[GOAL] Monographs - Australian university presses

[Gavin Moodie]

This responds partly to Professor Hurtado's contribution.

All Australian university presses are subsidised by their parent
university.  Some traditional university presses use that subsidy to
maintain their press much as it was before electronic publishing.

Other Australian university presses publish scholarly monographs in 2
forms, as ebooks and as print on demand.  Both formats are edited, designed
and promoted and presumably share these costs.  These presses give away
their ebook editions but charge for their print on demand editions and
report that there remains enough demand for print on demand editions to at
least cover their costs.  So these ebooks' editing and other production
services including promotion are paid for by presumably modest cross
subsidies from print on demand revenue and more substantial subsidies from
their university.

This seems to me to be a useful model as long as epresses are able to
demonstrate the rigour of their commissioning, refereeing and editing.
 However, there remains a divide between Australian traditional and
electronic university presses.  Furthermore, many monograph authors have
reservations similar to Professor Hurtado's.

So many Australian advocates for green open access for journal articles
believe that any form of open access mandate for monographs would be
premature.  As Professor Harnad argues, we prefer to concentrate on the
more straightforward case for articles at this stage.  If in the meantime
some progress can be made on monographs, good.  Otherwise a successful
green mandate for articles would be a good example but not necessarily
model for monographs.

Gavin

Gavin Moodie
Governance and Planning
RMIT
GPO box 2476
Melbourne 3001
Tel + 61 3 9925 2061
Fax + 61 3 9925 3185
gavin.moodie at rmit.edu.au
http://rmit.academia.edu/GavinMoodie
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