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 Boydell & Brewer 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).
Member libraries and institutions have unlimited, simultaneous access to all titles in the package they’ve subscribed to during the term of their three year membership. You get perpetual access to that package at the end of your three year membership. You may sign up for access to more than one package at any time - this membership and package access will also be for a minimum of three years. Packages are hosted by Fulcrum and come with MARC and KBART, and COUNTER-compliant statistics.
You can see the books on offer in the packages at: boydell.openingthefuture.net/packages
Library and institutional members are banded according to their size, in line with the Carnegie Classification and as recognised by Lyrasis. Based on this, our membership fees for 2026 are:
• $1350 high tier, per year (£935 GBP)
• $990 medium tier, per year (£685 GBP)
• $750 lower tier, per year (£520 GBP)
See the package pages for details of prices beyond 2026.
Sign up for libraries will be facilitated by Lyrasis soon. In the meantime you can pledge your support via our simple sign up form using the button below, or you can simply email them on membersupport@lyrasis.org
Sign up via LyrasisAll the revenue from the membership is used to fund the frontlist to be OA. Library membership fees pay for only those books that do not already have funding. If a proposal for a book comes to Boydell & Brewer with partial OA funding, the Press will use Opening the Future membership fees to share the production costs and publish the book OA.
The aim of this approach is to continue to yield a sustainable source of revenue for the Press while achieving the desired commitment to making more titles OA. Given ever-present budget pressures, a consortial model of funding promises a cost-effective solution for OA that means no single institution bears a disproportionate burden, while all benefit.
A three-year commitment to receive perpetual access to 30-150 titles and simultaneously fund new OA books is less than half an average BPC for a single book at many commercial publishers.
We are a mission-based publisher of scholarly works, our head office is in Suffolk, England and an office in Rochester, New York where we publish as a University Press in partnership with the University of Rochester. Always independent, we were founded 55 years ago by two British medieval scholars and became employee-owned in 2015. Over the years the business has grown substantially, we now publish over 200 books per year and have over 6000 books in print, over half of those also as ebooks. The majority of our titles are high-quality, peer-reviewed, academic monographs, but we do have a small list of trade titles as well.
More about Boydell & BrewerThis collaboration on the OtF program aligns with Boydell & Brewer’s commitment to expanding open access publishing in a sustainable way, ensuring that more high-quality content can be made accessible globally. The backlist books are hosted on Michigan Publishing’s community-based, open-source Fulcrum platform - seamlessly delivering accessible content into library catalogues. The program is supported by the trusted non-profit library consortium Lyrasis based in the USA, and membership is open to libraries worldwide.
Michigan Publishing is the Publishing division of the University of Michigan Library. We support the broadest possible access to trustworthy knowledge by promoting deep engagement with the expertise of authors and creators, a positive environment in which human dignity is valued, and constant improvement in the structure and clarity of publishing processes. With our Fulcrum technology and services platform, Michigan Publishing provides mission-driven publishers like Boydell & Brewer with a hosting solution driven by five core design principles: flexibility, durability, discoverability, accessibility, and integrity.
More about FulcrumLyrasis is a community-supported membership organization whose mission is to support enduring access to the world’s shared academic, scientific and cultural heritage through leadership in open technologies, content services, digital solutions and collaboration with archives, libraries, museums and knowledge communities worldwide.
More about LyrasisSupported by the Copim Community
Copim is an international partnership of researchers, universities, librarians, publishers and infrastructure providers supported by the Research England Development Fund (REDFund) and by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.
The OtF model was originally devised and launched by the Copim team in 2021 and was shortlisted for an ALPSP Innovation in Publishing Award soon afterwards. Boydell & Brewer are the first non-University Press to take up the model, opening the pathway for other mission-driven, scholarly publishers. When we first launched this program as a pilot with one press in 2021 we always hoped that other scholarly publishers would take it up and use OtF to fund more OA books. This partnership between Fulcrum, Lyrasis and Boydell & Brewer is an important step in sustaining and normalizing the model beyond the original project start-up phase.
More about Copim