More and more publishers are trying the Open Access model. For most of the publishers though, this means a hybrid model. There are few publishers who are solely Open Access publishers.
“At Open Book Publishers we are changing the nature of the traditional academic book. As well as printed editions, we offer online digital editions free of charge so that students, researchers and members of the public who cannot afford a printed edition can still have access to quality research. We are proud to say that our online titles are currently being accessed by hundreds of readers each month in over 120 countries. Our digital publishing model allows us to extend our books well beyond the printed page. On our website, we produce online supplementary material, including extra chapters, reviews, links, image galleries and other digital resources.”
More and more authors are publishing their book-length studies with renowned publishing houses, but at the same time offering access to the content of their books in various formats (HTML or PDF). Here are some notable authors and their freely available books:
- John Willinsky (with MIT Press): The Access Principle (2005)
- Marti A. Hearst (with Cambridge University Press): Search User Interfaces (2009)
- Christoper D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, Hinrich Schütze (with Cambridge University Press): Introduction to Information Retrieval (2008)