This paper discusses the availability of open access books which are available in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). The relevant data has been collected from the open access directory from http://www.openbooks.org/ on 25 October 2015. Among the 3379 books, 1584 (46.88 %) books are published in English which includes 445 books which have no licenses, 83 books have CC BY; 153 books have CC-BY-NC; 814 books have CC-BY-NC-ND; 36 books have CC-BY-NC-SA; 24 books have CC-BY-ND and 29 books have CC-BY-SA licenses. It is found that 21 books have not mentioned its authors in the directory.

Keywords:   open access  Directory of Open Access Books  DOAB  licenses

In the 20th century, the library was opened for people’s use. After the development of ICT, things have been changed. There are documents in electronic form that documents are made available to everyone with the help of internet. Internet helps to access anything at anywhere without any boundaries. So, internet brought the concept of accessing information stored in the network around the world. It is made available for public access, and private access with the help of technology. After the successful directory of open access journal, now the directory of open access of books has emerged in this direction. An attempt has been made to study and analyse the directory of open access books for the purpose.

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a service to provide open access on monographs. It provides a searchable index with links to the full- texts of the publications at the publisher’s website or repository for peer-reviewed monographs through open access business model. It invites the academic publishers to provide the metadata of their open access books to DOAB. To increase dissemination, impact and visibility, the content format should be in interoperable metadata format. So the libraries can integrate the directory into their online catalogues, thereby helping scholars, students and the general public to discover the books. The aggregators may integrate the records in their commercial services. The DOAB is open to all academic publishers to provide the data. The main aims are to fulfill all the subjects as well as all languages which consists of many books as possible¹. The DOAB was officially launched on 1 July 2013 at the Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference at the British Library in London². However, unofficially it was operating since 2011 and its beta version was launched in 2012. The DOAB is a service of the Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Foundation. The OAPEN Foundation is an international initiative dedicated to open access monograph publishing, based at the National Library, The Hague³. The DOAB is being developed in close cooperation with Lars Bjørnshauge and Salam Baker Shanawa (Director of Semper Tool), who were also responsible for the development of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)⁴.

The main intention of the authors is to maximise the research results impact. Copyright should not be hindrance against this intension. There exists websites and tools to find out the journals and rights they are granting for distribution, reuse, etc. So, the authors have to rethink about how their work will be carried out further and they should choose right journals to publish.

Proper licensing improves and enhances the scientific progress and also honors the authors by retaining the copyright of the authors of their own intellectual work. Open access are author-friendly, reader-friendly, research-friendly. If the author allows additional of his derivative work, then the newly created work will follow the same license terms. This idea is called as ‘ShareAlike’ and it is inspired by the General Public License (GNU) which is used by many free and open source software projects. The various types of Licences are as under:

The E-books are easily indexed, catalogued and included in online public access catalogue (OPAC). Readers can also find e-books through search engines (such as Google), library OPAC or the publisher platform which make them more exposed and visible to a larger audience⁵. E-books offer a number of advantages over their print for all stakeholders, i.e., patrons, libraries, authors and publishers. For patrons, e-books offer 24/7 availability, remote access (accessible outside the physical walls of a library), full-text searching, changeable font size, accurate presentation and possession for an unlimited time. For libraries, e-books require no circulation, no shelf space or re-shelving and are never lost, damaged, stolen, or overdue⁶. Brody⁷ studied the research access/impact problem i.e., the journal articles are not accessible to all of their users. Hence, they are losing potential research activities and their impact. The solution is to make all articles available in open access. The open access articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-open access articles. There are two roads which is ‘golden’ and ‘green’ road. Only 5 % of journals are in gold, but more than 90 % are already green yet only about 20 % of articles have been self-archived. The e-books with CC license listed in DOAB are downloaded almost twice (181 %) as compared to e-books with a more restrictive license available in the OAPEN Library in a period of one year from June 2013-May 2014⁸. This is the reason that DOAB includes e-books available through the CC or comparable licenses. Even the e-books available in the OAPEN Library with a more restrictive license aren’t included in DOAB.

The DOAB is being developed in close cooperation with Lars Bjørnshauge and Salam Baker Shanawa (Director of SemperTool), who were also responsible for the development of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)⁹. Loan¹⁰ found that 307 e-books under three categories–monographs (68.08 %), book series (30.29 %) and conference proceedings (1.63 %) are available for science and technology through DOAB. These e-books deal with 8 major subject areas of Science and technology having 36 sub-fields. The maximum number of e-books is available for the subjects like general science, technology & engineering, earth & environmental sciences; and health & medical sciences.

The objectives of this study are to:

(a) Know the author-wise open access book in DOAB;

(b) Identify the publishers-wise books available in DOAB;

(c) Find out the year-wise added Vs licenses books in DOAB;

(d) Analyse the language Vs licenses-wise available books; and

(e) Identify the no. of pages Vs licenses books in DOAB.

This study discusses about the availability of books available in the DOAB. The required data has been collected from the open access directory from http://www.openbooks.org/ on 25 October 2015. It was analysed by using simple percentage and Chi-square test.

Table 1 indicates the author wise distribution of books available in the DOAB. Based on the available data, the totally 3379 books available as on 25th October 2015. Among the 3379, 13 books (0.38 %) are authored by Goebl, Hans, but 27 (0.80 %) books the authors details were not mentioned in the directory.

The publishers-wise distribution of books available in the DOAB has been analysed and it is shown in the Table 2. Among the 3379 books, 368 books (10.89 %) are by ANU Press which includes 367 (10.86 %) books which has no licenses and only one book has CC-BY-NC-SA license and it is the first position while ranking the publishers.

Chi-square test is applied for further discussion about the licenses of open access books with respect to publishers. The computed Chi-square value is 14708.302 which is higher than its tabulated value at 5 % level of significance. Hence the difference among licenses wise publication is statistically identified as highly significant with respect to publisher wise open access books in DOAB.

The languages-wise distribution of books available in the DOAB has been analysed and it is shown in the Table 3. Among the 3379, 1584 (46.88%) books are published by English which includes 445 (13.17 %) books which has no licenses, 83 books (2.46 %) has CC BY, 153 books (4.53 %) has CC- BY-NC, 814 books (24.09 %) has CC-BY-NC-ND, 36 books (1.07 %) has CC-BU-NC-SA, 24 (0.7) book has CC-BY-ND and 29 (0.86 %) book has CC-BY-SA licenses. It is revealed from the table, only one book each published in the languages like Welsh, Swedish, Russian and Espanola are available in DOAB.

The Chi-square test is for the licenses of with respect to language wise distribution of open access books on DOAB. The computed Chi-square value is 6042.093 which is higher than its tabulated value at 5 percent level of significance. Hence the difference among licenses wise publication is statistically identified as highly significant with respect to language wise open access books in DOAB.

The publication year-wise distribution of books available in the DOAB Vs types of licenses is analysed and is presented in Table 4. During the period of 1866 to 2015 totally 3379 books were published. The publication year were categorised like upto 1980, 1981 to 1990, 1991 to 2000, 2001 to 2010 and 2011 to 2015. Among the 3379, 35 books (1.04 %) are published before 1980, which includes 31 books (0.92 %) has no licenses, 3 books (0.09 %) has CC-BY-NC-SA and only one book CC-BY-NC-ND licenses. And 22 books (0.65 %) in 1981 to 1990, 161 books (4.76 %) in 1991 to 2000 and 1525 books (45.13 %) in 2001 to 2010. The first book was published in the year 1866 and the second book in 1867 but after the 1867 to 1927 there were no books mentioned it is evidence from source.

The Chi-square test was applied for further discussion about the year-wise publication of open access books with respect to type of licenses. The computed Chi-square value is 532.750 which is higher than its tabulated value at 5 % level of significance. Hence, the difference among licenses-wise publication is statistically identified as highly significant with respect to year-wise publication of open access books in DOAB.

Table 5 shows the licenses-wise distribution of open access books available in DOAB which are categories based on year-wise added on DOAB. Out of 3379, 487 books (14.41 %) added in 2011, 702 books (20.77 %) in 2012, 365 books (10.8 %) in 2013, 920 books (27.22 %) in 2014 and 905 books (26.78 %) added in 2015 with DOAB. Among the 3379, 807 books (23.88 %) have no licenses, 97 books (2.87 %) have CC-BY, 351 books (10.39 %) have CC BY-NC, 1438 books (42.56 %) have CC BY-NC-ND, 464 books (13.73 %) have CC BY-NC-SA, 175 books (5.18 %) have CC BY-ND and 47 books (1.39 %) have CC BY-SA licenses. It is revealed from the table, more than 50 % of books were added in 2014 and 2015.

Chi-square test is applied for the licenses of open access books with respect to year of added on DOAB versus licenses. The computed Chi-square value is 1407.314 which is higher than its tabulated value at 5 % level of significance. Hence, the difference among licenses-wise publication is statistically identified as highly significant with respect to added year of open access books in DOAB.

The distribution number of pages-wise open access books in the DOAB has been analysed and it is shown in the Table 6. The open access books categorised based on the number of pages like 1-100, 101-200, 201-300, 301–400 and above 400. Among the 3379, 125 books (3.70 %) have below 100 pages, 528 books (15.63 %) have 101 to 200 pages, 683 books (20.21 %) have 201 to 300 pages, 387 books (11.45 %) have the category of 301 to 400 pages, 151 books (4.47 %) have more than 400 pages and 1505 books (44.53 %) have not mentioned its page number in the directory. It is concluded from the Table, nearly 45 % of the books have not mentioned its page number details. 535 (15.83 %) has no licenses, 15(0.44 %) has CC-BY, 122 (3.61 %) has CC-BY-NC, 680 (20.12 %) has CC-BY-NC-ND, 52 (1.54 %) has CC-BY-NC-SA, 90 (2.66 %) has CCBY-ND and 11 (0.33 %) book has CC-BY-SA.

Chi-square test is applied for further analysis about the licenses of open access books with respect to number of pages. The computed Chi-square value is 568.057 which is higher than its tabulated value at 5 % level of significance. Hence the difference among licenses versus number of pages is statistically identified as highly significant.

There are 3379 books available in DOAB in which 21 books don’t provide the authors details in the directory.

Among the 3379, 368 books (10.89 %) are from ANU Press out of which includes 367 (10.86 %) books have no licenses and only one book has CC-BY-NC-SA license.

1584 books (46.88 %) were published in English where 445 books (13.17%) has no licenses, 83 books (2.46 %) has CC BY; 153 books (4.53 %) has CC-BY-NC; 814 books (24. 09 %) has CC-BY-NC-ND; 36 books (1.07 %) has CC-BU-NC-SA, 24 books (0.7) has CC-BY-ND; and 29 books (0.86 %) has CC-BY-SA licenses

After 2011 nearly 1621 books were published which consists of 318 books (9.41 %) has no licenses; 92 books (2.72 %) has CC-BY; 200 books (5.92 %) has CC-BY-NC; 793 books (23.47 %) has CC-BY-NC-ND; 100 books (2.96 %) has CC-BY-NC-SA; 71 books (2.1 %) has CC-BY-ND; and 47 books (1.39 %) has CC-BY-SA licenses.

125 books (3.70 %) have less than 100 pages; 528 books (15.63 %) have 101-200 pages; 683 books (20.21 %) have 201-300 pages; 387 books (11.45 %) have 301-400 pages.

The open access movement is exclusive and important in the current digital era. It is evident that the scholarly communication forms like articles, monographs, reports, etc. are available open access mode. There are directories coming out with sole publications as journals, books, repositories and so on. They satisfy the end users for getting more documents through open access mode without spending more money. The DOAB is a platform to have more visibility for open access books to the users communities. The publishers as well as authors should take initiative to share the books in the DOAB. It paves way to integrate open access books links to the library online catalogue. The library professionals can also utilise this facility by way of giving link to the library catalogue. It also helps scholars and students to discover and utilise the open access books. Open access movement will be successful if institutions, organisations, and individuals keep on contributing in the open access mode.

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Dr S. Dhanavandan is working as Assistant Librarian at The Gandhigram Rural Institute, Deemed University, Gandhigram, Tamil Nadu. He has guided many PhD scholars. He has published more than 95 articles in National-International Journals presented and more than 120 papers in National and International Conferences. He has 15 books in Library and Information Science and 20 papers published in Chapters in edited books.

Dr M. Tamizhchelvan is working as Deputy Librarian at The Gandhigram Rural Institute, Deemed University, Gandhigram. He holds PhD in the Library and Information Science from University of Madras. He is the approved research guide for PhD at Gandhigram Rural Institute, Gandhigram. He has more than 20 years experience as working as librarian in different institutions. He has presented 65 papers in conferences and seminar and 45 articles in national and international journals. He has also published five books in Library and Information Science. He has organised many workshops on Library and digital related topics.