Opening the Future Annual Report 2024

Posted by Kira Hopkins on Feb. 3, 2025 at 1116

2024 was a busy year for Opening the Future and our participating publishers. We had a couple of major goals at the outset:

  1.  to continue supporting our existing publishers with implementing the model and navigate the start of the renewals process;

  2. to onboard some new publishers. 

1) Existing publishers

So firstly, here’s an update on our two partner presses, CEU Press and Liverpool University Press (LUP). 

Between both presses, we hit the milestone of 30 publications that were fully OtF-funded, 9 at LUP and 21 at CEU Press. 

Their numbers illustrate the different ways in which they have used the model. It represents a steady three publications per year on LUP’s Hispanic Studies list, which is nearly half of their ‘Liverpool Latin American Studies’ and ‘Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures’ series since 2022. CEU Press meanwhile, who opted to apply the model to their entire monograph list, have published 21 OtF funded titles so far, with 9 of these coming out in 2024. This follows a steady growth in 2022 and 2023, and represents around half of their entire monograph frontlist last year. We’re pleased that the model is working very well to the varying scales at both publishers; strongly supporting Hispanic and Lusophone cultural publishing at LUP, and also allowing for the steady and sustainable conversion of more of CEU Press’s frontlist to open access. Funding is already accrued at both publishers to continue this pattern for 2025 and beyond, and we will be announcing the next four OtF-funded titles at CEU Press, due out before April, very soon. 

A full list of all books published in 2024 is at the bottom of this update and available on the OtF websites. They cover an incredible range of topics, often shedding light on current world events: from urgent examinations of Putin's Russia and historical accounts of Nazi dictatorships, to Spanish expeditions in 16th century South America, and modern Latin American women's fiction.

Impact

Not only are these books being published, they are being read, according to the OAPEN data for 2024. CEU Press’ OtF-funded titles were read a total of 9231 times, while LUP’s OtF funded titles were read a total of 2624 times, for a combined total of 11855 (OAPEN usage data only - the books are all available on multiple other platforms, so these figures are indicative). 

Excluding any other platforms they were read on, this means that the OtF funded books were read on average 32 times a day in 2024. 

Or, to look at this another way, averaged out across all 30 titles, that’s around 395 reads per title. 

This degree of usage demonstrates one of the core values of publishing research open access (dissemination and reach), and we appreciate the financial support of our library members in enabling this. 


New and renewing libraries - a call to action

This year marked the real start of library renewals for CEU Press and, later in the year, for LUP as the library members of both began reaching the end of their initial three year subscriptions in 2024. The question of renewals and the mid-term sustainability of OtF, is one we are asked very often in webinars and meetings with publishers and libraries. This stems from the fact that OtF remains the only collective funding model that is fundamentally acquisition-based, as after the first three-year term, the library retains permanent access to the backlist package they have subscribed to. 

We therefore approach renewals in a different way to other models where, for example, access is only given for as long as the library subscribes. CEU Press has offered additional backlist packages, and LUP has focused instead on renewing members with their OA frontlist supporter package decoupled from the backlist. 

While it’s too early to make any conclusions on the renewal rate for LUP, nearly a year of renewal data for CEU Press indicates a fairly steady rate of c. 40% renewals. Where reasons were given for not renewing, invariably it was institutional budget cuts. The financial situation for many libraries around the world is undoubtedly getting much tougher, and we sympathise with colleagues that are in difficult situations.

Given this current financial climate in HEIs, and the fact that, with our model, the initial purchase is completed after the first term, we feel that this is a relatively strong rate of renewal. Between renewals and continuing new sign ups, OtF funds have continued to accumulate at both presses and they both still have accrued enough funds to continue their current rate of OtF-funded publication for some time. However, both publishers will only be able to continue this, or expand it, if they maintain support. Therefore, if you are a library member due for renewal soon we would urge you to continue your support of equitable and sustainable OA publishing at our presses if you’re able. And if your library is not currently a supporter but you’re interested in it becoming one, please take a look at the books on offer from CEU Press and the different set of books offered by Liverpool University Press. 

For full details of renewals and new sign ups please see the announcements on our news pages, and follow our BlueSky account and our LinkedIn pages.


2) Working with new publishers

In the spring, we began seriously to engage with one of our main goals for 2024, to work with a further three publishers. We had many productive, thought-provoking discussions in the following months, and are pleased to announce that we are in the process of signing an agreement with one publisher, and in advanced talks with one other. (There is still opportunity for one more small/medium-sized publisher to work with us in 2025 - get in touch if you’d like to know more, on OpeningTheFuture@copim.ac.uk). 

We are very excited to expand our work and support into new geographical areas, and into new subjects - details to follow soon. 

In other news

The Opening the Future Library Advisory Board

In early 2024 we also began to consider our own internal project governance, and how we could more concretely centre the perspectives of the library community that supports our work, as we refine our funding model and its implementation. So we sent out a call for participants to our new Library Advisory Board. 

We were grateful for the volume of positive responses received, and held our first board meeting in early November. It was an extremely productive and informative meeting for us. We are grateful to our members for generously giving up their time and knowledge to us, and will have been able to put some of their excellent advice to practice before our next quarterly meeting in February.

Areas we discussed were the pros and cons of collective OA models in general and the challenges and opportunities presented by OtF in particular. They also shared valuable feedback on how we present the benefits and information on our website - we look forward to putting some of their ideas into action in 2025. 


Advocacy and Outreach

While a lot of our work is day to day implementation, advocacy and outreach is a core component of our role, not just for OtF and our presses specifically, but for collective funding models more generally. For equitable and sustainable OA funding to flourish, the funding landscape more broadly needs to support this, a concept succinctly described as ‘enabling not acquiring’ by a UK Library Director on a webinar we co-organised with the UK library network SCONUL in early 2024. 

On the same principle, OtF presented with Elaine Sykes, Director of Open Research at Lancaster University, at the UKSG Conference 2024. The theme was on moving collective models away from ‘back of the sofa’ or leftover budget money and into more reliable budget lines. A recording is available of the webinar version. We also presented a paper about collective OA funding for books at Kennesaw Digital State’s ‘All Things Open’ week in 2024; spoke on our model as an acquisition-based programme at NAG webinar week; presented at the Charleston Conference in the USA; had several interesting face-to-face discussions with publishers at Frankfurt Book Fair; and contributed to other wider Copim events such as a webinar co-hosted with Jisc on library evaluation criteria for OA schemes. 

We will continue this advocacy work in 2025, with speaking slots at UKSG and Researcher to Reader in the diary so far!


Conclusions and Future Plans 

2024 was a busy and productive year, within a busy and productive multi-year project. The goal of Opening the Future since its inception in 2020 has been to help change how OA books are funded, using collective funding to move away from inequitable and unsustainable BPCs. 

2024 has been an excellent demonstrator of the successes of that goal. Our library supporters have enabled both CEU Press and Liverpool UP to continue publishing OA books from authors who might not otherwise have been able to afford this. These books have, as the OAPEN statistics demonstrate, been widely viewed by readers who may not otherwise have had access to them. 

We reached our first big hurdle of subscription renewals and, despite an extremely challenging financial climate in HEIs globally, have managed to maintain a level of support via renewals and new subscriptions. CEU Press has continued its incremental goal of gradually flipping their entire monograph frontlist, while Liverpool UP has continued to demonstrate this model working well on a single-list scale. 

But while we are proud of what was achieved in 2024, it has not been without its difficulties, as the call to action above outlines. We know that library budgets are extremely tight right now and that OA for books is understandably not a priority for many. But we also believe that at a time when many Arts, Humanities and Social Science departments are under threat of closure, open access for books could be one of the strongest tools these departments have for proving their relevance, their reach, impact and vibrancy. Our model is helping to disseminate AHSS books globally through an equitable approach that costs its library members a fraction of the BPCs and fees charged by many of the major commercial publishers.

For 2025, we will be expanding with new publishers into new geographical areas and lists, as well as continuing to support our original publishers and shore up their sustainability. 

To sign up to our mailing list for quarterly updates and other news, please click here.


New OtF books published in 2024

With thanks again for the support of library members - without you it would not have been possible for us to publish the following titles OA in 2024: