University Press Library Open

About UPLOpen

UPLOpen is one of the largest online collections of free-to-read academic books. Since its launch in April 2024, UPLOpen has grown to over 10,000 titles representing more than 60 of the world’s leading scholarly publishers, ensuring that everything you find on the site meets the highest standards of peer review.

More than just a platform, UPLOpen is a bold effort to accelerate Open Access publishing and build a sustainable future for OA monographs. It builds on the success of De Gruyter's University Press Library (UPL) and continues to rely on the essential support of libraries to grow and thrive.

What Sets UPLOpen Apart

Focus on UN Sustainable Development Goals 
The United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a comprehensive framework to eradicate poverty, tackle climate issues, and foster a fair, inclusive, and sustainable global community. In this context, academic publishers are crucial facilitators in driving these objectives through institutional practices and published materials. UPLOpen's emphasis on the SDGs underscores the distinctive dedication of HSS publishers to integrating the SDGs' expansive targets into their day-to-day operations and structure.

Commitment to Open 
The UPLOpen platform is fully optimized to support digital-first, open content distribution. Built by Ubiquity, a trusted partner of researchers, universities, and academic societies, UPLOpen is not only 100% open access; it also utilizes open-source infrastructure, enhancements to which will benefit the broader open source community.

Favorable to Libraries 
UPLOpen was developed with libraries in mind with processes that fit seamlessly into library collection & acquisition workflows. For those libraries that are already UPL customers, supporting UPLOpen requires no additional invoicing. When a library purchases a UPL collection, a percentage of the total amount is allocated for UPL member presses to publish open access books.    

Collective Action  
We believe that collaboration is essential to achieving a sustainable publishing ecosystem. UPLOpen is committed to engaging the full range of community stakeholders—including publishers, academic libraries, university leaders, consortia, aggregators, vendors, funders, and authors—to ensure a more equitable distribution of the financial burden.  

Collective action, however, doesn't happen on its own. That's why De Gruyter established eBound, a 501 (c) (3) public foundation dedicated to helping scholarly publishers develop sustainable business models for publishing monographs. As a not-for-profit, eBound oversees UPLOpen's finances, ensuring that funds are distributed to UPL member presses to publish open access books.    

Scale 
UPLOpen brings together the collective influence and prestige of more than 60 university press partners, many of which have not participated in previous OA eBook initiatives. Because the UPLOpen business model is inherently scalable, the number of presses is growing all the time.

Key Features:

• 10,000+ titles from over 60 of the world’s leading scholarly publishers.
• Quality. All books on UPLOpen have been peer reviewed according to rigorous standards. 
• 100% Open Access. All books on UPLOpen are released under Creative Commons licenses
• Equitable. UPLOpen spreads the financial burden more equitably across the scholarly publishing landscape
• Sustainable. Funded by library purchases of UPL publisher collections, UPLOpen returns $$ to UPL presses to publish more OA books.
• Publisher focused. Publisher-specific landing pages, retailer links that point to press websites, presses are free to choose their own path to open.
• Open Infrastructure. UPLOpen integrates key open-source tools and technology such as OPERAS metrics, Orcid, and hypothes.is.

Contact

Peter Potter
Executive Director of De Gruyter eBound 
peter.potter@degruyterbrill.com