The Jisc OAPEN-UK project has produced a new Guide on Open Access Books for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Guide to open access monograph publishing for arts, humanities and social science researchers is available online and as a pdf download.

I’ve had a quick browse and it’s looks a really useful introduction to the state of play of Open Access book publishing.

The premise of the guide is that publishing books Open Access is some way behind publishing journal articles Open Access, and that is undoubtedly true.

Nevertheless, several publishers mentioned in the guide have been used by OU researchers to make their books Open Access. Martin Weller recently published “The Battle for Open” using ubiquity press, Ruth Finnegan has published both”Oral Literature in Africa” and “Why do we Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation” using OpenBook Publishers, and Alexander Mikroyannidis has recently co-edited an Open Access collection Responsive Open Learning Environments published by Springer.

So, it seems, OU researchers are taking the leap when it comes to publishing Open Access books.