OA Book & Monograph Publishing

Open access (OA) book publishing — making a full-length scholarly monograph, edited collection, or textbook freely available to read online without a paywall — is a distinct discipline from open access journal-article publishing, not a smaller version of it. Books take longer to produce, cost more to edit and typeset, are peer-reviewed differently, and are funded, licensed, and discovered through a largely separate infrastructure. This guide covers how OA book publishing actually works: the funding models, licensing choices, the platforms where OA books are indexed, and what a funder mandate for long-form outputs does and doesn’t require.

How Open Access Book Publishing Differs From Open Access Journal Publishing

The mechanics that make gold open access and green open access work for journal articles don’t map cleanly onto books:

Production cost and scale. A monograph runs tens of thousands of words and typically takes a year or more of editorial, copyediting, typesetting, and (often) cover-design work to produce — multiples of what a single journal article requires. That cost has to be recovered or subsidized somehow even when the finished book carries no reader-facing price.
Peer review. Monographs are usually reviewed by the acquiring editor plus one or more external specialist readers who assess the whole manuscript (and sometimes a full-length revision), rather than the anonymous multi-reviewer process typical of a journal submission. An open access monograph from a reputable press goes through essentially the same review process as its non-OA counterpart from the same press — open licensing is a distribution decision layered on top of, not a substitute for, editorial vetting.
Format and distribution. OA books are usually released as a freely downloadable PDF and/or EPUB alongside a paid print-on-demand or hardback edition — the open digital edition and the commercial physical edition coexist rather than one replacing the other.
Funder mandate maturity. Funder and institutional open access policies for journal articles are well established and, in many cases, effectively immediate. Policies covering monographs and book chapters are newer, generally allow much longer compliance windows, and are often less strictly enforced during an initial phase-in period — see the UKRI example below.

How Open Access Books Are Funded

Because someone still has to cover production costs, OA book publishing runs on a handful of recognizable funding models, often used in combination:

Book processing charges (BPCs) / chapter processing charges (CPCs). The direct book-level equivalent of an article processing charge: the author, their institution, or their funder pays the publisher a one-time fee to make the finished book freely available. Rates vary substantially by publisher, book length, and complexity — published university-library guidance on BPCs puts the typical range for a standard monograph in roughly the $5,000–$17,000 (or roughly £4,000–£15,000) band, with specific presses quoting case-by-case.
Subsidized / “diamond” open access. A number of scholar-led and university presses publish OA books with no fee charged to the author at all, instead covering costs through university subvention, library consortium membership fees, or grant funding built into the press’s own operating model. This is the book-publishing analogue of a diamond open access journal.
Library and consortium funding. Some presses and platforms use a crowd-funding-style model in which a critical mass of library subscriptions or pledges unlocks open access for a title or a set of titles, spreading the cost across many institutions rather than one author.
Dedicated funder block grants. Some funders that mandate open access for long-form outputs also provide a dedicated pot of money to cover the resulting BPCs, separate from their journal-article OA funding. UKRI, for example, runs a dedicated long-form open access fund alongside its monograph policy specifically because BPCs are a real new cost that its policy creates for authors and institutions.

Licensing an Open Access Book

The same Creative Commons licenses used for journal articles and research data are used for OA books, but the mix looks different in practice. CC BY (attribution only) is the default preferred by most funder mandates and by cOAlition S’s Plan S framework, but book publishers — more often than journal publishers — also commonly offer CC BY-NC (non-commercial) or CC BY-NC-ND (non-commercial, no derivatives) variants, largely because a press’s revenue from translation rights, foreign-language editions, or a subsequent commercial edition depends on retaining more control than a fully permissive license allows. Authors weighing a monograph contract should check which CC variant a funder mandate actually requires (some accept only CC BY; others, like UKRI’s long-form policy, also accept other CC licenses or the UK Open Government Licence) before signing a publishing agreement that only offers a more restrictive option. See CASRAI’s broader guide to Creative Commons licenses for how the individual license terms work.

Where Open Access Books Are Indexed and Hosted

DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) is the book-equivalent of a journal directory like DOAJ: a curated discovery service indexing peer-reviewed open access books across disciplines and publishers, developed in partnership with OpenEdition and operated under the OAPEN Foundation.
OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) operates both DOAB and its own OAPEN Library, a hosting and dissemination platform that stores and distributes the full text of thousands of peer-reviewed OA books, concentrated in the humanities and social sciences.
OMP (Open Monograph Press), maintained by the Public Knowledge Project (the same organization behind Open Journal Systems), is a free, open-source editorial and publishing workflow platform built specifically for book-length open access publishing, used by a number of scholar-led and university presses to run their OA book programs.

For authors, getting a finished book properly deposited in DOAB (most publishers handle this automatically as part of their OA workflow) is what makes it discoverable alongside other OA scholarship, in the same way a DOI and repository deposit does for a journal article.

Funder and Institutional Policies for Long-Form Outputs

Open access requirements for monographs and edited collections are still catching up to the maturity of journal-article mandates. UKRI’s open access policy for monographs, book chapters, and edited collections is a concrete, currently-live example: effective for outputs published from 1 January 2024, it requires the version of record or author’s accepted manuscript to be freely available within 12 months of publication, accepts CC BY (preferred), other CC licenses, or the UK Open Government Licence, and included a “bedding-in” period during which compliance was expected but not strictly enforced. It is a deliberately separate, more flexible instrument from UKRI’s journal-article policy, which requires immediate CC BY with no embargo. See CASRAI’s dedicated guide to the UKRI open access policy for monographs and book chapters for the full requirements, exceptions, and the associated long-form funding pot. Other funders and national frameworks are at earlier or differently-paced stages of extending journal-style OA requirements to books, so authors and research offices should check the specific funder’s policy rather than assuming journal-article terms carry over automatically.

Chapter-Level vs. Whole-Book Open Access

Open access status can attach at the book level, the chapter level, or both, and this matters most for edited collections: a funder mandate that covers “publications” arising from a grant may require only the specific chapter written by the funded author to be open, while the rest of the volume remains under the publisher’s standard terms. If you’re contributing a single chapter to an edited book rather than authoring or editing the whole volume, see CASRAI’s guide to writing a chapter for an edited academic book volume for how chapter-level rights and OA obligations typically work, and the guide to writing a university press book proposal for where open access terms fit into the proposal and contract-negotiation stage.

Practical Steps for Authors Considering an Open Access Monograph

Check your funder and institutional requirements first. Confirm whether your funder has a long-form/monograph OA policy (not just a journal-article policy), what license it requires, and whether a dedicated fund exists to cover a BPC.
Compare publishers’ OA programs, not just their prestige. BPC amounts, accepted license types, and whether a press offers a no-fee subsidized OA route vary enormously between university presses and scholar-led presses — ask directly rather than assuming standard journal-OA economics apply.
Budget for the BPC early. Because monograph BPCs are a five-figure cost in many cases, identify the funding source (funder block grant, library open access fund, institutional subvention) during proposal planning, not after a contract is signed.
Confirm DOAB/OAPEN deposit is part of the publisher’s workflow. Most established OA book publishers handle this automatically, but it’s worth confirming so the finished book is actually discoverable through the infrastructure researchers use to find OA monographs.
Read the license terms in the contract, not just the marketing page. A press’s website may describe a book as “open access” while the actual contract specifies a more restrictive CC variant than your funder mandate requires — verify before signing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is publishing an open access monograph the same process as publishing an open access journal article?

No. Books involve a longer production timeline, whole-manuscript peer review by the acquiring press rather than a standard journal peer-review workflow, and a funding/discovery infrastructure (BPCs, DOAB, OAPEN) that is largely separate from journal-article gold and green open access mechanics, even though both ultimately produce a freely readable output under an open license.

How much does it cost to publish a book open access?

Published library guidance on book processing charges puts the typical range for a standard-length monograph at roughly $5,000–$17,000 (about £4,000–£15,000), though exact fees vary by publisher, book length, and complexity, and some presses quote case-by-case. Diamond/subsidized OA presses may charge the author nothing at all, recovering costs through institutional or consortium funding instead.

Do all open access books use the same Creative Commons license?

No. CC BY is the most common default and the license most funder mandates prefer, but book publishers use CC BY-NC and CC BY-NC-ND more often than journal publishers do, largely to protect translation rights and future commercial editions. Always check which license variant your specific funder mandate requires before signing a contract.

Where can I find open access books?

DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) is the main cross-publisher discovery index for peer-reviewed OA books, and the OAPEN Library hosts full text for a large share of them, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Many university presses and scholar-led presses also list their OA titles directly on their own sites.

Does my journal-article open access mandate also cover my book chapter?

Not automatically. Most funders that have extended OA requirements to long-form outputs treat monographs, book chapters, and edited collections as a separate policy instrument, with its own compliance timeline, license rules, and (sometimes) dedicated funding — UKRI’s monograph policy is a current example of exactly this separation from its journal-article policy. Check your specific funder’s guidance rather than assuming the terms are identical.

Open Access Book and Monograph Publishing Explained