CHICAGO — In partnership with seven Big Ten-affiliated university presses, including Penn State University Press, the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s Center for Library Programs announced the expansion of the Big Ten Open Books project with the publication of its second 100-book collection.
The second collection is centered on Indigenous North Americans. The high-quality scholarly works included in the collection have all been previously published in print by the partnering university presses and are now being made openly available in digital form to read and reuse at no cost to the reader or author.
Big Ten Open Books creates e-book collections that aspire to the highest standards of discoverability, accessibility, durability and flexibility. Each title has undergone a rigorous selection and quality certification process that supports the veracity of the content. Making these works openly available allows them to have tremendous impact through broad engagement and knowledge-sharing.
The Indigenous North Americans collection explores the history, culture, religion and resilience of Indigenous populations from the 15th century to present day. Events of Indigenous diplomacy, evolution, education and contributions to North American history are highlighted in this collection. The presses partnering on this phase of Big Ten Open Books are Michigan State University Press, Penn State University Press, University of Illinois Press, University of Michigan Press, University of Minnesota Press, University of Nebraska Press and University of Wisconsin Press.
The collection includes the Penn State University Press monograph “Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians and Catholics in Early North America” edited by A.G. Roeber and published in 2008. Roeber is professor emeritus of early modern history and religious studies at Penn State.
The Big Ten Open Books project has established a distinctive model for unified, open-access publishing of scholarly monographs. It creates open content that is immediately and universally available on open infrastructure — Fulcrum, hosted by the University of Michigan — using open distribution models — including Project MUSE, JSTOR, OAPEN and The Palace Project from Lyrasis — and envisions a robust programmatic future for open monograph publishing. Funding for this collection has been provided by the libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the California Digital Library.
This work is aligned with the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s vision for the BIG Collection, which seeks to unite the collections of the libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance into one collection, shared and fully networked.
August 2023 marked the launch of the first Big Ten Open Book collection: Gender and Sexuality Studies. Since its launch, the books in the collection have been used nearly 200,000 times in over 210 countries and territories, an average of 2,000 times each. Total reported usage across all distribution platforms, adding Project Muse and individual press websites, exceeds 400,000 downloads.
Big Ten Open Books will be launching three more collections over the course of 2025 and 2026:
- African-, Asian- and Hispanic-Americans
- Health Disparities and Disability Culture
- Human Environmental Impact
The Big Ten Academic Alliance advocates for a sustainable and open ecosystem of publication. Collectively, its institutions’ more than 75,000 faculty, staff and researchers are supported by over $19 billion in research expenditures, and its institutions have invested significantly in our capacity to further the research mission by advancing public knowledge through open publishing. Together, they produce roughly 15% of the research publications in the United States.
About the Big Ten Academic Alliance
The Big Ten Academic Alliance is the nation’s preeminent model for effective collaboration among research universities. For more than half a century, these world-class institutions have advanced their academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty, and served the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs. Governed and funded by the provosts of the member universities, Big Ten Academic Alliance mandates are coordinated by a staff from its Champaign, Illinois, headquarters.
The 19 world-class libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance members include Indiana University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Penn State, Purdue University, Rutgers University, University of California Los Angeles, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Oregon, University of Southern California, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Chicago.
For more information, the contact Kate McCready, program director for open publishing, Big Ten Academic Alliance, 612-626-4357 or kate.mccready@btaa.org.