Big Ten Open Books: An Interview with Kate McCready (BTAA) and Charles Watkinson (UM)

Authors Alliance has had a longstanding interest in helping authors see their older books reinvigorated with new life by making them available online for free on an open access basis. One of the most exciting initiatives working on OA for backlist books is the Big Ten Open Books program. This post is based on a set of questions we posed to Kate McCready (Program Director for Open Publishing, Center for Library Programs at the Big Ten Academic Alliance) and Charles Watkinson (Director of University of Michigan Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing at the University of Michigan) about what the program is and how it works.

1) What are the goals of the Big Ten Open Books program?  

The Big Ten Open Books program aims to develop a sustainable approach for creating open access copies of scholarly monographs previously published by Big Ten affiliated university presses. The program is a collaboration between those presses and the academic librarians at Big Ten Academic Alliance member institutions to publish thematic collections of 100 books each. The production team is based at the University of Michigan.   

2) I see that the project started in 2023, with 100 titles already opened up, and you’ve got a number of books available now for “sponsorship.” What are the basic terms you’ve been able to work out for opening up books, and what success have you had so far in terms of broadening the reach of these books?  

Yes, we began publication in 2023 with our first collection focused on Gender and Sexuality Studies. The next collection of 100 ebooks on Indigenous North Americans was published this August. The topics were identified by a group led by the Collection Development Officers. Initially, the Big Ten Academic Alliance Center for Library Programs funded the program. Now, we are looking to scale our efforts and are seeking support from other institutions to fund the creation of these open access versions of the books.  We have three more collections under development: African-, Asian-, and Hispanic American Experiences, Health Disparities and Disability Culture, and Human Environmental Impact. Institutions can sponsor a book for $3800. So far, of the 300 books we are seeking to re-publish openly, we have nearly 150 titles sponsored.  

Financial sustainability for both libraries and university presses is foundational to our work, and we have built from there. We provide $2000 per title to the university presses and are completely transparent about the costs to produce a high quality, fully accessible open access ebook.  

3) What do you find has been the biggest challenge for the project so far?  

Title selection has been harder than we thought it would be. We are looking for semi-recent, relevant works where the presses have (or can obtain) all the rights and permissions needed to make the works openly available. We also want to be sure that the participating presses can afford to make the works open access because they can no longer sell ebook copies to libraries once they agree to make an open access copy.  

Unsurprisingly, funding this work is challenging. It is expensive to create these works, but we continue to be motivated by the huge impact we’re seeing. Though documenting impact is another challenge we face, we’ve been blown away by the usage of the first two collections. In just two years, these books have been downloaded by over 1 million people! The response to our program has been tremendously positive from both authors and readers. Authors are thrilled that their work is reaching new audiences. Readers are incredibly grateful that these materials are available to them without charges. Of the hundreds of thank yous and comments we see recurring themes that highlight the benefits of providing vetted, well researched, scholarly materials to the world:  

• “I’m an adjunct academic who loves researching and teaching on Indigenous issues and your collection is incredible!”  

• “Very nice for students looking to save $ on course materials, tbs. Thanks for providing this service.” 

• “It is very hard to find academic books if you are not a member of a university. Open access books are so important.” 

• “Easily accessible ebooks are powerful and wonderful, please keep it up.” 

• “Thank you for providing free and open content. You are the shining beacon of what the Internet was meant to be.” 

4) Do you have a sense of what the project might look like in 2-3 years? Are there plans to expand?  

We are expanding our work by publishing multiple collections at one time. This allows other institutions to fund those works that are highest priorities for their affiliates and scholars. We are also working to identify future collection areas through a deep analysis of all titles that have been published by the Big Ten university presses.  

5) How have authors reacted to the project?  

They’ve been so excited to see their books have a second life! We have a couple video testimonials that demonstrate how important the authors feel it is to make their books widely available. The humanities and social science scholars who authored the books included in Big Ten Open Books did so to bring attention to different aspects of our world and culture, and they’re overwhelmingly thrilled to gain new readers.  

6) Do you have any suggestions for other libraries, presses, or others who might be interested in pursuing a similar initiative?  

 When we began our work, there were no other programs actively working on making in-copyright backlist content (older than one year) open access. Now that we’ve developed systems and figured out solutions, we are happy to share our model with others. We also believe we have encouraged colleagues in other libraries and presses to focus on backlist. I would also suggest that if others are interested, we should work together to find solutions that find even more efficiencies to make this work more scalable.