This video provides information about the Big Ten Open Books initiative (
https://bigtenopenbooks.org/).
Big Ten Open Books is a collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The first collection, published in June of 2023, is on the subject of Gender and Sexuality studies. Participating presses are Indiana University Press, Michigan State University Press, Northwestern University Press, Purdue University Press, University of Michigan Press, and University of Wisconsin Press.
This collection has established a model for unified, open-access publishing of scholarly monographs. It creates open content, on open infrastructure, using open distribution models - to envision a robust programmatic future for open monograph publishing. This work is aligned with the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s development of the BIG Collection's ambition of uniting the collections of the libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, and is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Public Knowledge program.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance continues its advocacy for a sustainable and open ecosystem of publication. Collectively, our institutions’ more than 50,000 faculty are supported by over $11 billion in research funding, and our institutions have similarly invested significantly in our capacity to further our missions to advance knowledge. Together, we produce roughly 15% of the research publications in the United States.