OpenEdition Books is a platform that brings together a consortium of international publishers interested in digitally publishing works generated by research in the humanities and social sciences. The platform currently hosts over 120 online publishers, with 83% of books published open access.

The platform is developed by OpenEdition, a French national research infrastructure dedicated to scholarly communication in the humanities and social sciences as well as furthering open science.

Are you a book publisher planning to publish humanities and social sciences content? Are you already a member of the OpenEdition Books publisher consortium and planning to submit a new series?

If so, get in touch by sending an email to accession[at]openedition.org.

Content

Why choose OpenEdition Books?

Application form

Reviewing applications

Acceptance criteria

Contact information

Material

 

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Why choose OpenEdition Books?

OpenEdition Books is a multilingual and open access platform promoting scholarly publications from across the humanities and social sciences. It enables content to reach a very wide audience by offering publishers the opportunity to incorporate an open science approach into their publishing practices.

Once a publisher has been granted access to our services, we help the publisher’s team create a website on the platform and also provide training on the electronic publishing software Lodel. In other words, OpenEdition helps editorial teams learn how to use various publishing tools and manage their own digital publishing process. Teams are then free to manage the publication of their series on their dedicated website. We continue to provide editorial advice and technical support once the publisher is online.

Example of a website hosted by our platform: https://books.openedition.org/irdeditions/

• semantic structuring of metadata (using the XML TEI OpenEdition schema)
• data persistence and citability (DOI allocation)
• interoperability with other systems (OAI repository)
• automatic generation of portable formats (PDF and EPUB)

Lastly, all the publishers on the platform are added to the OpenEdition catalogue and benefit from our work on search engine optimization, which boosts their online visibility.

Application form

Applying as a new publisher

New publishers can submit an application by sending us an electronic version of the application file, which includes:

• the publisher application form
• the series application form (one for each series submitted)
• the metadata table for the titles (one for each series submitted)
• at least three titles per series, in PDF format

Download the form and its appendices

Submitting a new book series

Publishers from the OpenEdition Books platform that want to add a new series to their publisher’s website need to submit the following elements in digital format:

• the series application form (one for each series submitted)
• the metadata table for the titles (one for each series submitted)
• at least three titles per series, in PDF format
• do not fill in the new publisher application form
  

Download the form and its appendices

Submitting titles that are not part of a series

OpenEdition’s scientific board does not generally give priority to titles that are not part of a series on the OpenEdition Books platform. However, if a publisher is already on the platform and would like to submit a title that is not part of a series, they need to submit the following:

• a finalized copy of the submitted title in PDF format
• a presentation of the editorial project and the publication context
• peer reports for the publication (these peer reports can be anonymized)

Reviewing applications

Review process

1. The application is received and screened.
2. The editorial quality and technical feasibility of each project are reviewed by an internal board.
3. OpenEdition’s scientific board appraises the scientific and editorial project.
4. The scientific board issues a decision and the reasons for its decision.
5. The publisher is notified of the final decision.

Deadlines and notification

It takes an average of three months to review an application. The length varies depending on the complexity of the project. To streamline the process, we issue deadlines for submitting applications on an annual basis.

Deadlines for 2024:

• 23/01/2024
• 21/03/2024
• 14/05/2024
• 28/08/2024
• 23/10/2024

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Acceptance criteria

Eligibility

The quality of the content published on OpenEdition Books is guaranteed by several criteria that publishers need to meet before applying, including the following:

• series need to include at least three finalized books
• at least 50% of the content on a publisher’s website must be open access (full open access and/or Freemium open access)
• series must include a nationally and/or internationally diverse range of authors (authors that are not all from the same research laboratory or university)
• scientific content must be selected and peer reviewed according to clearly described processes
• publishers need to choose a licensing policy (Creative Commons or OpenEdition Books Licence) applicable to the website and all its content (licensing policy)

Publisher’s commitments

OpenEdition carries out its work as part of the National Plan for Open Science and gives priority to:

• series that state their editorial line in a clear and detailed way (including review processes)
• series that are open about their editorial bodies in terms of members and appointment processes (editorial board, etc.)
• series that are open about the steps taken a priori or a posteriori to ensure scientific integrity (in terms of data fabrication, plagiarism, etc.)
• publishers that are open about the types of agreement established with authors as well as the licensing policy applied
• series that provide bilingual abstracts to ensure better search engine optimization
• works published from 2000 onwards

OpenEdition does not give priority to:

• titles that are not part of a series (a specific application procedure has been set up for such titles – see above)
• assigning exclusive access status to titles published more than 5 years ago

Contact information

The same email address is used for submitting applications as well as any enquiries about the application procedure and processes: accession[at]openedition.org

By post

OpenEdition - Adhésions
Technopôle de Château-Gombert
22, rue John Maynard Keynes
Bâtiment C
13013 Marseille
FRANCE

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Material 

Sample contracts

• Opening science. Contracts for open science: https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/des-contrats-pour-la-science-ouverte/

Recommandations et aspects juridiques

• FAQ “Contracts and liability concerning contents published on OpenEdition Books and OpenEdition Journals”: https://objs-en.hypotheses.org/854
• [In French] Céline Barthonnat, Cécile Beauchamps, Odile Contat, Anne-Laure Stérin, Céline Vautrin. Recommandations et aspects juridiques relatifs à la création et à la diffusion d’une revue scientifique - V2. 2021. ⟨hal-01960919v2⟩