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2025-10-31-accounts

Registered number 14118614

Open Access Book Collective

Accounts

31 October 2025

Open Access Book Collective Accountants' Report

Report to the directors on the preparation of the unaudited statutory accounts of Open Access Book Collective for the year ended 31 October 2025

In order to assist you to fulfil your duties under the Companies Act 2006, we have prepared for your approval the accounts of Open Access Book Collective for the year ended 31 October 2025 which comprise of the Profit and Loss Account and the Balance Sheet from the company’s accounting records and from information and explanations you have given us.

As a practising member firm of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, we are subject to its ethical and other professional requirements which are detailed at https://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/aboutus/regulation/rulebook.html

This report is made solely to the Board of Directors of Open Access Book Collective, as a body, in accordance with the terms of our engagement letter. Our work has been undertaken solely to prepare for your approval the accounts of Open Access Book Collective and state those matters that we have agreed to state to the Board of Directors of Open Access Book Collective, as a body, in this report in accordance with the requirements of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants as detailed at http://www.accaglobal.com/factsheet163. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than Open Access Book Collective and its Board of Directors as a body for our work or for this report.

It is your duty to ensure that Open Access Book Collective has kept adequate accounting records and to prepare statutory accounts that give a true and fair view of the assets, liabilities, financial position and profit of Open Access Book Collective. You consider that Open Access Book Collective is exempt from the statutory audit requirement for the year.

We have not been instructed to carry out an audit or a review of the accounts of Open Access Book Collective. For this reason, we have not verified the accuracy or completeness of the accounting records or information and explanations you have given to us and we do not, therefore, express any opinion on the statutory accounts.

Cambridge Tax and Accounting Limited Chartered Certified Accountants Brookfields 2A Water Lane Histon Cambridge CB24 9LR

14 January 2026

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Open Access Book Collective Directors' Report

Report of the directors of Open Access Book Collective for the year ended 31 October 2025

1. Introduction

This is the third OBC Directors' report and the second since the OBC was registered as a charity by the Charity Commission of England and Wales on 19 December 2023: https://doi.org/10.21428/41ca814e.caf1d303

This report provides an overview of core OBC activities, as well as its governance and financial position. A fuller report, including details of the work of our Publisher and Service Provider Members, is published https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/open-book-collective-2024-to-2025-annual-report

2. Governance & Staffing

The Open Book Collective remains established as a charitable Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) and a UK registered charity. It is governed by the OBC Board of Stewards, which are elected by members and act as the charity’s Trustees. During the period, there were no changes to the membership of the Board.

The OBC did not convene an Annual General Assembly of Custodians (AGAC) during this financial year. The second AGAC took place on 11 September 2024: https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/tjbb7k24

The third AGAC is scheduled to take place on 3 December 2025. This reflects an updated financial year and our aim eventually to be able to move the AGAC towards the start of a calendar year, while meeting the requirements that these meetings should occur no more than 15 months apart.

During the period, the board met 4 times, as follows:

The period also saw some staffing changes, with Kevin Sanders leaving the organisation at the end of September and the OBC welcoming Caroline Ball as its new Community Engagement Lead in October. Current OBC employees include:

Francesca and first Kevin and then Caroline continued to act as the OBC Secretariat, which supports the OBC’s Committees and governance functions. Many thanks to Caroline, Francesca and Kevin for all their work.

Thanks also to our colleagues seconded from partner organisations to the OBC, as part of the Copim Open Book Futures project. This includes Livy Synder (punctum), who leads much of our engagement in North America, Izabella Penier (Lancaster University), who leads our publisher and service provider engagement, and Judith Fathallah (Lancaster University), who leads our research work and work on the Collective Development Fund. Thanks also to Arturo Garduño Magaña who is a contractor who joined the OBC during this period, serving as our Metadata Management Associate.

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3. New Members

The OBC ended the 2025 financial year with a total of 18 Publisher and Service Provider Members, with 88 Library Members acting as supporting institutions. During the period, 5 new Publisher Members joined. 17 new library members joined, of which the following 16 have consented to be publicly acknowledged:

New Library Members

New Publisher Members

4. Outreach & outputs

In this reporting period, the OBC expanded its library outreach, with a focus on strengthening engagement with existing supporters, while also shifting our emphasis from individual institutions to engagement with library consortia.

An important part of this work was a comprehensive Consortia Mapping Project led by OBC staff, which informed a structured approach to engagement across regions. During this period, the OBC was pleased to welcome support from IReL, the consortium of Irish university libraries. IReL became the second consortium to support the OBC, joining California Digital Library (CDL). Additional discussions were held with a number of further consortia, including in Canada, the US, and Scandinavia, with the aim to build support from these organisations in future.

Another key development was the establishment of the General Library Custodian Forum, to function as a regular meeting space for OBC’s library supporters and wider sector stakeholders. The Forum, together with the launch of an OBC listserv mailing list, creates opportunities for information exchange, feedback, and collaboration across the library community.

Regionally, targeted outreach was carried out across the UK and Ireland, Europe, North America, and the Global South. In the UK and Ireland, engagement was strengthened through Research Libraries UK and IReL networks, alongside follow-up work with universities showing high author affiliations with OBC publishers. Across Europe, outreach materials were translated into Italian, Spanish, and French, and new collaborations developed in Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordic region.

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In North America, OBC’s work focused primarily on consortial partnerships, with proposals and presentations to a range of library colleagues at US institutions which emphasised the local impacts of the work of OBC Publisher and Service Provider Members and how the OBC’s work aligns with institutional missions, strategies and priorities. OBC also contributed to a series of international events in Africa and the Middle East. This including joining, remotely, the Forum for Open Research in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and co-organising a workshop on sustainable OA book publishing at the University of Cape Town Libraries, as part of the 2nd Global Summit on Diamond OA.

Throughout the year, the OBC has had a strong presence at major sector events, including the Charleston Conference in the US, where OBC was featured in a well-attended panel alongside representatives from punctum books, the American Library Association, and the City University of New York. OBC representatives also spoke at UKSG, RLUK, ACRL, AsSIST, OA Tage, OASPA, and the National Open Access Summit in Nigeria, among others. These events were complemented by workshops co-organised with partners including Thoth Open Metadata, OAPEN, AG Universitätsverlage, and the Association of African Universities, and contributions to webinars hosted by NAG, OIPA/IOAP, and IOAP.

Collaboration with Thoth Open Metadata has enhanced the use of author affiliation and usage data in outreach, providing tailored impact evidence to strengthen the case for support in institutional and consortial contexts. OBC continued to coordinate closely with other partners within the Open Book Futures project, including Lancaster University, punctum books, Open Book Publishers, and Jisc, to align engagement with broader sector initiatives.

International and Regional Conferences

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Articles, reports and publications

5. Collective Development Fund

In late November 2024, the Open Book Collective announced the first recipients of awards from the Collective Development Fund. In early November 2025, the OBC announced some of the awardees from the second round of funding, with additional awardees to be announced shortly. The first and second rounds of funding are based on financial support from our two funders, Arcadia and the Research England Development Fund, as part of the Copim Open Book Futures project. Funds for subsequent awards are funded by an optional 5% fee paid by our publisher and service provider members from revenue received via the OBC. The fund is designed to support projects that build capacity for open access publishing capacity, in line with the OBC's charitable objectives. It supports projects that are able to demonstrate their alignment with one or more of 3 priority areas:

Significant milestones for the Collective Development Fund during the period included:

The Collective Development Fund does not support direct costs associated with publishing individual texts - sometimes referred to as Book Processing Charges. We aim to allocate at least 30% of funding in each round to projects benefitting work in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), as defined by the World Bank. Grant awards assessed via external reviews and the proposals and reviews are assessed by a panel including both our Stewards and Members.

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In the first round, we made awards to three projects:

Awardee: Federal University of Technology, Minna Amount: £15,000

Press release:

https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/annoucing-obcs-first-collective-development-fund-awardfostering-academic-self-reliance-in-nigeria-through-open-access-books

Awardee: Chinhoyi University of Technology Amount: £15,000

Press release:

https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/announcing-obcs-second-collective-development-fundaward-enhancing-open-access-book-publishing-at-chinhoyi-university-of-technology-library

Awardee: Radish Press Amount: £7,500

Press release:

https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/annoucing-obcs-third-collective-development-fundawardthe-community-publishing-garden

We have held reporting calls with all awardees for updates on progress and during this reporting period published interim updates from all awardees.

In January 2025, we launched the second Call. We received 13 full applications, of which 6 were advanced to full review. All 6 were from and/or for projects doing significant work in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). The final decision-making panel met in August 2025. Details of the successful awards were announced after the conclusion of this financial year. Nonetheless, we include the two projects that have so far been announced, at the time of writing; details of the other successful projects will be announced shortly.

Awardee: Haramaya University Amount: £7,500

Press release:

https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/announcing-obcs-second-collective-development-fundaward-for-2025-26-empowering-ethiopian-research-universities-a-multifaceted-approach-to-overcomeopen-access-barriers-in-scholarly-publishing

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Awardee: CLACSO Amount: £12,000 Press release: https://openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/announcing-obcs-second-collective-development-fundaward-for-2025-26-knowledge-accessible-to-the-community-clacso-as-a-platform-to-democratizescholarly-publishing-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean

6. Funding & financial position

The OBC was supported through the present period by the Copim Open Book Futures project. The project covers the large majority of OBC’s current financial costs and will do until the end of the project on the 30 April 2026.

During the period, a major focus has been on developing a clear roadmap for full financial sustainability, independent of grant funding. This included commissioning Research Consulting to undertake research on our value proposition and to develop different sustainability scenarios. This review confirmed that the OBC can readily sustain itself into the near to medium term at current staffing levels (circa 2.5 Full Time Equivalent) without the need for grant funding and is on track for full break-even and sustainability by 2029, if we are able to continue increasing support for our collective offering to approximately 200 libraries regularly supporting our Members.

We have also pursued grant funding opportunities during the period. The OBC was a partner on a submission by the Association of African Universities to the Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) fund for Network Adoption. This bid made it to the final shortlist, but was unfortunately ultimately unsuccessful.

We look forward to providing further updates about the development of the OBC in next year’s report.

Prof. Joseph Deville OBC Managing Director and Trustee Approved by the board on 14 January 2026

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Open Access Book Collective Profit and Loss Account for the year ended 31 October 2025

Turnover
Other income
Grants and donations
Gross profit
Staff costs
Other charges
Profit		 2025
£
39,726
334,821
(45,520)
329,027
(118,445)
(118,382)
92,200		 2024
£
44,476
229,487
(1,369)
272,594
(113,343)
(66,033)
93,218

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Open Access Book Collective Registered number: 14118614 Balance Sheet as at 31 October 2025

Open Access Book Collective
Registered number:
Balance Sheet
as at 31 October 2025		 14118614
Current assets
Creditors: amounts falling due within one
year
Net current assets
Total assets less current liabilities
Accruals and deferred income
Net assets
Capital and reserves
Average number of employees		 2025
£
285,412
(52,506)
232,906
232,906
(10,871)
222,035
222,035
Number
2		 2024
£
307,248
(33,182)
274,066
274,066
(144,231)
129,835
129,835
Number
2
274,066
(144,231)
129,835
129,835
Number
2

The company is a private company limited by guarantee and incorporated in England. Its registered office is One Bartholomew Close, London, EC1A 7BL.

The directors are satisfied that the company is entitled to exemption from the requirement to obtain an audit under section 477 of the Companies Act 2006.

The members have not required the company to obtain an audit in accordance with section 476 of the Act.

The directors acknowledge their responsibilities for complying with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 with respect to accounting records and the preparation of accounts.

The accounts have been prepared in accordance with the micro entity provisions of the Companies Act 2006 and FRS 105, The Financial Reporting Standard applicable to the Micro-entities Regime. The accounts have been delivered in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies regime.

Prof. Joseph Deville Director Approved by the board on 14 January 2026

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Open Access Book Collective Detailed profit and loss account items for the year ended 31 October 2025

This schedule does not form part of the statutory accounts

Turnover
Fees from institutions
Fees from providers
Other income
Donations from providers to development fund
Grants
Interest receivable
Grants and donations
Collective Development Fund
Staff costs
Wages, pensions and social security costs
Payroll overheads
Other charges
General administrative expenses:
Admin
Bank charges/(cashback)
Conferences/events
Equipment
IT Costs
Legal and accounting
Network engagement
Report on collective funding models
OBC board translations
Platform development
COPIM Wordpress design
Consultancy fees
Video production
Travel and subsistence
Exchange losses/(gains)		 2025
£
18,341
21,385
39,726
18,341
312,360
4,120
334,821
45,520
117,776
669
118,445
381
30
16,454
1,664
3,873
15,848
15,077
180
5,093
11,860
3,800
16,200
11,810
15,617
495
118,382
118,382		 2024
£
20,127
24,349
44,476
20,387
208,408
692
229,487
1,369
112,640
703
113,343
494
(172)
6,628
-
1,391
13,336
10,000
-
1,404
20,000
-
-
-
13,821
(869)
66,033
66,033

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Open Access Book Collective Detailed balance sheet items as at 31 October 2025

This schedule does not form part of the statutory accounts

Current assets
Trade debtors
Other debtors: Loan to OJC (Open Journals Collective)
Cash at bank
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Trade creditors
Platform providers
Other creditors
Accruals and deferred income
Deferred income
Capital and reserves
Profit and loss account
Profit and loss account
Brought forward
Profit		 2025
£
2,135
5,000
278,277
285,412
13,049
39,184
273
52,506
10,871
222,035
129,835
92,200
222,035		 2024
£
94,840
-
212,408
307,248
2,776
27,291
3,115
33,182
144,231
129,835
36,617
93,218
129,835

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