Practical Action Publishing's Open Access programme 

Practical Action publishing puts transformative knowledge into the hands of people who need it most. The ability to publish an article that is Open Access is often a desired and/or mandated access status for our authors and partner organizations. With this in mind, our peer-reviewed journals are all Open Access as standard (enabled through valued subscriptions from our supporting institutions and individuals), and we offer Gold open access options for our book programme.

Gold access for books

All open access books are subject to peer-review, both at the proposal stage and when the full manuscript is complete. Further information for book authors on the proposal, submission, peer-review and production procedures can be requested by emailing publishinginfo@practicalaction.org.uk   Post acceptance, authors who have indicated an open access requirement will be asked to pay a Book Processing Charge (BPC). Funding for this may be available as part of the original research project or from an author’s institution. Payment of the BPC ensures that a paginated PDF of the title is freely available in perpetuity and in its final published form, from the moment of formal publication. The title will also be maintained as part of the scholarly record and benefit from inclusion in industry standard archival and preservation initiatives. Further fee information is available below as this charge is dependent on the length of the book and calculated only once the text is finalized.

Books can be published under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License, Practical Action’s own Open Access License (Non-Commercial, No Derivatives) or an All Rights Reserved copyright status. Practical Action Publishing will also ensure that a hard copy is available for purchase. Authors may also choose to pay for additional reflowable ebook formats to be produced in addition to the PDF. Practical Action Publishing will distribute these via popular channels such as Amazon, Apple  and Mobi.

Authors should note that all books published via Gold Open Access routes available with Practical Action Publishing will be subject to rigorous peer-review at both the proposal stage and when the manuscript is complete.

Book processing charges

Up to 50,000 words: $12,000 |£6,000 |€9,000

Books which exceed this word count will be charged at the basic rate plus $2,000 |£1,000 |€1,500 for every additional 20,000 words or part thereof. Please note that the quoted fees apply to books with a low level of complexity; higher charges will apply for a non-standard design template or for greater levels of design complexity, including photos and figures. Authors are responsible for the production of an index for their book, if the publishers consider this to be desirable.

Open Access journal articles

We are proud to announce that we will be making Waterlines and Enterprise Development & Microfinance journals free for everyone to access from January 2022, through a Subscribe to Open (S2O) model.

Read about our 2022 plan for moving our journals to an S2O model