Open Access

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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 I 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.

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Open? When Site Restrictions and Clauses Undermine Open Access

Open access publishing has transformed the way research circulates. In principle, open access means that anyone, anywhere, can read and reuse scholarly work without financial, legal, or technical barriers. But in practice, many works labeled as “open” are quietly constrained by restrictions that limit how they can be used, especially by machines.

NIH Building

The NIH Public Access Policy: Implementation and Feedback

The NIH Public Access Policy is in effect as of July 1, 2025. In response, Authors Alliance and SPARC have created a form to collect information about challenges or questions faced by authors, librarians and their institutions in complying with the roll out of new public access policies by federal grant making agencies in compliance with the OSTP directive to make federally funded research freely available to the public immediately upon publication. 

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