About the Press

Here on Aarhus University’s site on Open Books, you will find Open Access publications by employees of Aarhus University. The publications you find here are freely available. Use the menu at the top to find publications categorized by type or subject area or view all publications in the Catalog.

As an employee of Aarhus University, you have the opportunity to publish your research publication on this page too. Read more about this on the Submissions page. 

The publications must have a professional or scholarly objective and must have been prepared in relation to research activities. 

The Royal Danish Library hosts Open Books and is responsible for the technical maintenance of the platform. Aarhus University is responsible for the content on its own page and acts as the publisher of the e-books here. 

Open Access Policy 

All publications are published Open Access, meaning anyone can freely read them without login or payment. Open Books aims to contribute to making research openly available to the public and promote global knowledge exchange. 

Authors do not have to pay any fees (so-called Book Processing Charges) to publish on Open Books. 

Copyright and License 

Authors retain their copyright to their publications on Open Books. 

Publications published after October 1, 2025, will (in most cases) be published under a Creative Commons license. See more on the page of the individual publication. 

Publications published before October 1, 2025, are not published under a license. Danish copyright law applies in these cases. 

History 

In 2015, the publishing platform 'AU Library Scholarly Publishing Services' was launched in collaboration between Aarhus University (AU) and the State and University Library in Aarhus (Statsbiblioteket). To publish their manuscript on the platform, the author/editor had to be employed at Aarhus University; besides that, there were no additional requirements for the manuscript. 

The service aimed to provide employees of Aarhus University with a place to publish material that did not fit for publication with an established publisher, such as a defended PhD thesis, a report, or a conference proceeding. The service was not meant to compete with established publishers, and no assistance was provided for formatting/layout nor for editorial review, including assessment and proofreading. 

In 2017, the State and University Library and the Royal Danish Library merged into the Royal Danish Library. 

In 2024, a project was initiated to expand the existing service for academic e-book publishing. The Royal Danish Library aimed to establish a national publishing platform for professional or scholarly e-books. 

In 2025, Open Books was launched, and the previous platform, which was only a service for employees of AU, was transformed so that AU’s page became one of several on a national publishing platform.