We launched the Flip it Open pilot as an experiment in June 2021. In April this year, less than 8 months after the publication of the first titles in August 2021, we are excited to announce that the first three titles are being flipped to open access.

The pilot has generated a lot of interest from the libraries, who we engaged with the request to not change anything about the way they were buying, but simply to support the pilot and these titles by adding them to their EBAs and other purchases. If buying patterns did not change, we were confident that we could flip books within 18 months of publication, and hopeful that we could do it a lot sooner. In fact, the community spirit to help flip monographs to open access has been overwhelming with 57 libraries already contributing to the pilot.

Interest in the pilot has also come from authors asking how they can add their books to the mix, which has encouraged us to start thinking seriously about what the future of the program looks like. Watch this space.

As with any experiment, the last couple of months has also offered up a lot of learning experiences for us. A particularly vexing problem has been working out how to set up retrospective OA capabilities in a way that works for the many parties involved (publishers, buyers, authors and educators). We’re actively thinking about the needs of both libraries and researchers and incorporating that into what the best solution will be for flipping books to OA. Internally the pilot has prompted questions about workflow and our metadata and how this change in title information is shared with our customers and readers in a way that’s meaningful for usage, citation, and  the career development of academics who author the books.

The freedom we’re allowing ourselves to try different methods of producing a sustainable retrospective OA service is unique. This means it has required a cross-functional group to work in a very agile way to identify, solve and innovate their way around problems as they come up.

As the rest of the titles in the pilot publish over the next couple of months we expect more questions, experimentation, and excitement. We still have much to learn. The pilot is scheduled to complete in May 2023, 18 months after the last publications. We’ll be sure to report back on what we find out.