[GOAL] New Open Access book collection from the MIT Press + Open Publishing Services and Direct to Open

[Jessica Pellien, Fortier Public Relations]

Hello -

I hope this post is OK to share on GOAL. I think you'll be interested in three new open access initiatives from the MIT Press over the last month:


  1.  This open collection of architecture and urban studies books is part of the Mellon- and NEH-funded Humanities Open Book Program: https://mitpress.mit.edu/blog/mit-press-launches-new-open-access-collection-34-classic-architecture-and-urban-studies-titles

For years, the MIT Press has fielded requests for ebook editions of classic, out-of-print works, like the two volumes of The Staircase<http://bit.ly/MITPStaircase> by John Templer, On Leon Battista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories<http://bit.ly/MITPBattista> by Mark Jarzombek, Possible Palladian Villas: (Plus a Few Instructively Impossible Ones)<http://bit.ly/MITPPalladian> by George L. Hersey and Richard Freedman, and Making a Middle Landscape<http://bit.ly/MITPMiddle> by Peter G. Rowe. Many of these foundational texts were published before the advent of ebooks and remained undigitized because of complex design requirements and the prohibitive cost of image permissions.

Now, with funding from the Mellon Foundation and the efforts of an open-access-savvy digitization team, the MIT Press was able to not only secure image permissions, but also to solicit fresh prefaces that bring new insights to bear on many of these classic texts. Many of the titles will also be made available on the open access platform PubPub where readers will be able to interact with and annotate the works with contemporary context and related readings.



  1.  MIT Open Publishing Services - which will offer their professional editorial, design, marketing support for open access projects:  https://mitpress.mit.edu/blog/mit-press-launches-mit-open-publishing-services

MIT Open Publishing Services (MITops), working with its partner the Knowledge Futures Group<https://www.knowledgefutures.org/>, provides a portfolio of services to mission-aligned partners, including peer review support and editorial development; professional copy editing and design; marketing and publicity; and hosting on the PubPub<https://www.pubpub.org/> open source platform.

  1.  MIT Direct 2 Open - a new OA model that will make monographs available going forward: https://mitpress.mit.edu/blog/mit-press-launches-direct-open

A first-of-its-kind sustainable framework for open access monographs, D2O moves professional and scholarly books from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model.

D2O gives institutions the opportunity to harness collective action to support access to knowledge. Beginning in 2022, all new MIT Press scholarly monographs and edited collections will be openly available on the MIT Press Direct eBook platform<https://direct.mit.edu/books>. Instead of purchasing a title once for a single collection, libraries now have the opportunity to fund them one time for the world through participant fees.
Full disclosure - I am involved in the promotion of the first of these items - the book collection. The rest is of interest to me because I follow open access publishing closely as a person who worked in university press publishing and libraries for 20 years. It was recommended to me that I share the collection on GOAL, the rest is just because I think you'll be interested in how MIT Press is tackling OA from all sides.


Jessica





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