Opening the Future: A New Model for Open Access Books

Welcome to Michigan University Press's Opening the Future program: funding BPC-free open access book publishing while also broadening your own collection through an affordable subscription to closed content.

Learn more about the program

Opening the Future funds scholarly presses like ours to publish new OA monographs, while libraries that participate simultaneously benefit from access to closed content. No paywalls for readers, no paywalls to authors, it's a fairer way to fund the future of publishing books.

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African Studies Package [test]

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Political Science Package [test]

Interest in Central and Eastern Europe over the past 30 years has been intense. The region experienced political, economic, social and cultural changes on a scale not seen elsewhere. This scholarly c…

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Editors' Choice Package [test]

For those libraries that would like to acquire a broad selection of books about the region covering its literature, history, economics and culture. This package includes issue-focussed books in gende…

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Library Selection [test]

This package contains 50 books selected by an independent panel of librarians. This selection is a cross-section of the other three packages and represents those CEU Press titles that might be of int…

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East Meets West [test]

The Russia-Ukraine war once more brings into focus the transformations of the former Russian empire: Romanov rule was followed by Bolshevik politics, and after a period of post-communist consolidatio…

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OA Single Supporter Membership [test]

Some institutions may not wish to sign up to a book package, or may not be able to. However they might still want to support, and help to fund, the frontlist of Open Access monographs that CEU Press …

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OA Supporter Double Membership [test]

Some institutions may not wish to sign up to a book package, or may not be able to. However they might still want to support, and help to fund, the frontlist of Open Access monographs that CEU Press …

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OA Supporter Triple Membership [test]

Some institutions may not wish to sign up to a book package, or may not be able to. However they might still want to support, and help to fund, the frontlist of Open Access monographs that CEU Press …

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View All Packages (8 total)

About CEU Press

Michigan State University Press is the scholarly publishing arm of historic Michigan State University (1855), the nation’s pioneer land-grant university and the prototype for the institutions established under the Morrill Act of 1862. Although a formal Press was not established at MSU until the mid-20th century, scholarly publishing was an important part of the institution’s mission from early on; significant and influential technical publications were regularly issued from the colleges as early as the mid 1870s. 

Since its founding in 1947, the mission of the Michigan State University Press has been to be a catalyst for positive intellectual, social, and technological change through the publication of research and intellectual inquiry, making significant contributions to scholarship in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. 

The Press has been publishing titles OA since 2002, and is keen to increase this because we are committed to fostering equitable access to knowledge for all. 


Learn more about the programme

The OtF Model

Opening the Future is a monograph subscription model that makes library funds go further through its collective membership scheme: achieving the dual objectives of enhancing collections while also supporting open access. Members pay a small annual fee to get DRM-free, unlimited access to a closed selection of the well-regarded MSU Press backlist, with perpetual access after three years. The membership revenue is used only to produce new OA monographs, without forcing authors to find funding for book processing charges (BPCs). 

Since 2020, OtF has enabled the OA publication of 37 titles across its participating publishers , with several more in the pipeline. The programme was shortlisted for an ALPSP Innovation in Publishing Award soon after launching. 

See our FAQs

Open Access for Books

The move to OA monographs must be a sustainable and bibliodiverse one - it must be sustainable for presses like ours and also for libraries. 

For us, OA enables works to become the foundation blocks of Humanities and Social Sciences and with which our civilisation stands a better chance of becoming fairer, more equitable and more inclusive.  

Open access for books is now high on the international policy agenda. Many models are prohibitive, though, for authors who do not have funding.  Book Processing Charges (BPCs), for example, worsen inequality by favouring the most wealthy institutions and authors, whereas collective library funding models like ours seek to spread the funding of OA books so that no single institution bears a disproportionate cost.