By Jamie Jones, University of Michigan Press

This year’s UP Week theme is #TeamUP. The theme encourages us to celebrate all of the staff, scholars, librarians, organizations, partner presses, and the many others in our networks that allow us to pursue our shared mission of disseminating scholarly content far and wide. 

One project that very much embodies the #TeamUP theme is Big Ten Open Books (BTOB), which is a collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The BTOB project is dedicated to promoting open scholarship through the curation of open book collections from scholarly monographs published by university presses.

To date, ten university presses have contributed to the published collections. This involved extensive collaboration between the presses, the BTAA, and the Michigan Publishing staff (the collections are hosted on Michigan Publishing’s Fulcrum platform). Rights and permissions needed to be cleared, library sponsorship was secured, contracts were negotiated, book data was gathered and enhanced, and then finally the ebook files were created using a Benetech Certified Global Accessible workflow to meet WCAG 2AA standards. It was crucial to #TeamUP and share the work required to make these vital subject area collections accessible to today’s readers.

Participating Presses

• University of Illinois Press
• Indiana University Press
• University of Michigan Press
• Michigan State University Press
• University of Minnesota Press
• University of Nebraska Press
• Northwestern University Press
• Penn State University Press
• Purdue University Press
• University of Wisconsin Press

Supporting Statements

When asked about the benefit of teaming up and creating a sustainable platform for open scholarship, directors from participating university presses had a lot of great things to say.

“Through the Big Ten Open Books initiative, Penn State University Press is helping to reimagine how scholarship circulates in the digital age. Open access ensures that our authors’ ideas travel farther, informing conversations and discoveries well beyond the academy.”

– David Aycock, Executive Director, Penn State University Press

“It’s a privilege to be a part of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. We tend to think of the Big Ten in terms of athletic achievement and excellence, but the BTAA—and especially Big Ten Open Books—creates BIG opportunities for achievement and excellence in scholarly communication and research as well. By banding together, the presses and libraries of the BTAA can offer powerhouse open access collections better than any one institution can do on its own. BTOB helps MSU Press fulfill its commitments to scholarly communities across the Midwest, the nation, and throughout the world.”

– Elizabeth Demers, Director, Michigan State University Press

“The BTOB partnership underscores how much we can achieve when university presses collaborate with purpose. For UNP, making rigorous, field-defining work freely accessible isn’t simply good publishing practice, it’s good citizenship.”

– Jane Ferreyra, Director, University of Nebraska Press

“Through Big Ten Open Books, university presses and libraries #TeamUP to expand access to high-quality scholarship, removing geographic and financial barriers to research and learning. This unique collaboration demonstrates our shared commitment to students, to scholars, and to the public good.”

– Michelle Sybert, Director, University of Illinois Press

“BTOB is a tangible way in which university presses are partnering with libraries, our sister campus experts on scholarly communication, under the big tent, which is the Big Ten. The collaboration resets traditional roles, where publishers sell and libraries buy, to create a partnership in process that benefits both authors and readers.”

– Charles Watkinson, Director, University of Michigan Press

Big Ten Open Books Collections

Two subject area collections have now been published, one in 2023 on Gender and Sexuality Studies, and one in 2025 on Indigenous North Americans. Each collection includes 100 Open Access books. Since the launch, these titles have been accessed over one million times, and have reached readers in 220 different countries and territories worldwide. Three more collections are on the way, in the subject areas of African-, Asian-, and Hispanic-American Experiences, Health Disparities and Disability Culture, and Human Environmental Impact. 

Visit bigtenopenbooks.org to learn more.