Supporting community-based open research initiatives: Open Access Community Framework 2023

The Open Access Community Framework (OACF) was launched in 2022 as a new approach to supporting publishers or initiatives operating under the Diamond Open Access (OA) model – open access publishing with no subscription or author facing fee – which is a competitive and sustainable alternative to the Book Processing Charge (BPC) model.

Following on from the success of last year’s pilot scheme, the aim in 2023 was to support new university, library led and community-based monograph publishers. We restricted applications to monographs and books in series to align it with the strategic objectives of sector libraries and the new UKRI Open Access Policy for monographs, which commences in January 2024.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

We organised an online member event to introduce the three successful OACF initiatives we have chosen to support for a three-year commitment. This included presentations from participants about their initiatives, and reflections on the successes of the initial pilot year.

The event provided an opportunity for all the participants to present their initiatives. We’ve listed here the start times in the event recording for each, as well as links to the catalogue page in Licence subscriptions manager, so that you can easily find out more about all the OACF agreements.

Introducing the OACF participants for 2023

University of London Press (12:25 on the recording) – Paula Kennedy introduced their initiative which aims to publish an additional three titles per annum, 9 in total, with OACF funding in their Human rights and social justice titles, including the Human Rights consortium and Reimagining Law and Justice series.

White Rose University Press (26:20 on the recording) – Kate Petherbridge spoke about their External Author Support pilot programme which will aim to support authors from outside of the White Rose institutions to publish monographs without author facing fees.

University of Westminster Press (35:40 on the recording) – Philippa Grand introduced their Cultural China series which is seeking support via the OACF to publish an additional 9 titles over the following three years. University of Westminster is considered one of the leading centres of Chinese study with their Contemporary China Centre.

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

All three publishers also participated in the pilot scheme last year and so it is fantastic to see how the OACF is meeting their needs in producing additional content and gaining support from within the sector to further disseminate key humanities research.

We hope that institutions are able to support these three OACF initiatives which will help to consolidate and grow a thriving diverse number of agreements with small university, library led and non-commercial presses as an alternative to the large commercial presses.

Further information

For more information about this event or to find out more about other the community OA initiatives that are available via Jisc, please get in touch by emailing help.digitalresources@jisc.ac.uk