MIT Press’s Direct to Open Reaches Annual Funding Goal, Opens Access to Full List of 2024 Monographs

Nine open access books cross 10,000 reads threshold, bringing total for Direct to Open titles to almost 425,000 

Now in its third year of operation, Direct to Open (D2O) is proud to announce that it has reached its full funding goal in 2024 and will open access to 79 new monographs and edited book collections this year. What makes this year noteworthy is that this is the first year in which D2O has been fully funded by its November 30 deadline and will not require an extension through the end of the fiscal year.  

“Reaching our overall funding goal – in full and on time – is a major milestone in developing a sustainable open access publishing model,” said Amy Harris, senior manager, library relations and sales at the MIT Press. “We are extremely grateful for the support of our library and consortium partners that makes this possible.” 

Launched in 2021, D2O is an innovative sustainable framework for open access monographs that shifts publishing from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. 

There are other models that offer fund-to-open opportunities on a title-by-title basis or that focus on opening access within specific disciplines. D2O is unique because it allows the Press to open access to its entire slate of scholarly books at scale during each funding cycle. Thanks to D2O, all monograph authors have the opportunity for their work to be open access and the Press can offer equal support to traditionally underserved and underfunded disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. 

At a time when the traditional market for scholarly books continues to decline, works funded through D2O are reaching larger audiences online than ever before – averaging 2,694 reads per title and bringing important scholarship to new audiences. D2O books have also been academically cited almost 1,100 times.

“D2O is meeting the needs of academics, readers, and libraries alike, and our usage and citation stats demonstrate that the academic community is embracing open access scholarship across a wide range of fields and for many purposes – from the classroom to research projects to professional interest reading,” said Harris. “This further aligns the work of the MIT Press with the mission of MIT to advance knowledge in science, technology, the arts, and other areas of scholarship to best serve the nation and the world, and provides opportunities for expansion of the model in the forthcoming years.”

The MIT Press will now turn its attention to its fourth funding cycle and invites libraries and library consortia to participate. For details, please visit: mitpress.mit.edu/D2O.

Important statistics

• 162 – number of books published in D2O to date
• 332 – number of libraries participating in D2O in 2024
• 423,044 – total # of times D2O books were read
• 12.74% / 54.78% / 32.48% – % of humanities/social sciences/STEM in D2O

9 Books with >10,000 reads

• Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind Brain and Behavior by Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo, and Karl J. Friston
• The Entangled Brain: How Perception Cognition and Emotion Are Woven Together by  Luiz Pessoa
• Computational Thinking Education in K–12: Artificial Intelligence Literacy and Physical Computing by Siu-Cheung Kong and Harold Abelson
• Cognitive Robotics edited by Angelo Cangelosi and Minoru Asada
• Sheaf Theory through Examples by Daniel Rosiak
• Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning by Sheila L. Macrine and Jennifer M.B. Fugate
• Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence by Elena Esposito
• Discard Studies: Wasting Systems and Power by Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky
• Social Engineering: How Crowdmasters Phreaks Hackers and Trolls Created a New Form of Manipulative Communication by Robert W. Gehl and Sean T Lawson

Title list for Spring 2024 Direct to Open

• Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power by Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré
• Cats, Carpenters, and Accountants: Bibliographical Foundations of Information Science by Wayne de Fremery
• Computational Thinking Curricula in K–12: International Implementations edited by Harold Abelson and Siu-Cheung Kong
• Cracking the Bro Code by Coleen Carrigan
• Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA edited by Daniel Strand, Anna Källén and Charlotte Mulcare
• Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools by Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard
• Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy by Cristina Alaimo and Jannis Kallinikos
• Digital Ethology: Human Behavior in Geospatial Context edited by Tomáš Paus and Hye-Chung Kum
• Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine by James Malazita
• Fulfilling the Pledge: Securing Industrial Democracy for American Workers in a Digital Economy by Roger C. Hartley
• Hedgehogs, Killing, and Kindness: The Contradictions of Care in Conservation Practice by Laura McLauchlan
• Imagining Transmedia edited by Ed Finn, Bob Beard, Joey Eschrich and Ruth Wylie
• Inducing Immunity?: Justifying Immunization Policies in Times of Vaccine Hesitancy by Roland Pierik and Marcel Verweij
• Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media by Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka
• Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans, Anti-Nazis, Bureaucrats, Feminists, Veterans, and Whistleblowing Moralists Created Bioethics by Robert Baker
• Migration Stigma: Understanding Prejudice, Discrimination, and Exclusion edited by Lawrence H. Yang, Maureen A. Eger and Bruce G. Link
• Navigating the Polycrisis: Mapping the Futures of Capitalism and the Earth by Michael J. Albert
• Optimizing Play: Why Theorycrafting Breaks Games and How to Fix It by Christopher A. Paul
• Psychoacoustic Foundations of Major-Minor Tonality by Richard Parncutt
• Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer by Peter D McDonald
• Seeing Red: Nintendo’s Virtual Boy by José P. Zagal and Benj Edwards
• The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience by M. Chirimuuta
• The Cognitive Life of Maps by Roberto Casati
• The Curious Culture of Economic Theory by Ran Spiegler
• The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports by Thomas Metzinger
• The Evolution of Techniques: Rigidity and Flexibility in Use, Transmission, and Innovation edited by Mathieu Charbonneau
• The Future Is Present: Art, Technology, and the Work of Mobile Image by Philip Glahn and Cary Levine
• The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology by Elena Kochetkova
• The Left Hand of Data: Designing Education Data for Justice by Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia
• The Nature and Dynamics of Collaboration edited by Paul F.M.J. Verschure
• The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola
• The Science of Sadness: A New Understanding of Emotion by David Huron
• Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy by Ben Collier
• Transforming School Food Politics around the World edited by Jennifer E. Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert
• Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education by Chris Higgins
• Underbelly: Childhood Diarrhea and the Hidden Local Realities of Global Health by Rachel Hall-Clifford
• Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications by Jacob Ward
• Voices on the Margins: Inclusive Education at the Intersection of Language, Literacy, and Technology by Yenda Prado and Mark Warschauer
• Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative by Aaron Bateman