Partnerships

At Open Book Publishers, we feel that the dissemination of research should be in the hands of academic institutions and societies rather than commercial publishers. We are looking to collaborate with these groups to create one-off publications or to develop whole series. Our model offers societies and institutions a flexible and affordable way of publishing, with the opportunity to include online multi-media content. Our Open Access ethos means that research published with us will reach the widest possible readership. We are currently involved in several exciting partnerships:

World Oral Literature Project
Open Book Publishers is working in partnership with the World Oral Literature Project, directed by Mark Turin at the University of Cambridge and Yale University, to create a World Oral Literature Series. The series will work to preserve and promote the oral literatures of indigenous people by publishing materials on endangered traditions in innovative ways. Lying at the intersection of anthropology and linguistics, the study of oral genres is an exciting and developing field, but one with few publishing outlets. While linguists may relegate their textual corpus to an appendix, anthropologists similarly harvest elements of oral literature to make comparative or theoretical points. The richness and contextual meaning of oral narratives is thus often lost in the process. The innovative publishing practices adopted by OBP make the dissemination of such unique literary traditions possible for the first time. The World Oral Literature Project is committed to supporting the publication and dissemination of transcribed narrative works which have been collected, analysed and glossed by ethnographers, field linguists or local researchers. Open Book Publishers is proud to be working with them to achieve this.

Forthcoming titles in the World Oral Literature Series include:
• Oral Literature in Africa by Ruth Finnegan
• Voices from the Volcano: Myths, Folktales and Poetry from Gaua, Vanuatu by Alexandre François 

•  Ibonia: An Epic Folktale of Madagascar by Lee Haring

• Quechan Traditional Stories by Amy Miller

• Storytelling and Telling Stories in Northern Zambia: Theory, Method, Practice and Other Necessary Fictions by Robert Cancel

The Re:Enlightment Project
Open Book Publishers has a partnership with the Re:Enlightenment Project, a rapidly growing association of institutions and individuals among whose primary aims is to encourage new ways to disseminate as well as to produce knowledge. Other partners of this project include New York University, New York Public Library, Stanford University and the British Museum. One of our titles, The Sword of Judith, has already resulted from that partnership and OBP participated in the Re:Enlightenement Exchange in London in July 2011.

International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)
We are part of INASP's network of Open Access organisations. INASP works with partners like us to support global research communication through innovation, focusing particularly on the needs of developing and emerging countries.