COPIM

COPIM
Name	COPIM
Formation	2019
Type	Non-profit consortium
Headquarters	United Kingdom
Region served	International

COPIM

COPIM is a collaborative initiative formed to develop open infrastructure and business models that support non-commercial publishing, open access monographs, and community-led scholarly communication. It brings together libraries, university presses, scholarly societies, funders, and technical developers to design, implement, and scale alternatives to proprietary publishing platforms and commercial subscription models. The partnership emphasizes transparency, sustainability, and collective governance in building services that serve researchers, institutions, and the public.

Background and History

COPIM emerged amid debates over subscription crises, transformative agreements, and the growth of open access advocacy involving actors such as Wellcome Trust, Research England, Horizon Europe, Jisc, and Open Society Foundations. Early collaborations drew on practices from Directory of Open Access Books, Public Knowledge Project, and projects associated with SPARC, FORCE11, and Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. The initiative built on precedents set by experiments in community-owned infrastructure like OAPEN, PubPub, and Public Knowledge Project platforms. Founding partners included representatives from institutions such as University of Cambridge, York University, Utrecht University, Bodleian Libraries, and independent publishers with ties to European Research Council funded networks. COPIM’s timeline reflects phases of pilot interventions, prototyping, and scaling influenced by policy shifts from bodies like National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust Open Research, and national consortia in Canada, France, and the Netherlands.

Mission and Objectives

The mission centers on creating collective, non-commercial infrastructure to support open scholarly monographs and related outputs, aligning with objectives championed by Plan S, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and advocacy efforts such as Right to Research Coalition. Key objectives include reducing reliance on commercial intermediaries like Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis by enabling library-owned platforms, community governance, and diversified revenue models. COPIM seeks to advance interoperable metadata practices compatible with standards promoted by Crossref, ORCID, DOAJ, and COUNTER; foster discoverability through partnerships with aggregators like JSTOR, Internet Archive, and HathiTrust; and support rights retention strategies resonant with initiatives from Creative Commons and SPARC Europe.

Projects and Initiatives

COPIM coordinates multiple technical and service development strands inspired by prior work from groups such as Knowledge Unlatched, OAPEN Foundation, and Open Book Publishers. Major initiatives include development of cooperative business models akin to consortial approaches used by Project MUSE and JSTOR, experimentation with preservation workflows interoperable with LOCKSS and Portico, and creation of discovery services interoperable with WorldCat and Google Scholar. Technical projects have drawn on software stewardship exemplars like Open Journal Systems, Janeway, Manifold, and FOLIO to build reusable components. Outreach and capacity-building activities include training programs modeled after workshops run by Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and Data Curation Network, plus pilot publishing partnerships with academic presses from Oxford University Press, MIT Press, University of California Press, Liverpool University Press, and regional university presses across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Governance and Funding

COPIM’s governance architecture reflects multi-stakeholder governance practices seen in organizations like Internet Engineering Task Force, W3C, and Open Knowledge Foundation, combining advisory boards, funder representation, and community steering groups. Funding sources have included major philanthropic bodies such as Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Arcadia Fund, Wellcome Trust, and governmental research councils including UK Research and Innovation and agencies within European Commission programmes. Financial models explore recurring library consortia contributions comparable to subscription consortia like Research Libraries UK and collective funding mechanisms similar to Knowledge Unlatched’s crowd-subscription experiments. Transparency measures mirror reporting expectations from Charity Commission for England and Wales and grant conditions set by entities like European Research Council.

Partnerships and Collaborations

COPIM collaborates with an array of institutional actors, platform providers, and advocacy groups, forming networks with university presses, libraries, and meta-research projects. Notable collaborators and linked initiatives include OAPEN, DOAB, Directory of Open Access Journals, Public Knowledge Project, Portico, CLOCKSS, OpenAIRE, Crossref, ORCID, Digital Preservation Coalition, and regional consortia such as CARL and CONP in Canada. Academic and research partners have involved units from University of London, University of Edinburgh, King’s College London, University of Toronto, Utrecht University, and University of Leicester. COPIM’s collaborative model also engages subject societies and learned organizations like Modern Language Association, American Historical Association, Royal Society, and discipline-specific publishers.

Impact and Reception

COPIM has been cited in policy discussions and scholarly debates alongside other open infrastructure initiatives like Plan S, SCOSS, and Invest in Open Infrastructure. Evaluations note contributions to alternative funding experiments, open metadata advocacy, and technical prototypes that reduce vendor lock-in associated with entities such as Elsevier and Clarivate. Reception among librarians, press directors, and funders has been mixed to positive: supporters from institutions such as Harvard University, Princeton University, and University of Oxford emphasize community control and resilience, while some commercial publishers and distribution intermediaries express caution about scalability and long-term financing compared with established models from Springer Nature and Wiley. Independent assessments by research teams connected to Digital Science and policy analyses from Jisc and Wellcome inform ongoing iterations of COPIM’s strategy.

Category:Open access