For more than a week now I have been moderating a wonderful discussion on Open Access books as part of wider user needs research for the DOAB (The Directory of Open Access Books). DOAB is a discovery service for Open Access monographs which provides a searchable index to peer-reviewed monographs and edited volumes published under an Open Access business model, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher’s website or repository.

The discussion has touched on a variety of topics including rights, re-use, quality control, formats, business models, and more theoretical debates on the specificity of different kinds of books, ideology and pragmatism, alternative modes of knowledge production, plurality of opinions and consensus, Open Access and experimentation as a radical critique of technocracy etc.

You can still join the discussion, which will be running until this Sunday. Please find more practical information on the discussion, and how to join, underneath.

Next week, from the 9^th until the 22^nd of July, the DOAB (The Directory of Open Access Books) will be hosting an open, online and moderated discussion on Open Access books. This online discussion with publishers, scholars and the wider Open Access and publishing community will focus on getting an overview of opinions and views that exist on Open Access books, and quality control, peer review and the Open Access publishing of books.

The goal of this discussion will not be to decide on a definition of what constitutes an Open Access book or on what the proper way to publish an OA book is. Although the data gathered through discussions on these topics will be used to formulate recommendations for the DOAB, the idea of this discussion is more to establish a set of ‘lowest common denominators’, requirements for entry that are flexible and can change, following the processual nature of both books and the discourse on Open Access books. This discussion is thus predominantly meant to gain an overview of the views and opinions that exist in the scholarly and publishing community with respect to Open Access books.

To subscribe to the DOAB mailing list, where the discussion will take place, please follow this link: https://listserv.gwdg.de/mailman/listinfo/doab

The discussion will take place over two weeks, but feel free to jump in at any time that is convenient for you. Archives of the discussion will be kept here, and digests of the daily discussion will be posted to the DOABlog.

We will start off the discussion on Monday the 9^th with an introductory email. The main questions that will lead the discussion are:

• What is an Open Access book?
• What is an Open Access book publisher?
• What kind of copyright licenses are suitable to use with an OA book?
• What kind of quality control do we need for OA books?
• What kinds of peer review are seen as authorative?

However, please feel free to add questions, or suggest other topics for discussion.

For any further questions, or if you are having problems subscribing to the mailing list, please contact: info@oapen.nl