Commit to Open: a new initiative to support open access for books

We are pleased to announce a new initiative to support open access for books, Oxford Scholarship Online: Commit to Open.

As the world’s largest university press publisher of open access research, we publish rigorously peer-reviewed, world-leading, trusted open access research, upholding the highest standards of publications ethics and integrity.

Commit to Open aims to secure funding from libraries and institutions for 30 monographs to be published open access, ensuring that their digital editions are freely available, globally and in perpetuity.

There are three collections of 10 books available for libraries to support:

• Support new voices: The landscape of academic publishing can often present particular challenges for those just starting their career. To nurture this community, we have a collection available where every book is written by an early career researcher. The titles in this collection are diverse, feature several titles on topics relating to under-represented groups, and cover eight different academic disciplines.
• Humanities: This showcases the vitality and variety of our publishing across the Humanities. These books cover topics including the cross-pollination of ideas via missionaries, the cultural influences on music and music genres, and the flow of religious ideas and identities around the Mediterranean in both the ancient and modern worlds.
• Law & Social Sciences: This collection has a strong focus on marginalized groups, with books on current controversies in development studies, incarceration systems, and voters from ethnic minorities and the LGBT community. It also features titles on radical ideas such as what we owe to animals and how states can exist without armed forces.

If we reach our funding targets by March 2025, we will publish all 30 titles open access. If we receive a proportion of our target, we will make the corresponding proportion of the titles open access, with the remaining titles made available for purchase.

You can follow the progress of our initiative against our targets here.