[Ict4devwg] Open Access Book publishing

Tue Jun 23 21:09:58 BST 2009

Subject: 	[bytesforall_readers] OA publishing
Date: 	Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:05:44 +0530
From: 	Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com>
Reply-To: 	bytesforall_readers at yahoogroups.com

Here is a must read news story for all those interested and involved in
scholarly publishing.

Arun

==

  From Open Access News

*University presses debate OA at conference
<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2009/06/university-presses-debate-oa-at.html>* 

Reports from the Association of American University Presses annual
meeting <http://aaupnet.org/programs/annualmeeting/> (Philadelphia, June
18-21, 2009):

Scott Jaschik, Change or Die?
<http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/22/aaup>, Inside Higher Ed,
June 22, 2009.

     [Kathleen] Keane of Johns Hopkins, in her debut speech as president
     of the association, noted that the current debates over open access
     "appears to put us at an impasse with members of the library and
     faculty communities" and that this appearance was "unfortunate." But
     she didn't suggest any change in association policies. ...

     Stuart M. Shieber, director of the Office of Scholarly Communication
     and professor of computer science at Harvard University, said that
     the current publishing system is "not economically sustainable," but
     he offered a take on open access that differed from that of its most
     fervent supporters. Shieber said that we shouldn't be talking about
     how to pay for open access, since open access doesn't cost much at
     all. Rather, the question should be about "paying for publisher
     services" such as managing peer review and marketing (which apply to
     digital work as much as to printed editions). He said that it may be
     time to consider a model where libraries don't pay for subscriptions
     in the typical way, but pay "first copy costs" (those that still
     exist digitally) or that universities pay a fee for work published
     by their faculty members. ...

     Michael Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the
     National Academies Press, noted that his publisher offers more than
     4,000 books in free, digital form, "and we are not broke." Jensen --
     who, when he isn't thinking about the future of scholarly
     publishing, is thinking about environmental issues -- said that
     university presses need to acknowledge "an inconvenient truth about
     book publishing," namely that its basic structure won't work
     anymore. ...

     Scholarship must be "de-linked from print publication," such that
     books are "the exception" and no longer the norm for disseminating
     new scholarship. With colleges and universities unlikely to be
     providing major budget increases to libraries, the reality is that
     within a decade "we will be unlikely to be able to sell print books
     to to libraries at the prices we need to charge," adding that "it's
     crazy to think we can continue to do what we have been doing."

     While stressing that he believes book publishing is essential to
     promote and spread great new intellectual ideas, Jensen said there
     is no good reason to keep print and to keep charging. Print
     distribution hurts the environment, he says, and charging (while
     failing to make university presses economically viable) limits
     readership. ...

Jennifer Howard, Scholarly Presses Discuss What It Takes to Survive
<http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/06/20390n.htm>, Chronicle of Higher
Education, June 22, 2009. Access restricted to subscribers.

     ... One indication that university-press publishing has life in it
     yet: Many more presses have moved from talking about electronic
     books to producing them. On June 12, for instance, the University of
     Chicago Press made 1,000 of its titles available as e-books, using
     Adobe Digital Editions. Garrett P. Kiely, the press's director, said
     he was already seeing some indications that the digital books were
     finding a market. He noted that other scholarly publishers,
     including the University of Alabama Press, the University of Iowa
     Press, and Utah State University Press, have recently begun to sell
     digital editions of books. Having big players like Sony and now
     Google in the e-book game has lit a fire under academic presses, Mr.
     Kiely said.

     "It's one of those things that's just bursting to happen," said Alex
     Holzman, director of Temple University Press. "Once we make a hole
     in the dam, the water's just going to rush through. It's going to
     change fast."

     Mr. Holzman and the directors of New York University Press, the
     University of Pennsylvania Press, and Rutgers University Press have
     an idea about how to push the transition along. Over the weekend,
     they learned that they had gotten a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon
     Foundation for the first phase of a project to help presses make the
     leap to electronic monographs.

     The project, which does not have an official name yet, will survey
     librarians--major buyers of university press output--to figure out
     what they want from electronic books. It will also analyze current
     systems for delivering digital books, to see what might work best
     for university presses and whether something new needs to be built. ...

     "As we know, the crisis in scholarly communication is now in its
     fifth decade," joked [Douglas] Armato of the University of Minnesota
     Press as he moderated the plenary session in which Ms. Bonn, of
     Michigan, took part.

     The comment got a laugh, but it also set up an assault on what Mr.
     Armato called the "polarizing and self-serving rhetoric" that fills
     the debate over open access and scholarly publishing. Yes, we have
     to learn to live with and through "the transformation that lies not
     ahead of us but all around us," he advised. Nobody wants to be the
     ancien régime, Mr. Armato said--look what happened when the
     tumbrels rolled--but he pointed out that "revolutions often begin
     without much consideration" of what's lost on the road to utopia.
     Revolutionary rhetoric has done more to harm scholarly communication
     than to advance it, as revolutions tend to ignore "the human,
     social, and cultural consequences of those steps and what is
     destroyed along the way," he warned. ...

Permanent link to this post
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Posted by Gavin Baker at 6/22/2009 02:34:00 PM.