Taylor & Francis Partnership with the National Council on Measurement in Education Yields Dramatic Open Access Results

Collaboration between the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) and Taylor & Francis (T&F) to make more books in Education open access catapulted readership six-fold in the partnership’s first year.

The NCME Applications of Educational Measurement and Assessment series, available here, provides definitive research, theory, and applied insights in educational measurement, assessment, testing, and psychometrics. Topics addressed include validation, fairness, accountability, technology, natural language processing, and beyond.

Ten edited volumes have been published since the partnership between NCME and T&F commenced in 2011, and the series will continue to follow key advancements in the subject area. In 2022, NCME agreed to provide open access funding for all books in the series, allowing each title to be read in full, at no cost to the reader.

“Taylor & Francis is inspired by collaborating with progressive, scholarly organizations like NCME to increase impact, reach and readership of trusted knowledge globally with open access books,” said Jeremy North, Managing Director, Advanced Learning, Taylor & Francis. “Taylor & Francis is a leader in open books across humanities, social sciences, STEM, and behavioral sciences. We also continue expansion in open books for professional audiences, in addition to research audiences.”

“NCME is committed to bringing leading scholarship to the widest possible audience, and publishing our Applications of Educational Measurement and Assessment book series under open access with Taylor & Francis has allowed us to advance this goal,” said NCME President Michael Walker.

Making these works available open access allows for this research to be read by a broader reading public. Scholars, academic faculty, and graduate students specializing in educational measurement, assessment, and psychometrics, alongside test development professionals, are among the primary readers of the NCME series.

Within the collection, a standout volume is Classroom Assessment and Educational Measurement, edited by Susan M. Brookhart and James H. McMillan. For this title, which addresses a critical area of emerging scholarship and innovative practice, usage jumped from 2,329 in 2021 to 9,989 views and downloads in 2022 and has surpassed previous years at 13,000 already in the current year.  Similarly, the book received more than nine times the average number of citations for publications in the same field, according to Dimensions data.

Between 2021 to 2022, the average number of countries accessing each series title increased by more than 200 percent, from seven to 21 countries. In the United States alone, average usage increased over 60% in 2022, compared to the year before.  Similarly, the average number of institutions accessing the content more than doubled per title from 2021 to 2022.

Authors and their funders can publish open access single- or co-authored books, edited collections and individual chapters with the Taylor & Francis OA books program. Upon publication, OA content is made available in digital format to read and download freely under a Creative Commons license.

T&F is making great strides in open books. Open access book publishing began a decade ago and with the publication of Technology and Sustainable Development: The Promise and Pitfalls of Techno-Solutionism earlier this year, T&F reached the milestone of 1,500 open access books. In addition, Education is the largest publishing list for Advanced Learning, the book division at T&F. Advanced Learning’s U.S. and global presence in Education continue to expand and diversify to provide a greater range and depth of knowledge for its customers.