<font size="2"><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif">[Forwarding from OAPEN minus the attachment. --Peter Suber.]<br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="5" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Arial">OAPEN Newsletter - February 2010</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-weight: normal; font-size: small; "><b><font size="4" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">Digital Monographs in Humanities and Social
Sciences: Report on User Needs</span></font></b></span></span></font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; "><b><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">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. </span></font></b></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial">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.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial">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.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial">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.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial">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.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial">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. </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial">The full report can be found at <b><span style="font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.oapen.org/images/D315%20User%20Needs%20Report.pdf" title="blocked::http://www.oapen.org/images/D315 User Needs Report.pdf" target="_blank">www.oapen.org</a>.</span></b></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; "><b><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">For more information, contact Janneke Adema
(Amsterdam University Press) tel. 0031 (0)20 420
0050 email <a href="mailto:j.adema@aup.nl" title="blocked::mailto:j.adema@aup.nl" target="_blank">j.adema@aup.nl</a></span></font></b></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; "><b><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">UPCOMING MEETINGS AND EVENTS</span></font></b></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial">OAPEN Meeting – February 25 to 26 – Naples, Italy</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial">Bibliothekartag 2010 – March 15 to 18 – Leipzig, Germany</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial">OAPEN Meeting- March 17 to 19 – Florence, Italy</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial">JISC Conference – April 12 to 13 – London, England</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial">UKSG Conference – April 12 to 14 – Edinburgh, Scotland</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial">London</span></font><font face="Arial"><span style="font-family:Arial"> International Book Fair –
April 19 to 21 – London,
England</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial">European Conference on Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine
and Medicine 3 – May 27 to 29 – Leiden
University, The Netherlands</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); ">OAPEN is a Targeted Project co-funded by the EC
within its eContentplus Programme.</span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">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. </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Learn more about OAPEN by visiting the website: <a href="http://www.oapen.org/" title="blocked::http://www.oapen.org/
http://www.oapen.org/" target="_blank">www.oapen.org</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; "> </span></span></font></p>
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