open access books

Academic Book Week: Tips for Academic Book Authors

Academic Book Week (#AcBookWeek) is a week-long celebration of the diversity, variety and influence of academic books throughout history run by the Booksellers Association, returning for a fourth year from 4-9 March 2019. This week on The Source, we are recognizing the important role of academic books, including how they engage critical audiences such as the media and policy-makers, as well as reflecting on their evolution and what the future might hold for this research format. This blog focuses on open access book publishing. Springer Nature publishes open access books and chapters under its SpringerOpen, Palgrave Macmillan and Apress imprints. … Read more…

How important are open access books to academic authors?

By: Christina Emery How important are open access books to academic authors? To kick off Academic Book Week in April, Springer Nature held a free event for researchers exploring open access (OA) books, discussing topics such as why academics publish OA books, how the impact of their research can be tracked, and the future of OA book funding. Researchers in the hard sciences are more familiar with the concept of open access article publishing, but we were interested in talking to researchers across various disciplines, including the Humanities and Social Sciences, specifically about OA books. You can read what the … Read more…

Why I Published an Open Access Book

On April 23rd, Springer Nature is participating in Academic Book Week, a global awareness event that aims to champion and showcase the evolution of academic books. Authors Prof. Owen Davies (History, University of Hertfordshire) and Dr. Roseli Pellens (Macroecology, Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité, Paris), who are participating in a panel discussion share their experiences of publishing an open access book. “Publishing is about communication beyond academia.” – Prof. Owen Davies Prof. Owen Davies has been interested in open access for more than ten years, having personally experimented with creating and uploading his own PDF online. There was interest in … Read more…

How does open access affect the usage of scholarly books?

By: Mithu Lucraft, Head of Marketing, Outreach and Development, Open Research, Springer Nature  In previous blog posts, we have talked about the benefits of publishing a book open access (OA). But what evidence is there to support these assertions? For the journals market, where open access is now well into its second decade, there has been much analysis to show how publishing OA affects usage and citations. And whilst it is possible to draw assumptions for books looking at these studies, until now there has been little research on the OA books market. That’s why today we are delighted to … Read more…

Open Access Books: Open Access in order to…

By: Christina Emery, Marketing Manager, OA Books This week is Open Access Week, a global event that encourages the discussion of open access (OA) amongst researchers and the scholarly community. This year’s theme for OA Week asks the question, ‘Open access in order to…?’ Whilst OA is more established for journal publishing, it is still relatively new for academic books. So, from a publisher’s perspective, why does Springer Nature offer an OA option for book authors? We have been publishing OA books and chapters under our SpringerOpen and Palgrave Macmillan imprints since 2011 and just this week published our 400th OA … Read more…

The story of Springer’s first Open Access Book

Did you know that it has been five years since Springer launched an open access books programme? To commemorate this landmark we feature the story of our first Open Access book and the benefits of publishing Open Access.   Written by Christina Emery  A year before the official launch of its OA books programme in August 2012, Springer published its first OA book: Future Internet Assembly 2011: Achievements and Technological Promises (Editors: Domingue, J., Galis, A., Gavras, A., Zahariadis, T., Lambert, D., Cleary, F., Daras, P., Krco, S., Müller, H., Li, M.-S., Schaffers, H., Lotz, V., Alvarez, F., Stiller, B., … Read more…