Column by Alisha Rall, Academic Services Librarian, Kansas State University.
Exploring Open Access Monographs: MIT鈥檚 Direct to Open Model
To help celebrate Open Access Month this October, we would like to explore the unique position of the field of architecture in the broader scholarly communication landscape. MIT Direct to Open (D2O) is an emerging model to support open access publishing for monographs.
Background: Open Access in Arts, Humanities and Design
While open access has gained significant momentum in the sciences, its adoption within the arts and humanities has been comparatively slower. Several factors contribute to this trend:
- Open Access Mandates: Compared to the sciences, the disciples of humanities, arts and design receive less government funding. As a result, there has been less external pressure to comply with open access mandates for publicly funded research.
- Importance of the Monograph: The long-form monograph remains a critical mode of scholarly dissemination of information in the arts, humanities and design fields. Most successful open access funding models, however, have been developed for scholarly journals, the standard means of dissemination of scientific literature.
- Author Fees and Funding: With the adoption of open access journals, the practice of authors covering the costs of Article Processing Charges (APC) has become the standard funding model for open access scholarship. Scholars in the arts, humanities, and design have been less willing or able (with less institutional and grant support) to cover the costs of publishing open access articles, let alone monographs.
- Production Costs: Not only does the length of the work add to the difficulty in publishing open access monographs, but the prevalence of image-heavy text in art and design works adds complexity and costs to acquire copyright access.
- Shelf Life of Scholarship: While scientific research often loses relevance within a few years, work in the arts and design maintains a much longer 鈥渟helf life.鈥� In scientific disciplines, embargo periods can significantly reduce market competition for new material. In contrast, publications produced decades ago often remain valuable and relevant in the arts and design fields.[1]
Why Open Access Monographs Matter
Despite these challenges, there are benefits to open access publishing for the scholar, which provides a means to address the weakening monograph market.
- Scholarly Impact: Not only are OA books more likely to reach a global audience, these titles experience ten times more downloads and twice the number of citations (across all disciplines).[2]
- Decreasing Monograph Sales: Scholarly monograph sales have been steadily decreasing over the past few decades. Many books that would have sold a few thousand copies before may now only sell a few hundred.[3]
- University Press Financial Strain: Many university presses are struggling. Academic libraries represent the majority of university presses鈥� monograph sales. Unfortunately, library鈥檚 monograph budgets have been slashed to counterbalance the 鈥渟erials crisis,鈥� the drastic increase in journal subscription costs.[4]
As higher education seeks to find solutions to this emerging 鈥渕onograph crisis,鈥� open access initiatives may offer opportunities to reimagine the traditional publishing model and develop more equitable, sustainable funding strategies for all stakeholders.
However, open access monograph practices have led to a variety of models that can often be confusing, each offering a different blend of access between backlists, frontlists and based on different sources of funding from author payments or subscription models.
Open Access Monographs: Profile of MIT Direct to Open
Launched in 2021, MIT Direct to Open (D2O) provides diamond open access to monographs. At the heart of this initiative is leveraging the collective purchasing power of libraries to help fund releasing an ever-growing collection of open access titles. This model avoids placing funding responsibilities for Book Processing Charges (BPC) on the author.
MIT Press鈥檚 History of Architecture Scholarship:
When asked about MIT Press鈥檚 engagement with architectural scholarship, representatives emphasized the Press鈥檚 enduring commitment, stating:
“Publishing scholarly work in the field of architecture and design has been a focus of the MIT Press since its founding in 1962. From groundbreaking works like Walter Gropius鈥� , Jean Gottman鈥檚聽, and Nicholas Negroponte鈥檚聽, to critical contemporary scholarship like聽,听, 补苍诲听, the MIT Press values cutting-edge scholarship that shapes the way we think about architecture and design. We encourage scholars in the field to submit their work and take advantage of D2O鈥檚 diamond open access model to reach as many readers as possible.”
How does MIT鈥檚 Direct to Open (D20) work?
Rather than buying individual titles, libraries can contribute funds to a collection of titles, so that if the funding threshold is met, the collection will be released as open access for everyone on the MIT Press Direct Platform. This cost-sharing model allows open access beyond a title-by-title model, with the target goal of funding ~80 open access books per year. Content remains open access in perpetuity once flipped.
This model supports , with multiple participation fee tiers based on a participating institution鈥檚 median acquisition budget, size and degree type. While meeting the open access threshold is not guaranteed, participating institutions receive guaranteed perpetual access to all titles in the D2O collection(s) that they supported, and one year of access to the monographs backfile (~ 2,650 titles).
What types of titles are included?
From the MIT Press, libraries can either support the Complete Collection (~80 titles) or focus on two subject collections: Humanities & Social Sciences (~50 titles), and STEAM (STEM + Art & Design, ~30 titles). In 2026, D2O added publishing partnerships with Duke University Press (~20 frontlist titles from their Humanities and Social Sciences collection, plus exclusive access to a backlist collection of ~250 titles) and Goldsmith Press (~4 frontlist titles, plus access to a backlist collection of ~13 titles).
Has the D2O model been successful?
Since its launch in 2021, D2O has funded 320 open access monographs, with 407 libraries and 13 consortia participating in the program.
According to the D2O Impact Report 2025:
鈥淥n average, our open access Humanities and Social Sciences books are used 2.26 times more and receive 8% more citations than their non-open counterparts.
Our open access STEAM books are used 1.6 times more and receive 5% more citations than their non-open counterparts.鈥�[5]
How can my institution participate?
There鈥檚 still time to support D2O 2026! The commitment deadline is November 30, 2025. If your institution is interested in learning more, please contact the MIT Press Library Relations team at聽mitp-library-relations@mit.edu.
Learn more about .
[1] Patrick Tomlin, 鈥淏eyond the Monograph? Transformations in Scholarly Communication and Their Impact on Art Librarianship,鈥� in The Handbook of Art and Design Librarianship, 2nd edition. (Facet Publishing, 2017), https://doi.org/10.29085/9781783302024; Albert N Greco, The Future of聽the聽Humanities 补苍诲听Scholarly Publishing in聽the聽Humanities, Marketing and Communication in Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 119鈥�46, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66170-9_6.
[2] Cameron Neylon et al., 鈥淢ore Readers in More Places: The Benefits of Open Access for Scholarly Books,鈥� Insights 34, no. 1 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.558.
[3] 鈥淭he Costs of Publishing Monographs,鈥� Ithaka S+R, n.d., accessed October 15, 2025, https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/the-costs-of-publishing-monographs/.
[4] Elisabeth A Jones and Paul N Courant, 鈥淢onographic Purchasing Trends in Academic Libraries: Did the 鈥楽erials Crisis鈥� Really Destroy the University Press?,鈥� Journal of Scholarly Publishing (TORONTO) 46, no. 1 (2014): 43鈥�70, https://doi.org/10.3138/jsp.46.1.003.
[5] 鈥淒2O Impact Report 2025,鈥� MIT Press, n.d., accessed October 14, 2025, https://mitpress.mit.edu/open-access-at-mit-press/d2o-impact-report-2025/.