International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and academic publisher Brill have announced the winner of the IFLA/Brill Open Access Award for initiatives in the area of open access monograph publishing. The winner is Open Book Publishers, Cambridge (United Kingdom).
Open Book Publishers (OBP) is a not-for-profit independent publisher of Open Access, peer-reviewed monographs in the humanities and social sciences. Founded in 2008 by a small group of academics at the University of Cambridge and London who believed in a fairer access to research results, OBP is now the leading Open Access publisher in the humanities and social sciences in the UK.
The jury was impressed by OBP's serious effort to publish high quality monographs on an open access basis. In spite of their wide subject coverage, OBP has been able to attract high quality material in a number of very distinct subject areas. The number of books published in five years (30) is growing and indicates that OBP's activities are based on a sustainable business model. OBP encourages authors to use the Creative Commons Attribution License within their author guidelines, although they do allow authors to select a more restrictive license if the authors wish to do so. The jury also recognised OBP's professional and transparent website that makes it easy for readers to browse the open access monographs.
