MIT Press’s Direct to Open reaches annual funding goal

The MIT Press has announced that Direct to Open (D2O) has reached its full funding goal for 2025 and will open access to 80 new monographs and edited book collections in the spring and fall publishing seasons.

Launched in 2021, D2O is an framework for open access monographs that shifts publishing from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model.

“It has been one of the greatest privileges of my career to contribute to this program and demonstrate that our academic community can unite to publish high-quality open access monographs at scale,” said Amy Harris, Senior Manager of Library Relations and Sales at the MIT Press. “We are deeply grateful to all of the consortia that have partnered with us and to the hundreds of libraries that have invested in this program. Together, we are expanding the public knowledge commons in ways that benefit scholars, the academy, and readers around the world.”

Among the highlights from the MIT Press’s fourth D2O funding cycle is a new three-year, consortium-wide commitment from the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC) and a renewed three-year commitment from the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA). These long-term partnerships will play a pivotal role in supporting the Press’s open access efforts for years to come.

“The Florida Virtual Campus is honored to participate in D2O in order to provide this collection of high-quality scholarship to more than 1.2 million students and faculty at the 28 state colleges and 12 state universities of Florida,” said Elijah Scott, Executive Director of Library Services for the Florida Virtual Campus. “The D2O program allows FLVC to make this research collection available to our member libraries while concurrently fostering the larger global aspiration of sustainable and equitable access to information.”

“The Libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance are committed to supporting the creation of open access content,” added Kate McCready, Program Director for Open Publishing at the Big Ten Academic Alliance Library. “We’re thrilled that our participation in D2O contributes to the opening of this collection, as well as championing the exploration of new models for opening scholarly monographs.”