8 Benefits of Open Access Books over Conventional Publishing
The academic world is emerging each day with new ideas and scopes for their authors. Academic books have their own readers too who love to associate themselves with quality intellectual knowledge; in fact, knowledge-sharing helps students and researchers a lot. With this on mind, many researchers nowadays publish their thesis as online open access books for a wider recognition of their work. Online open-access book is an excellent medium of knowledge sharing, mutually. It benefits the author as well as the readers.
- Free and Easy Access– Books can be accessed without any substantial barrier in this mode. Most publishers and repositories do not impose any fee on its readers hence, price barriers are substantially lowered. Authors can propagate their own work or enrich their materials with references from open access books without any corresponding cost. The reach of materials increases tremendously with open access sources irrespective of reader’s/author’s economic status or geographic location.
- Increased Citation and Readership– Many studies have shown that open access academic works are viewed much more than those that require subscription to publication houses/journals. This makes sense, because from a reader’s perspective, it is difficult to get the essence of a paper from only the abstract, and readers are rarely willing to pay something like $50 for a few days of access to a few materials. Since materials get higher viewership, number of citations also increase. Online open access books are not regular fiction, they are meant for a particular audience. This model not only got them higher total downloads and citations, but attracted a high number of downloads over a longer period when compared to non-open access materials.
- Compliance with Funder Mandates– Many research funders require authors to publish with freelicence, with no restrictions on re-use (anyone using your work will still have to acknowledge the original resource).
- Immediacy and Complete Control– Through Open access books, the research results can be made immediately available to not just others within that community but also those beyond, including other scientists and laypeople. Also, author has complete control on what he chooses to distribute.
- Access for Researches in Developing Countries– With the prominence of open access books in the digital world, students and researchers from developing countries like India, Africa and others get fair opportunity to share their knowledge and gather inspiration from related works. No wonder, why several traditional publishers are also opening gates for online open access book, like Manchester University Press, Bloomsbury Open content and Springer Open books. So, it is an approved model of thesis publication worldwide. Do not wait to publish your thesis as a book.
- Modes of Availability– In the open access model, research material need not be restricted to articles and books only, unlike traditional publishing. Any kind of digital content, including text, images, raw and processed data, audio/video and software can be part of a digital archive.
- Reasonable Publishing Cost: Publishing costs are extremely reasonable and rejections are less- Since open-access publications are usually less expensive to produce and disseminate. In some cases, authors may be required to pay enhanced publication charges. Many traditional publishers have made part of their content open access which has enhanced their visibility and attracted subscriptions. In this model there are less rejections, so author stays motivated to produce quality work every time.
- Increased Interdisciplinary Conversation– Interdisciplinary publications foster greater dialogue across disciplines, helping to find novel approaches to traditional problems. Publishers who publish online open-access book on variety topics and fields, help open up your research to a wider academic community.
Hence, the benefits of open-access publishing are clear. They are way better and faster than the traditional routes of publishing. The scope is huge and the books reach faster to the readers. So, if you want to spread your research beyond the research community, want all people to benefit from it, publish your thesis as an open access book.
How much do you charge for the manuscript for publication
This is interesting. How does the author benefit financially, i.e. recoup his expenses.
It is quite a welcome idea and I am excited about it. However, what are the procedures one has got to go through.