[1][2] All OBP titles are open access, and are available in free editions in PDF, HTML and XML formats on the publisher's website, and a number of platforms including Google Books, Worldreader, OpenEdition, DOAB, The European Library and Europeana.

[5] OBP is a founder member of ScholarLed, a collective of not-for-profit, academic-led, open access book publishers.

[7] Open Book Publishers was founded in 2008 by Rupert Gatti and Alessandra Tosi, both academics from the University of Cambridge.

William St Clair joined OBP in 2009 and became the chairman of the board of directors, a role he held until his death in 2021.

OBP organized a campaign to republish an out-of-print book by Ruth Finnegan through the crowd source funding platform Unglue.it.