Creating immediate global access to cutting-edge research

We launched Direct to Open (D2O) in 2021 as a sustainable framework harnessing the collective power of libraries to support open and equitable access to vital, leading scholarship. D2O moves scholarly books from a solely market-based, purchase model, where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model.

“Direct to Open is a game changer,” said Amy Brand, director and publisher at the MIT Press. “We know that open scholarship benefits authors, readers, and the academy at large. This is why we designed and implemented a new solution that would better serve scholars and the research monographs that are vital to our mission.”

D2O empowers authors with the ability to publish their work open access regardless of their or their institution’s ability to pay a Book Processing Charge. This diamond open access approach has special relevance for Humanities and Social Sciences scholars as well as independent researchers around the globe and ensures. 

“For the Indian market, MIT Press books are prohibitively expensive,” said Janaki Srinivasan, Associate Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, India and author of The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India. “People are very interested in my book in India, where the book is based, so it’s been a blessing to have the open access edition.”

With the recent release of our Direct to Open impact reportearlier this year, we can see the results from the first three years of D2O in stark relief. Direct to Open books reach larger global audiences and receive more citations than their paywalled counterparts—allowing key scholarship to reach wider audiences in communities that need it most. On average, our open access Humanities and Social Sciences books are used 3.75 times more and receive 21% more citations than their non-open counterparts, while our open access STEAM books are used 2.67 times more and receive 15% more citations than their non-open counterparts.

Readers all over the world and across levels of means benefit from immediate access to cutting-edge research. Direct to Open aims to make this possible with the generous support of our library partners. Supporting libraries not only contribute to opening frontlist titles, but also receive exclusive participation benefits including term access to a backlist collection of over 2,400 titles.