Many funders such as UKRI, Wellcome, NIHR, Horizon Europe now require Open Access publication for books and book chapters. For full details see our Open Access and UKRI funded projects page and our Open Access and funder requirements page .

 Publishing your book Open Access has a range of benefits such as 

• Flexibility to link to audiovisual resources and other multimedia such as interactive maps, digitised archives etc. or to toggle between versions in different languages 
• Reaching a wider audience and increasing citations 
• Ability to measure use and downloads of your work 
• Freedom to post and share your work online wherever you want 
• Making it easier for your work to be included in Reading Lists and other teaching resources

Academics talking about their experiences of publishing OA

Caroline Warman, University of Oxford  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYG6Um90bVI&t=883s   

Claire Brock, University of Leicester (forward to 41.18 in recording) UKRI open access policy for longform publications event | Part 2: Presentations from research sector - YouTube   

Joanna Page, University of Cambridge (forward to 46.21 in recording) UKRI open access policy for longform publications event | Part 2: Presentations from research sector - YouTube   

The Open Access Books Toolkit’s collection of case studies where authors from different disciplinary and geographical backgrounds explain their experiences with a range of publishers.

Understand the process and choose the right publisher 

The OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit explains the process of publishing an Open Access book. 

Use these tools to choose a quality, trusted publisher for your book or chapter. 

Licences 

OA books and chapters must be published under a Creative Commons licence which specify the ways in which your work can be used and shared. Check if your funder requires the use of a specific licence. CC BY is recommended by most funders.  

Third party copyright  

Including third-party content in online OA publications is largely the same as for print non-open access publications. However, licences from copyright holder and attribution may differ. Third-party items in OA publications can be made available under their own separate licences.  Refer to UKRI’s Managing third-party copyright for research publications.

Open Access can be achieved by depositing the accepted version of your book or chapter in KAR (at no cost, called Green OA) 

OR  

by making the published version freely available on the publisher website (this usually involves a cost, called Gold or Diamond OA) 

This route means that the author, institution or funder pays a book processing charge (BPC) to make the work Open Access.  

• This route applies to e-books only. 
• Your book will be freely and publicly available online upon publication. 
• You choose the terms under which your work is shared and re-used by applying a Creative Commons licence. 

There are currently no institutional funds for payment of BPCs unless your work arises from a UKRI, Wellcome, NIHR or Horizon Europe project.  

Under these arrangements the University joins with other academic libraries through coordinated schemes to facilitate OA publishing with no payment of BPCs for Kent authors.  The library is investigating these schemes on behalf of Kent researchers. This will enable us to identify those most relevant to our core research areas and to decide which we wish to contribute to.    

This route means you deposit a version of your work in the Kent Academic Repository (KAR). 

• This costs nothing
• It's most suitable for chapters
• It works for books that are published in print or online
• You need to get the permission of the publisher to put your work in KAR. Many publishers allow this. Email us if you need advice: researchsupport@kent.ac.uk. 
• Use JISC’s Sherpa services Open Access for Books to check publishers’ policies  
• You are usually only allowed to use the Author Accepted Manuscript of a chapter. 
• You usually need to use an embargo, which means your work won't be Open Access until a set period of time has passed

Need research support or advice? Email researchsupport@kent.ac.uk

Find out all the ways you can get in touch.