Affiliations: htwk leipzig -leipzig university of applied sciences, 04251 leipzig, germany[1] Orcid ids: 0000-0001-7080-634X[1], 0000-0003-1126-3415[2], 0000-0001-9169-5685[3] Contact

Across the world, there is a growing interest in Open Access (OA) publishing. Therefore, OA publishing has become a trend and is of key importance to the scientific community. However, observing the publication landscape in Germany leads to a striking finding of very different approaches. In particular, OA book publishing is still in relatively early stages, leading to OA books being much less frequently published than OA journal articles. However, although well-established publishers offer the publication of OA books, only certain researchers can actually publish, because of high Book Processing Charges (BPCs). In contrast to such publishers, university presses publish books as OA without any or at significantly lower charges; however, university presses are often inadequately staffed and do not have the technical know-how of the state-of-the-art publishing of OA books possessed by well-established publishers. For these reasons, our research project aims to develop an ideal and transferable publication workflow for OA books that is both cost-effective and personnel-efficient as well as media-neutral to enable universities to publish their publications as OA. To this end, a one-day meeting with stakeholders of the publication landscape was held in June 2018 at the University of Applied Science in Leipzig, Germany. During the meeting, the stakeholders were asked to present their views on the current situation and also the lessons learned and the shortcomings of the existing approaches. As a result, the observation was confirmed that the publication landscape is very heterogeneous and that there are no standardised interfaces and no harmonised practices for publishing OA books. Furthermore, in a discussion with the stakeholders during the second part of the meeting, further various issues of OA book publishing were revealed that have to be considered. Additionally, the various challenges and wishes of the stakeholders could be classified into five topic areas. These findings illustrate that the primary task of the research project has to be the analysis of the existing publishing workflows and abstracting generally valid processes that are needed to publish OA books. Additionally, the further issues of OA book publishing, mentioned by the stakeholders, have to be addressed during the development. The five topic areas will help reduce the complexity of this project.

A draft (final version) of an media-neutral as well as both cost-effective and personnel-efficient publications workflow for Open Access (OA) monograph publishing at university presses is presented. The workflow has been developed as a result of the research project Open-Access-Hochschulverlag at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, Germany. The aim of the project is to develop a sustainable and adoptable workflow to enable universities to publish their publications as OA and printed books simultaneously in a state-of-the-art way and without any restrictions regarding the license, the variety of formats, print run etc. Up to now, we have defined 17 process groupswith up to 9processes,which a university press has to consider when publishing OA books state-of-the-art. These processes have been shown on the poster (it is the final version of the project, two preliminary versionswerealready published in April and June 2019). The arrangement and the arrows between the processes indicate in which order the processes should be ideally organised by the university presses. Since any university may adapt that workflow individually, it includes several possible ways by which an OA book can be published (see process group Ka or Qe at the poster). The visualisation of the publication workflow represents only a part of the results of our research project. In addition detailed descriptions for each process have been created, which explain a certain process in depth, e.g. who is responsible for it, what time it takes and what it may cost to complete the process. These detailed descriptions will be published elsewhere.

A first draft of an media-neutral as well as both cost-effective and personnel-efficient publications workflow for Open Access (OA) monograph publishing at university presses is presented. The workflow has been developed as a result of the research project Open-Access-Hochschulverlag at the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, Germany. The aim of the project is to develop a sustainable and adoptable workflow to enable universities to publish their publications as OA and printed books simultaneously in a state-of-the-art way and without any restrictions regarding the license, the variety of formats, print run etc. Up to now, we have defined 20 main processes with up to 12 sub-processes which a university press has to consider when publishing OA books state-of-the-art. These processes have been shown on the poster. The arrangement and the arrows between the processes indicate in which order the processes should be ideally organised by the university presses. Since any university may adapt that workflow individually, it includes several possible ways by which an OA book can be published (see process 1 or 3 at the poster). The visualisation of the publication workflow represents only a part of the results of our research project. In addition detailed descriptions for each process have been created, which explain a certain process in depth, e.g. who is responsible for it, what time it takes and what it may cost to complete the process. These detailed descriptions will be published elsewhere.

The poster is an overview of the research project Open-Access-Hochschulverlag (in english Open Access University Press), that is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Germany) for 23 months (Start in May 2018). Open Access (OA) book publishing is still in relatively early stages, leading to academic books being much less frequently published OA than research journal articles. This has various effects on the publication landscape, which are described here. Despite established publishers meanwhile also offer the publication of OA monographs, only certain researchers can actually publish, because of high Book Processing Charges (BPCs) up to 10,000 USD and more. In contrast, university presses have started to publish monographs as OA without any or at significantly lower charges; however, university presses often do not have the technical know-how of the state-of-the-art publishing of OA books possessed by academic publishers. This is why, our research project aims to develop an sustainable and easy-to-adopt publication workflow for OA monographs, which is media-neutral as well as both cost-effective and personnel-efficient. Universities shall be enabled to publish their book publications as OA by adopting this workflow. In addition, first results and an outlook ahead to the further steps of the research project are depicted on the poster.