Origins and Developments of the Open Access Books

Abstract

The open access books (OAB) are a product of the research that in recent years has gained its place in scientific publishing and open access (OA). Both have gone from initial diffidence (for different reasons) to a growing interest. In the first part of the article, we present the most recent data relating to this kind of publication while in the second one the OAB phenomenon is examined within a more general evolution of the OA. In this way there seems to be a link between the open access monographs and the diffusion of models increasingly distant from the original mission of the OA.