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The PALOMERA project has raised awareness of the importance of Open Access books by providing ground-breaking research into OA book policymaking and recommendations for RPOs and other stakeholders. This has the potential to help improve the funding, supportive infrastructure and services for OA book publishing across the European Research Area (ERA).
On 24 September 2024, PALOMERA and the EUA co-organised a webinar in the 2024-2025 series The future of scholarly communication to present findings from the PALOMERA policy analysis and introduce the project’s recommendations. Now that the project is coming to an end, the resources that PALOMERA has developed will continue to support policymaking for OA books across the ERA.
Scholarly book publishing must be an essential part of OA book policy. Since the PALOMERA project began in January 2023, it has striven to provide actionable recommendations to boost the number of OA policies including books in the ERA. Open Access for monographs and other long-form scholarly publications has thus far attracted less focus than journal publications among OA policymakers.
PALOMERA has investigated the status of OA book policymaking in the ERA through desk studies, surveys, in-depth interviews, and use cases. Over 650 policy and policy-related documents from 39 ERA countries were consulted, as well as 40 anonymised interviews with representatives of different stakeholder books from all corners of Europe. The PALOMERA Knowledge Base contains the comprehensive collection of these resources, references and excerpts that will support policymakers as they develop or update OA book policies.
Extensive analysis of the documents in the Knowledge Base enabled the development of evidence-based recommendations and resources that can help speed up the transition to OA for books. The PALOMERA recommendations are actionable and promote alignment across national Open Science policymakers, funding agencies, universities, their libraries, scholarly societies and publishers. To drive change by embedding OA principles for books in policy and strategy across the ERA, these stakeholders need to work together to make an aligned effort, which these recommendations can help create.
PALOMERA developed more resources, including the OAPEN OA Books Toolkit, which was updated in November 2024 to include ten new articles on funding and policies for OA books, and the Funder Forum.
The Funder Forum has been an inclusive and open space where mainly research funders convene to discuss their policy for OA books, both in the ERA and beyond. This forum has proven to be of wide interest and over the four meetings held during the project, we have seen the participation of 24 countries. It will be renamed the Policy Forum for OA Books to clearly signal its purpose and scope from 2025. Research funders have confirmed their commitment to the continuation of this forum and Science Europe, cOAlition S, and OAPEN are currently investigating how to coordinate the forum supported by organisations like SPARC Europe and EUA.
As the PALOMERA project comes to an end after two years, more work must still be done on national levels and with a wide range of stakeholders to build on this momentum for OA book policies. The role of the university here in supporting OA book policymaking and publishing will be critical going forward. It will also be crucial to gain a better understanding of the economic aspects of OA books to help us develop economical, manageable and fair business models that ensure the further development and sustainability of the long-form publication.
