Beyond PALOMERA: What will the future of OA book policymaking look like?
This post was originally published in the OABN blog as part of the OABN PALOMERA blog series. Link: https://openaccessbooksnetwork.hcommons.org/2025/01/21/beyond-palomera-what-will-the-future-of-oa-book-policymaking-look-like/

Now that the PALOMERA project has ended after two years of in-depth work on OA book policy, the OABN is sharing this final blog post to describe the project’s outputs, reflect on its impact and report on the OABN webinar held on Wednesday 3 December 2024, where participants discussed how to use PALOMERA’s results and recommendations in the present and future.
When PALOMERA began in January 2023, it aimed to provide evidence-based and actionable recommendations to boost the inclusion of books in OA policies across Europe. The OABN’s PALOMERA series has documented the project’s progress along the way, sharing updates and offering a route to engage with PALOMERA’s work; this post concludes that series. Read on to find out what the project has created, some thoughts about its impact and how its resources might be used. For a more formal summary of the project, you can also read PALOMERA’s Second Policy Brief.
When PALOMERA began in January 2023, it aimed to provide evidence-based and actionable recommendations to boost the inclusion of books in OA policies across Europe. The OABN’s PALOMERA series has documented the project’s progress along the way, sharing updates and offering a route to engage with PALOMERA’s work; this post concludes that series. Read on to find out what the project has created, some thoughts about its impact and how its resources might be used. For a more formal summary of the project, you can also read PALOMERA’s Second Policy Brief.
PALOMERA resources and recommendations
The key outcomes from PALOMERA are the Knowledge Base and analysis of its contents, the Funder Forum (which may be renamed as the Policy Forum), and tailored stakeholder recommendations about how different stakeholders can make sustainable progress towards increased levels of equitable OA book publishing and policymaking.
The recommendations
The actionable recommendations provide evidence-based guidance on good practices that can help policymakers build strong policy, but also support other stakeholder groups, including publishers, researchers, infrastructure providers, libraries, and national policymakers, to build a strong and resilient culture of OA book publishing.
The participants in the OABN webinar held on 3 December observed that the recommendations will be particularly helpful because they are simple and segmented, offering guidelines and good practices with an indication of whether they are short-term, medium- or long-term. They enable stakeholders to compare themselves against a quality standard, and it was noted that they would be particularly powerful if they are endorsed and promoted by other organisations working in related areas, for example CoARA, Science Europe, and cOAlition S. Policy may demand compliance, but the recommendations and resources from PALOMERA can also create incentives, motivating OA book publication among publishers, researchers and funders.
Read the recommendations here.

The Knowledge Base and analysis
To back the recommendations with evidence, PALOMERA has investigated the status of OA book policymaking in the European Research Area (ERA) through desk studies, surveys, in-depth interviews, and use cases. Over 650 policy and policy-related documents from 39 ERA countries were consulted, as well as 42 anonymised interviews with representatives of different stakeholder books from all corners of Europe. The PALOMERA Knowledge Base is a comprehensive collection of these resources and references. They are tagged, searchable, and excerpted and translated into English where appropriate. This is a resource that can support policymakers as they develop or update OA book policies, and it is all completely open for anyone to browse, explore and use.
PALOMERA has identified many use cases for the Knowledge Base. Focus groups and an ERA-wide stakeholder survey revealed that the most important use cases of the Knowledge Base include gathering evidence, accessing knowledge or resources, advocating for OA books publishing and policy, informing decision-making, identifying and sharing good practices, and finding community, and they make a strong argument for the Knowledge Base’s current and potential future value. The OABN webinar participants observed that the Knowledge Base is extremely helpful for its detail and geographical breadth, but that more work is needed to pull out the common threads across different countries and policymakers, and the missing areas (e.g. metadata) or the contentious areas e.g. licences could be identified. What are the contradictions between policies? And what have the outcomes been?
The Knowledge Base is hosted by the OA Books Toolkit, a publisher-agnostic resource aimed to inform authors and other stakeholders about the process of publishing an OA book. The Toolkit was updated in November 2024 to include ten new articles on funding and policies for OA books, drawn from PALOMERA’s research, in a new ‘Open Access book policies’ section. This has made the Toolkit an even more robust and comprehensive resource on OA books.
Browse the Knowledge Base here.

The data from the Knowledge Base was analysed in order to gain insights into the current status of OA book policies in the European Research Area. The analysis findings served as the foundation for the project’s recommendations (described above) and offer the most comprehensive study on OA book policies yet. They include not only a structured and detailed analysis of a large and internationally diverse set of policies, but also an examination of the other datasets that were collected in order to understand the circumstances of individual countries and stakeholder groups in detail.
Read the analysis findings here.
The Funder Forum
The Funder Forum is an inclusive and open space where research funders convened during the PALOMERA project to discuss their policy development for OA books, both in the ERA and beyond. Project partners are currently discussing whether there is a scope to rename it as the Policy Forum for OA Books, to clearly signal that its purpose and scope from 2025 is to support all types of OA book policymakers, not only funders.
The OABN webinar participants argued that the Funder Forum is not only important in itself, but can build on and maximise the usefulness of the other key PALOMERA outputs: it can draw out the information within the Knowledge Base, conducting further analysis on the wealth of information it contains to build more robust policies, and it has an important role in promoting the recommendations, checking progress, offering support, and engaging with organisations that are not used to have OA books on their agenda.
What’s next?
At the final webinar in the OABN PALOMERA series, members of the OA books community put their heads together to reflect on where OA book publishing will be in five years’ time, and how policymaking will have contributed to this.
Some participants were more optimistic than others about the rate of increase in OA book publishing: the optimistic ones felt that there was already a significant increase in OA book publishing underway, referring to OAPEN and DOAB for evidence of this, and that this would be accelerated by policymaking, particularly at a national level. Others argued that there is a range of circumstances across Europe, with some countries introducing national policies to support OA books or fostering a publishing culture that is innovative and receptive to OA, but others where policymaking is dormant or a powerful group of publishers that are hostile to OA hold sway. It was also noted that author attitudes to OA books are slow to change, with younger academics appearing more receptive. Although there are different models emerging to support OA books, there does not yet appear to be a ‘game-changer’ on the horizon.
The role of publishers was identified as key: some are blockers, charging high author fees to make books OA and lobbying governments to hold back a movement towards greater openness, while others are supporting a change, developing equitable models such as Open Edition’s ‘freemium’ approach, with participants in France and Spain observing positive developments from certain publishers. Another factor identified is the growth in library-based publishing, with their focus on equitable Diamond models that don’t charge author fees.
Another key topic under discussion was the necessity of changing research culture, and improving the knowledge and understanding of authors about publishing in general, and OA book publishing in particular. Research assessment was identified as critical, with positive incentives a significant and neglected area – the incentive that could and should be used alongside policy mandates.
Policymaking and funding were agreed to be essential: the development of common policies was seen as particularly important, since these can play a role in increasing knowledge about OA book publishing among different stakeholders and shaping services, particularly local services. It was pointed out that infrastructure is critical to implement policies effectively, and that change takes time, even with good policies in place. It was also pointed out that policymakers themselves often lack sufficient resources to tackle the challenges they face. The PALOMERA resources and recommendations were viewed as significant in supporting policymakers, giving them resources, networks and information to operate more effectively.
Finally, we asked participants about the role the OABN might play in supporting this work. The OABN’s role as a place to discuss and share best practices was noted as important in growing knowledge about OA book publishing, while its events and outreach work are valuable, particularly as they take place across institutional and stakeholder boundaries. More particularly, the OABN’s role in promoting the OA Books Toolkit, sharing practical resources for publishers and engaging researchers were all seen as important.
If you would like to suggest possible activities, or work with us to make best use of the PALOMERA resources, please contact us at info@oabooksnetwork.org.
Thoughts from some project partners
SPARC Europe and DARIAH were delighted to catch up with some of the project members, who shared their thoughts on the far-reaching implications of the project via video.
Niels Stern (OAPEN Foundation)
Mikael Laakso (Tampere University)
Ursula Rabar (OPERAS)
Maciej Maryl (IBL-PAN)
Gabriela Manista (IBL-PAN)
Johan Rooryck (cOAlitionS)
Oliver Blake (LIBER)
Vanessa Proudman (SPARC Europe)
Françoise Gouzi (DARIAH)
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
OPERAS Editorial Team (January 22, 2025). Beyond PALOMERA: What will the future of OA book policymaking look like? OPERAS. Retrieved February 6, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/134la