How Does Open Access Work With John Wiley Sons Books?

Wiley’s approach to open access for books is basically a menu of options rather than a single fixed policy, and I like that flexibility — it fits different kinds of projects and funding situations. For monographs and edited volumes, Wiley offers a true open access route (often called gold open access) where the entire book is published freely on Wiley Online Library under a Creative Commons license. That usually means the author or the author’s funder/institution pays a book processing charge (BPC), though the exact price depends on the title and the list price, so you have to check Wiley’s current fee schedule or ask your editor. In many cases publishers will allow different CC flavors (CC-BY is common for funder compliance, but other CC variants may be possible depending on requirements and negotiations).

If you’re an author who can’t or won’t pay a BPC, there are other routes. Wiley allows authors to put preprints on personal or institutional repositories in most cases (posting the accepted manuscript may be subject to an embargo for some book types), and they sometimes permit individual chapters to be made open within an otherwise subscription book. Those chapter-level OA options are handy for edited volumes: a funder can pay for a single chapter, which is then published OA while the rest of the volume remains behind paywall. Institutional transformative agreements — those “read-and-publish” deals many universities make with Wiley — can also cover book OA fees, so check with your library; if your institution has a Wiley deal, it might reduce or eliminate the upfront cost to you.

From a reader’s perspective the good part is discoverability and permanence: Wiley puts OA books on Wiley Online Library with DOIs, good metadata, and indexing so they show up in discovery services. For librarians there are COUNTER usage stats and perpetual access terms to consider. Practical tips I’ve learned: read Wiley’s author guidelines early, confirm allowable licenses with your funder, ask your institution about transformative agreements, and always email the Wiley contact listed for your book to negotiate specifics like embargoes or chapter-level OA. I’ve seen projects transformed when a single institutional agreement covered the BPC — it’s worth checking, especially if you’re nursing a grant schedule or trying to meet a funder’s open access mandate.

I ran into Wiley’s open access options while helping a friend publish a chapter, and the system felt flexible but a little maze-like at first. In short: you can publish a whole book OA (usually a BPC is charged), make single chapters open inside a subscription book, or rely on Green OA by depositing preprints/accepted manuscripts in repositories — embargoes and exact rights vary by book type.

If you’re the author, first check funder rules (many require CC-BY), then ask your library if they have a Wiley deal that covers fees. If you’re a reader, search Wiley Online Library for free-to-download books or look for OA-labelled chapters. My practical trick: email the editorial contact to confirm licensing choices and any possible fee waivers — they’re often helpful, and institutional agreements can save a lot of money. It made a tight timeline manageable for us, and it might for you too.