[BOAI] OAPEN Newsletter - February 2010

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from OAPEN minus the attachment.  --Peter Suber.]

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OAPEN Newsletter -  February 2010

*Digital Monographs in Humanities and Social Sciences: Report on User Needs*

*The OAPEN study of the prospects for scholarly publishing in the humanities
and social sciences (HSS) points to the e-monograph, published in open
access, as a promising publishing model for the future. This model offers a
satisfactory response to the crisis facing the printed monograph while
connecting to the general trend in academia towards electronic research and
study resources. Moreover, it fully embraces the advantages in terms of
access and usability of e-monographs provided by academic libraries. *

The printed monograph has become an endangered species: libraries spend an
ever larger part of their already dwindling budgets on licences for online
science, technology and medicine journals, leaving little to purchase
monographs. For many publishers, paper monographs represent a prestigious
but loss-leading part of the list, and they, as well as libraries and
funding agents, are gradually becoming more open to new business models.

Last year, OAPEN conducted a broad study involving some 250 HSS scholars and
40 experts from the relevant stakeholder groups to investigate trends,
practices and expectations regarding production and dissemination of
monographs. The study focused on two main areas: the effect of digitisation
on monograph publishing, and the expectations of various user groups
regarding a possible new publishing model based on Open Access. The future
of the monograph is particularly relevant for the HSS, where its position is
much stronger than in science, technology and medicine (STM) where the
journal article is the dominant format.

Although it appears that as many as 30 per cent of scholars are still not
familiar with Open Access publishing, most of them, as well as universities
and research funding institutes increasingly recognise its benefits, such as
greater visibility of research results and the opportunity for universities
and other funding institutions to become directly involved in electronic
publishing agreements with publishers and libraries. The digital revolution
allows libraries to expand their services, by building digital repositories
and facilitating scholarly communication, thus turning them into integrated
service and content providers. In all, the level of use of digital services
in the scholarly community demonstrates fertile ground for a large-scale
introduction of Open Access e-monographs.

The OAPEN study has also identified two areas, common to the different
stakeholder groups, as the main obstacles to the development of Open Access
e-monographs: firstly. perceptions of academic quality (e-monographs are not
seen as adding value to a scholar’s career outlook, and they have limited
pulling power in terms of research funding), and a general tendency to
devalue ‘free’ online content; and secondly, anxieties regarding the
financial viability of Open Access business models. However, these
reservations help to formulate the desired attributes of the new model -
broad and perpetual online access to trustworthy scholarship, combined with
the print-on-demand paper monograph, peer-reviewed to ensure scholarly
quality and the author’s research ratings, and upfront funding of
publications.

Despite all the uncertainties, it is clearly essential that the scholarly
and publishing communities continue to experiment with new models and
practices on a flexible, learn-as-you-go basis, in order to preserve the
benefits of the monograph from the no longer sustainable print model.

The full report can be found at
*www.oapen.org<http://www.oapen.org/images/D315%20User%20Needs%20Report.pdf>
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*For more information, contact Janneke Adema (Amsterdam University Press)
tel. 0031 (0)20 420 0050 email j.adema at aup.nl*

*UPCOMING MEETINGS AND EVENTS*

OAPEN Meeting – February 25 to 26 – Naples, Italy

Bibliothekartag 2010 –  March 15 to 18 – Leipzig, Germany

OAPEN Meeting- March 17 to 19 – Florence, Italy

JISC Conference – April 12 to 13 – London, England

UKSG Conference – April 12 to 14 – Edinburgh, Scotland

London International Book Fair – April 19 to 21 – London, England

European Conference on Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine and Medicine 3 –
May 27 to 29 – Leiden University, The Netherlands

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OAPEN is a Targeted Project co-funded by the EC within its eContentplus
Programme.

OAPEN aims to develop and implement an Open Access publication model for
academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). Our goal is to
achieve a sustainable European approach to improve the quantity, visibility
and usability of high quality academic research and foster the creation of
new content by developing future-oriented publishing solutions, including an
Open Access Library for peer reviewed books in HSS. The 30-months project
started in September 2008.

Learn more about OAPEN by visiting the website: www.oapen.org

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