OA Monographs and Their Impact on Revenue

Report: Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs

Released September 19, 2023

Brown, Laura, et al. "Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study." Ithaka S+R. Ithaka S+R. 19 September 2023. Web. 28 September 2023. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.319642

The central question behind this report was What happens to print sales when an OA edition of a scholarly monograph is also available on publication?

The introduction notes the deepest concern behind the joint AUPresses and Ithaka S+R joint investigation – the recognition that "it has been challenging to develop open access business models for books similar to the grant-supported APCs and transformative agreements that journal publishers have adopted. Moreover, smaller and even mid-sized university presses often lack the capital to experiment with new models. Perhaps more daunting still, with the decline in monograph sales over the last couple of decades, margins on academic books are so thin that publishers may fear that anything that threatens to cannibalize anticipated print sales of a scholarly title, such as a freely available open edition, is a threat to its viability."

Twenty-six university presses (In a range of sizes) responded, providing data on 976 titles published between 2005-2022. Investigators "believe the aggregated data set of nearly 1,000 titles can be used by individual publishers to measure against their own historical data of sales for traditional, fully-paywalled monographs."

The leading (and perhaps most reassuring) key insights were these:

OA titles can generate significant print revenue. While there may be some tradeoff between OA editions and print sales, publishers can produce print sales revenue from their OA lists. Publishers may wish to take such revenue into account in considering business models for OA publication today.

OA titles can generate meaningful digital revenue. When made available through consumer channels such as Kindle, ebooks that are available openly on other platforms can in parallel generate meaningful consumer sales. Publishers may benefit from giving focused consideration specific to OA monographs to their pricing and windowing tactics for such channels.

For perspective, a recent post on the Scholarly Kitchen blog -- one referenced by the authors of the report -- suggests that OA titles make up less than five percent of the total new monographic output of university presses. 

The full text of Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs may be found here. The page also includes a downloadable PDF.