Milner Library has joined over 250 other libraries this year in supporting Direct to Open (D2O), a sustainable approach to funding Open Access monographs. Developed by the MIT Press and launched in early 2021, D2O was designed to help nonprofit scholarly presses thrive as well as make recent titles available for the public to read at no cost. In 2022—the first year of the program—participation fees from libraries helped provide open access to 80 titles.
The traditional practice of libraries purchasing single titles of scholarly monographs has long been unable to sustain the high costs of publishing these specialized resources. D2O provides a revenue model for scholarly presses to continue producing this scholarship which is an important publishing opportunity for many faculty, particularly in social sciences and humanities disciplines.
The D2O framework calls for libraries to contribute an annual fee, and if enough libraries join, monographs published during that year are made available Open Access. If the contribution threshold is not reached, libraries receive access to the titles published during the year they contributed.
Milner Library is supporting the complete collection, which means the Ilinois State University community has full read access to MIT Press’s backlist of around 2,500 digital monographs. MIT Press has demonstrated a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access through several ongoing initiatives, including the Fund for Diverse Voices.
Milner Library maintains an online guide with more information about agreements with publishers and publishing your work Open Access. Milner Library’s Scholarly Communication Team is also happy to speak with you, address any questions, and learn more about your goals. Contact us at isured@ilstu.edu.
