For Institutions

Open Books is the Royal Danish Library’s national publishing platform for e-books from Danish research institutions. This site provides comprehensive information for institutions interested in establishing their own publication site on Open Books.

Contents

1. What are the advantages of being a publisher on Open Books?
2. What does it require to become a publisher on Open Books?
3. Open Access
4. Copyright
5. The software behind Open Books and the editorial workflow

1. What are the advantages of being a publisher on Open Books?

  • Being a publisher on Open Books is free-of-charge for your institution.
  • Your institution gets a dedicated site to showcase your research.
  • Your institution can publish research outputs that would otherwise not have been made available.
  • Open Books supports the entire editorial workflow including peer review.
  • The publications are Open Access making them readable and usable for everyone without delay or subscription.
  • The publications will be integrated into a global scholarly infrastructure.
  • The Royal Danish Library can help you set up a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for your publications at no cost.
  • The Royal Danish Library offers guidance on how your publications can be indexed in relevant databases.

2. What does it require to become a publisher on Open Books?

Being a publisher on Open Books requires that your institution conducts research. The publications must have a professional or scholarly objective and must have been prepared in relation to research activities. Your institution is responsible for ensuring the quality of the publications, e.g. through peer review.

As an Open Access platform, Open Books has a number of requirements concerning accessibility, licensing, and copyright to the publications. You can read more about these requirements below.

Your institution will sign a contract with the Royal Danish Library covering the establishment of the Open Books site, the operation and maintenance of it, and the support you will receive from the library.

It is possible to move previously published e-books to Open Books if the rights have been cleared.

If your institution is interested in establishing a publication site on Open Books, you can contact the Open Books support team at the Royal Danish Library by sending an e-mail toopenbooks@kb.dk.

3. Open Access

On Open Books, all content is published Open Access. This means that all publications will be openly available to readers without delay or subscription. Authors and institutions will not be charged any fees such as Book Processing Charges (BPC).

As a rule, all content must be published with a Creative Commons (CC)-licence. The license allows readers to reuse the content for other purposes in accordance with the terms of the license. However, content that has previously been made available elsewhere can be published on Open Books without a license.

The institution will be able to choose a CC-license as a default for publications on their site. However, authors should be able to choose a different license for their publication.

The Royal Danish Library offers support in Open Access publishing practices including Creative Commons licensing.

The authors retain copyright to their publications on Open Books. However, other conditions may apply if the publication has previously been made available elsewhere. In such cases, the copyright conditions must be clearly stated in connection with the publication.

The author is responsible for clearing rights to others’ content and to clearly state these rights in the publication.

5. Softwaren bag Open Books og det redaktionelle arbejde

Open Books is based on the software Open Monograph Press (OMP). This software supports the entire editorial workflow including submission of manuscripts, peer review, copyediting, and publishing. The layout must be done outside the software and must meet web accessibility requirements.

The software allows search engines such as Google Scholar to harvest and share information about the publications. The software can handle persistent identifiers such as DOI and ORCiD. Metadata can also be exported to reference management tools.

Open Books is open source and is developed by Public Knowledge Project (PKP). PKP also develops the software Open Journal Systems (OJS), which is used for the Royal Danish Library’s publishing platform for journals, tidsskrift.dk.