(CPC) is a flagship initiative in this broader investment programme. It 
was launched in early 2018 with the mission to conduct world-leading 
research and promote critical practices in open access publishing 
building on Coventry University’s long-standing research excellence in 
Open Media.

The CPC, directed by COPIM’s PI Hall, has a reputation for supporting 
cutting-edge open access publishing projects. Its researchers, including 
Co-PI Adema, have established new forms of collective organisation (e.g. 
Open Humanities Press, The Radical Open Access Collective) and 
innovative business models for open access books, while being at the 
forefront of experimental publishing.

Professor Gary Hall, Executive Director Centre for Postdigital Cultures, 
Faculty of Arts and Humanities

“As a community-led consortium of universities, presses, libraries, and 
infrastructure providers, we are delighted with Research England’s 
investment in COPIM, supporting the project’s aims to address those key 
hurdles, around funding, production, dissemination, discovery, reuse, 
and archiving, that are currently standing in the way of the wider 
adoption and impact of open access books”

Dr Janneke Adema, Assistant Professor, Co-Principal Investigator

"COPIM is an exciting opportunity to push for open infrastructures, for 
community-led governance, and for the realignment of relations between 
not-for-profit institutions in the realm of monograph publishing. It 
will support the sustainable publication of open access 
books, delivering major improvements and innovations in the 
infrastructures, systems, and workflows being used by open access book 
publishers and by those publishers making a transition to open access books"

For more information about COPIM please contact us at

Professor Gary Hall: gary.hall at coventry.ac.uk

Dr. Janneke Adema:janneke.adema at coventry.ac.uk


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[1] <#_ftnref1>The total project value is £2.8 million with £680,000 
contributions from the consortium partners.


****

-- 
Gary Hall, http://www.garyhall.info
Professor of Media, Coventry University
Director of Open Humanities Press: http://www.openhumanitiespress.org

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http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-13-open/open-access-bouillabaisse/open-humanities-press-the-inhumanist-manifesto/

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