Palgrave Macmillan joins OASPA

Palgrave Macmillan has joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), a trade association which represents the interests of open access publishers in all academic disciplines.

Palgrave Macmillan published its first open-access monograph, Fungal Disease in Britain and the United States 1850-2000, funded by The Wellcome Trust, under a CC-BY licence in November 2013. An open-access option has been available for journals since 2011, and for Palgrave Pivots and monographs since January 2013.

Carrie Calder, director of market development, Palgrave Macmillan said: 'It’s important that we advance open access in the humanities and social sciences, whilst ensuring models are sustainable. We know the demand is there, because over two thirds of our academics across all HSS disciplines said that they thought open access would benefit their specific field.'

Paul Peters, president of OASPA, which developed a separate membership criteria for open access books this year, commented: 'We are pleased to have the support of a major publisher for the Humanities and Social Sciences in Palgrave Macmillan, who have shown their commitment to a standard licensing approach by offering the CC BY licence for their open-access books. OASPA hopes that this will add to the momentum of creative commons licensing uptake for open access books on a broader scale, as is already well established for open access journals, and that Palgrave Macmillan will help to lead the way for more OA book publishers to follow suit.'