Publishers, librarians, and scholarly market experts have debated the future of open access publishing for decades now. What have they found? That it’s difficult to enact far-reaching, equitable, and sustainable change across an entire market. However, MIT Press hopes to make waves by creating an OA monograph publishing model usable for all presses, currently in the works thanks to a three-year $850,000 Arcadia grant.

Raym Crow, Senior Consultant at SPARC and researcher on the project, explains that to publish more OA monographs, replicable frameworks need to be introduced. If more institutions successfully adopt these models, “then other presses that have different risk profiles and maybe aren’t as deeply funded also would be willing to try.”

In this final episode, Terry Ehling, Director for Strategic Initiatives at MIT Press, offers background on the press’ commitment to open access, and how OA could affect the dynamic between presses and their institutions. Ehling and Crow also take a bold look ahead at the future of the OA monograph market and the potential change MIT Press’ model could make for other presses.