Our advocacy

Visit our blog and sign up to our newsletter for all the latest developments at OBP! As well as writing about our books, we post about broader issues related to open access book publishing on our blog.

We are part of Copim, building and advocating for community-led, open systems and infrastructures that will grow and strengthen open access book publishing. Copim is currently engaged in the Open Book Futures project funded by grants from the Research England Development (RED) fund and Arcadia Fund. Read more about our role in this exciting project and read updates from the project, including blog posts and presentations from our team and other members of the project. Much of our recent writing about OA books can be found there.

We are also one of three coordinators, alongside OAPEN/DOAB and SPARC Europe, of the Open Access Books Network (OABN), a free and open network that enables a community of people to share knowledge, best practices, support and advice on all issues related to OA books via events, blog posts, resources and more. Join the OABN Mailing List or find us at Humanities Commons.

Open Book Publishers sits on the advisory board of a range of Open Access initiatives and members of our team are frequently invited to write or speak about open access for books. Scroll down to discover selected articles and presentations by our team, as well as media coverage about our press and our Open Access Kit.

Presentations

• Our Co-Director Rupert Gatti spoke about 'Navigating AI in Academic Publishing: Open Book Publishers - a use case' for the OIPA AI and Publishing webinar (slides available) (2025)
• Rupert Gatti spoke about 'Making OA Textbooks a Reality' at the UKSG Open Educational Resources online seminar 2025 (slides available) (2025)
• Our Senior Editor and Outreach Coordinator Lucy Barnes spoke at 'Beyond Mandates: Fostering a Culture of Open Access Book Publishing' hosted by the Knowledge Equity Network (2025)
• Lucy Barnes spoke as part of the panel at 'Working collectively to open up access to books' as part of the OASPA Wayfinders series (2025)
• Lucy Barnes hosted the OABN webinar 'From Permission to Publication: Managing Third-Party Materials in Open Access Books' (2024)
• Lucy Barnes spoke about 'Diamond Open Access Books with Open Book Publishers' at Navigating (Diamond) Open Access Book Publishing: Four perspectives on how, why and where (slides available) (2024)
• Lucy Barnes spoke about 'What do we mean when we talk about "community"?' at Sheffield Open Fest (2024)
• Lucy Barnes spoke at 'COPIM – SciELO 25 Years Seminar: Open Book Futures' as part of a detailed introduction to the work of Copim Open Book Futures (2023)
• Lucy Barnes organised and moderated a panel on 'Equity and sustainability in Diamond OA publishing' at the 2023 OASPA Conference (recording available)
• Lucy Barnes spoke about 'The problem of prestige' at a webinar organised by Jisc on 'Open access books mythbusting' (recording available) (2022)
• Lucy Barnes and our co-Director Rupert Gatti spoke at a webinar organised by the National Acquisitions Group (NAG) and Copim: 'Open Access Monographs: where we are now and how to make mandates a reality' (recording available) (2022)
• Lucy Barnes organised and chaired an OASPA webinar on 'Business Models for Open Access Books: A Compendium' (recording available) (2022)
• Lucy Barnes delivered a webinar about publishing with OBP at the University of Salford (recording and slides available) (2020)
• Rupert Gatti spoke at OER 18: Open to All, 9th Annual Conference for Open Education Research, Practice and Policy, Bristol (recording available) (2018)

Articles

• Our Co-Director Rupert Gatti wrote 'Beyond "No Fee": Why Diamond Open Access Is Much More Than Just a Business Model' with Pierre Mounier and Johan Rooryck in Current Trends in Open Science: Will Open Science Change the World? (Ledzioni LediPublishing, 2025)
• Our Senior Editor and Outreach Coordinator Lucy Barnes wrote for Research Professional on 'Open-access books need more support from universities' (2024)
• Lucy Barnes wrote for Research Professional on 'How to shake up ebook publishing' with Rachel Bickley from the ebookSOS campaign (2021)
• Rupert Gatti wrote Business Models and Market Structure within the Scholarly Communications Sector, International Science Council (2020)
• Rupert Gatti worked with OPERAS to develop the OPERAS Platforms and Services White Paper (2018)
• Rupert Gatti contributed to the Universities UK Open Access Coordination Group's July 2018 report Open Access Monographs about the transition to OA for academic books

Blog posts

• Our Senior Editor and Outreach Coordinator, Lucy Barnes, wrote for LSE Impact, 'The REF consultation shows the need for a more plural perspective on OA Books' (2024)
• Lucy Barnes wrote for LSE Impact, 'Genuine open access to academic books requires collective solutions' (2021)
• Lucy Barnes, University of Kent, Office for Scholarly Communication, 'Innovation in Scholarly Communication: Open Book Publishers – An Open Access Publisher Writes' (2018)
• Lucy Barnes, LSE Impact, 'ScholarLed collaboration: A powerful way to grow Open Access publishing' (2018)

Media Interest

• Our Managing Director Alessandra Tosi wrote an article for The Telegraph on the revolution in online learning and the urgent need for Open Access.
• David Matthews' piece on OBP in Times Higher Education discussed our initiatives to provide Open Access monographs to readers in the developing world.
• Robert Darnton mentions us in his article for the New York Review of Books.
• We are featured in the Times Higher Education in an article by Paul Jump entitled 'Research Intelligence - Unbound Possibilities'.
• Our Co-Director Rupert Gatti had an article published in The Guardian Higher Education Network Blog: 'We no longer need expensive publishing networks'.
• Author Ruth Finnegan writes about her experience of publishing with us in The Independent: 'Open Access: Taking Academic Publishing Out of its Ivory Tower'.
• We have been featured on the website Open Access Success Stories, which chronicles successful OA ventures across Europe: 'Open Book Publishers'.