The OBC’s online platform is central to our work. It enables a wide range of potential funders to understand what different open access book publishers and open publishing service providers do, and to learn more about their missions and values, content and services, business models, and ongoing projects. It also enables knowledge institutions, including scholarly libraries, to fund these initiatives by subscribing to individual Supporter Programmes and collective Packages.

Our online platform serves as a aggregator and discovery portal for a diverse set of Supporter Programmes offered by open access book publishers and publishing service providers. It is designed to assist supporting institutions in evaluating and comparing different initiatives for potential subscription. Users of this site will find richly detailed information for all of the publishers and publishing service providers in the OBC, including the pricing for and benefits from each. There is also an indexed, searchable catalogue for the books of our publisher members that use the platform and services developed by Thoth Open Metadata. In future, we expect potential supporters to also be able to use this site to generate quotes and set up third-party payment processing options (e.g. through Jisc in the UK). The development of this platform has been funded by the Research England Development Fund and Arcadia.

Here is how it works in more detail:

• Publishers and publishing service providers offer individualised Supporter Programmes via the OBC. Each open access initiative is scrutinised before joining the OBC, will be transparent about their activities and finances, and will be re-scrutinised on an ongoing basis by the OBC team.  

• Institutions select the Supporter Programmes they want to subscribe to – they can subscribe to one or more individual Supporter Programmes or suggested Packages of Supporter Programmes.

• The OBC issues payment requests to the supporting institution for the cost of the Supporter Programme, as well as a 5% fee that contributes to the OBC’s operating expenses.

• Publishers and publishing service providers receive subscription income from the OBC, 10%-12.5% of which goes back to the OBC for operating expenses and to a collective fund for the development of technical and other resources needed over time by the member initiatives of the OBC.

• Supporters receive benefits offered by publishers and publishing service providers, including annual activity and finances reports, discounts for print books, usage metrics, governance roles, catalogue records, interoperable metadata, and access to back catalogue content.

Joining the OBC empowers supporting institutions, publishers, and publishing service providers to collaborate on a consortial funding model for open access books in which public resources are gathered from multiple institutions across the world – an extremely cost-effective method for funding open access books in which no single institution bears a disproportionate cost, and collectively, we increase and amplify a body of research that is openly available to research and learning communities worldwide. 

Download our OBC leaflet here.