self-publishing route and began to identify a publisher that would be able to publish the final project within a reasonable timeline (ideally around summer 2021), could provide the right amount of services, would allow us to publish an openly licensed publication, offered an affordably priced physical version, and had reasonable publication fees.
Our initial search led us to Lever Press; however, that bid was not successful. After some research, we decided to seek a bid from Ubiquity Press, an OA press in the United Kingdom. Though we were not entirely familiar with them, the services they offered, particularly their post-publication offerings, drew us in with the promise of continued access and the ability to keep track of scholarly impact. This was important to us since our goal was to publish all of the chapters under a CC BY license. I will speak more about the licenses in the next section, but in short, we wanted our contributors to still maintain some ownership over their work. After a successful bid, we received a quote from Ubiquity that satisfied many of our requirements. However, we decided to seek another publisher since the initial quote1 would have made seeking funding a more intensive process.
Soon after our Ubiquity bid, we identified another potential publisher: Maize Books, an imprint of Michigan Publishing. Thanks to our University of Michigan sponsors, we were able to secure a bid for this project at a price point that would not put too much pressure on us. Given the reputation of both the University of Michigan and Michigan Publishing and following the advice of some of our supervisors, we signed a contract with Maize Books to develop an OA publication that will be distributed both physically and digitally. After receiving an initial quote,2 we refocused our efforts to finish the call for proposals and seek grant funding. Ultimately, this project was funded by the following grants:
- Creative Commons Global Network Community Activities Fund
- Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Grant
- Oregon State University Robert Lundeen Faculty Development Award
