James Shulman has published "Sustainable Free: Lessons Learned from the Launch of a Free Service Supporting Publishing in Art History" in LIBER Quarterly.
Here's an excerpt:
Hilary Ballon and Mariet Westermann, writing about the struggles of publishing in art history noted that "It is a paradox of the digital revolution that it has never been easier to produce and circulate a reproductive image, and never harder to publish one." If publishing in general is in crisis because of the seismic re-ordering in a digital world, the field of art history is the extreme tail of the spectrum; rights holders are accustomed to licensing image content for limited edition print runs. Given this particularly challenging corner of the publishing work, a project initiated by the Metropolitan Museum offers some hope of a collaborative way forward. What sociological re-engineering enabled progress on this problem? It is possible that there are other lessons here too, that might throw at least streaks of light on other process re-engineering provoked by digital innovation in publishing?
Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"
