24.02.2021
Academic Libraries and Open Access Books in Europe. A Landscape Study
« The last fifteen years have witnessed the emergence of a new role for academic libraries. Besides fulfilling their fundamental task of providing access to knowledge, besides being called everything from temples of knowledge to disturbing heterotopias, libraries have become one of the crucial stakeholders in the open access book publishing space. They act as funders for OA book fees, they support collaborative funding schemes, and sometimes they assume the role of publishers themselves.
In an attempt to create a sustainable publishing environment, in which OA books could blossom, it
is therefore necessary to gain a sound understanding of how academic libraries work, how they deal
with open access initiatives, and what challenges they encounter. These questions remain at the very
core of this report. (…) »
