Digital Presses – DigitalKoans

Knowledge Exchange Report: "Alternative Publishing Platforms. What Have We Learnt?"

From our sample, no pattern emerged of any discipline appearing to be more innovative than any others, and indeed most alternative platforms seemed to be open to use by all fields.

Most platforms within this survey were replacing the function of existing publishers in publishing research articles, books and conference proceedings. There was some innovation around peer review. Considering both of these aspects, only a small group of fewer than 10 of the 45 platforms should probably be described as truly exploring "alternative ways" of doing things.

Only 11 of the platforms said that they solely concentrated on the methodological quality of the work, 2 solely on the impact of the work. Most said it was up to the editors to decide on criteria for assessment — the platforms themselves were agnostic. This is an area where further work might help elucidate the philosophies of different platforms when it comes to research assessment.

https://tinyurl.com/59eknvy6

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography, Version 3

Digital Scholarship has released the Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography, version 3. This bibliography includes over 300 selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports about academic libraries’ digital publishing programs from 1989 though 2022. While academic libraries have published a variety of digital publications during this period, this bibliography primarily covers the open access publishing of scholarly books, journals, and other serials. It provides a brief narrative overview of the early development of these publishing efforts. It covers the establishment of new university presses by academic libraries, especially all-digital open access presses, and the merger or cooperative efforts of libraries and university presses. It also covers the technical publishing infrastructures used by library publishing programs. It includes full abstracts for works under certain Creative Commons Licenses. It is available as a website and a PDF file (52 pages). It includes a Google Translate link.

The bibliography has the following major sections:

https://digital-scholarship.org/alsp/alsp.htm

Digital Scholarship’s website bibliographies have been reformatted as single-page files and a PDF file designed for printing has been made available for each one. They include a Google Translate link.

UC Publishing Services Launched

The University of California Press and the California Digital Library have launched the UC Publishing Services (UCPubS).

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

UCPubS offers a suite of open access digital and print publication services to University of California centers, institutes, and departments that produce scholarly books. By coordinating the publishing efforts of UC Press, the California Digital Library's eScholarship program, and publishing partners throughout the UC system, UCPubS provides a sustainable publishing model that extends the University's capacity to disseminate its scholarship to the world.

Building on current publishing activities, UCPubS enables organizations such as the Townsend Center at UC Berkeley and the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA to focus on scholarship rather than on distribution, sales and web platform development. "Campus partners immediately recognize the benefits of this program as it solves so many of the logistical challenges they face as small publishers," according to Laura Cerruti, Director of Digital Content Development at UC Press. These challenges include reaching a broader public by increasing print sales and gaining access to new market channels; streamlining peer review and manuscript production; reliable preservation of digital publications; and tracking usage and sales of publications. "The program seeks to enable greater visibility of UC-affiliated research while reducing duplication of effort and cost," Cerruti added.

With this shared resource model, campus publishing partners are responsible for selection of content, peer review, editing, design, and composition. eScholarship provides open-access digital publishing, peer review and manuscript management tools, and preservation. University of California Press handles printing (using print-on-demand technology), sales and distribution of print publications, and online marketing for both print and digital publications. "For the University Press and the Library, it is a mutually beneficial partnership, enabling us to amplify our capacity to serve our institution in ways that neither one of us could do as effectively alone. Combining eScholarship's open access platform with UC Press"s commercial distribution capacity brings two seemingly divergent models together as a flexible solution to monographic publishing needs at UC," says Catherine Mitchell, Director of the Publishing Group at the California Digital Library. . . .

Several partners are already using UCPubS services: The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley; California Academic Partnership Program (CAPP); The Earl Warren Institute of Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity, UC Berkeley School of Law; The Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley; Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA); Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA; Regional History Project at the University Library, UC Santa Cruz; and the UCLA Graduate Student Association.

eScholarship Relaunched with New Services and Enhanced Functionality

The California Digital Library has relaunched eScholarship with new services and enhanced functionality.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Previously known as UC's eScholarship Repository, the new eScholarship offers a robust scholarly publishing platform that enables departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.

"Our relaunch of eScholarship reflects the enormous value we see in recasting the institutional repository as an open access publisher," says Catherine Mitchell, Director of the Publishing Group at the California Digital Library. "There is significant need across the University of California campuses for a sustainable infrastructure to support the publication and dissemination of research. In our efforts to respond to this need, we have watched our institutional repository evolve into a dynamic platform for the original publication of scholarly work." . . .

The relaunch of eScholarship brings new opportunities for digital publishing to the University of California and offers substantially improved services for previously supported publication types. Books published in eScholarship are now eligible for a combined digital/print publication service, courtesy of UC Publishing Services (UCPubS), a joint program of UC Press and the California Digital Library. In addition, eScholarship now offers conference lifecycle support, including mechanisms for proposal submission, program display, and the ultimate publication of proceedings.

Much of the site redesign has been focused on improving the quality of access to eScholarship publications. The site is optimized for Google searches; PDFs can be viewed in their entirety without download; and research can be shared easily through third party social networking sites and RSS feeds. Likewise, the ability to locate relevant scholarship within the new site is greatly improved as a result of the implementation of:

a highly developed similar items finder

visual snippets of keywords within documents (KWIC Pics) accessible from the search results page

facets for narrowing search results by UC campus, discipline, and peer review– status

keyword search capability within documents

University of Michigan to Offer Print-on-Demand Editions of Thousands of Public Domain Books via BookSurge

The University of Michigan will offer print-on-demand editions of thousands of public domain books via BookSurge for between $10 to about $45.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The agreement gives the public a unique opportunity to buy reprints of a wide range of titles in the U-M Library for as little as a few dollars. As individual copies are sold on Amazon.com, BookSurge will print and bind the books in soft-cover form.

"This agreement means that titles that have been generally unavailable for a century or more will be able to go back into print, one copy at a time," said Paul N. Courant, U-M librarian and dean of libraries.

"The agreement enables us to increase access to public domain books and other publications that have been digitized," Courant said. "We are very excited to be offering this service as a new way to increase access to the rich collections of the university library."

Maria Bonn, director of the U-M Library's scholarly publishing office, said the reprint program includes both books digitized by the U-M and those digitized through the U-M's partnership with Google. The initial offering on Amazon will include more than 400,000 titles in more than 200 languages ranging from Acoli to Zulu.

All of the books being offered on Amazon through BookSurge are titles that remain available in their original form at the U-M Library. The U-M has been offering a limited number of titles for reprint on demand with BookSurge and other distribution partners for the past five years. A reprint "best seller" might sell 100 copies, Bonn said.

The U-M will set the list price of each book. The agreement calls for a sharing of revenue between BookSurge and the university.

Two Million Plus Downloads: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Institutional Repository

As of today, the DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln repository contains over 31,000 documents, has had 2,132,581 full-text downloads to date, and 1,307,822 downloads in the past year (see the bottom of the repository's home page). It is also used to publish RURALS: Review of Undergraduate Research in Agricultural and Life Sciences, a gratis open access journal. It uses the Digital Commons software from the Berkeley Electronic Press.

University of Arizona Libraries Collaborate with Faculty Member to Publish New E-Journal

The University of Arizona Libraries and UA Regents' Professor Richard Wilkinson have collaborated to publish a new quarterly e-journal, the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, or the JAEI, was created by Wilkinson, a UA classics and Near Eastern studies professor, and will be hosted on the UA Libraries' institutional repository site, also known as UAiR.

The digitially-based, peer-reviewed journal explores the relationship between ancient Egypt and its surrounding regions and helps develop an important new trend in Egyptological scholarship by taking an interdisciplinary approach.

The journal publishes full-length articles, which have been subjected to the same peer-reviewed, blind screening process used by traditional scholarly print journals. The JAEI will also include short research notes, reviews of published works, announcements and reports of relevant conferences and symposia.

The journal also examines the relationship between ancient Egypt and its neighbors through different lenses, ranging from history to technology to art and religion. . . .

The journal counts Oxford and Harvard universities among its initial subscribers and subscriptions have already been received from a number of countries. Interest has also been high among scholars wanting to contribute to the journal.

Penn Libraries and Kirtas Technologies to Offer Digitization/POD on Request for Public Domain Books

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries and Kirtas Technologies will offer a new service that allows customers to request that public domain books in Penn's collection be digitized and printed on request.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Today, Kirtas announces a partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Libraries to make over 200,000 titles available to the public in a unique way.

Using existing information drawn from Penn's catalog records, Kirtas is able to offer out-of-copyright books for sale through its own retail site, www.kirtasbooks.com. What makes this initiative unique is that the books can be offered for sale before they are ever digitized, so there is no up-front printing, production or storage cost.

"This partnership allows us to gauge reader interest in on-demand digitization and printing services," said Carton Rogers, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania. "That frees us from difficult selection decisions and lets the digital collection grow in response to user demand. The model is efficient and minimizes the risk as we develop new ways of addressing information needs."

Through www.kirtasbooks.com, customers will be able to search for a desired title, and when found, place a "digitize for me" request. The desired book will be pulled from Penn's shelves, digitized, processed by Kirtas for optimal reading and printing, and a newly-printed copy will be shipped to the initiator. Or, the customer can purchase access to an online-only version of the book. Once the book has been digitized, it is returned undamaged to the library shelf. . . .

Through this unique partnership with Kirtas, the Penn Libraries will also earn income on orders of its books. Distribution rights are non-exclusive so the books can be made available through the Penn Libraries, as well as other distribution channels at the library's request.

Cornell University Library to Offer More Than 80,000 POD Books on Amazon.com

The Cornell University Library is increasing its print-on-demand books on Amazon.com to over 80,000 titles.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

By the end of 2009, tens of thousands of new books will be added to the approximately 6,000 items in Cornell’s collection already available on Amazon. All of the books are in the public domain in the United States, and many are currently out of print.

"Although demand for online access to digital books has been growing, books as artifacts continue to have a real value," said Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies. "This initiative supports the reading and research patterns of users who prefer the affordances provided by physical books—they support deep reading, underlining and writing comments in the margins. The Web is great for easy access and browsing, but because digital content can sometimes be ephemeral, physical books continue to serve as valuable reference sources on your shelf."

Positive feedback from users helped contribute to the decision to expand the number of titles available. "The publication of this little book adds valuable primary source material for students of the War of 1812. Bravo to Cornell for making it available," one customer wrote. Another said, "Words cannot express how grateful I am that Cornell University saw fit to republish these two papers."

The books that will be added throughout 2009 were digitized with the support of Microsoft over the last two years. These new volumes represent a substantial part of the Library’s rare and unique offerings printed before 1923.

They will reflect Cornell’s subject strengths, including American history, English literature, astronomy, food and wine, general engineering, the history of science, home economics, hospitality and travel, human sexuality, labor relations, Native American materials, ornithology, veterinary medicine and women's studies. Collections already available for reprint from Amazon include New York state historical literature, core historical literature in agriculture, historical math monographs and materials related to home economics.

Cornell University Library has been a cutting-edge participant with print-on-demand services and mass digitization initiatives, partnering with multiple outlets to make its collections available to the public. The partnership with Amazon began in 2006, and the Library is currently engaged in a large-scale digitization initiative with Google that will create 500,000 digitized books over the next six years.

For a sample of the titles offered on Amazon, go to bookstore.library.cornell.edu, and check Amazon.com throughout the year to see new titles as they are added.

Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues

SPARC has published Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues.

Here's an excerpt from the report's Web page:

SPARC’s Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues addresses issues relevant to building sound and balanced partnerships, including:

Establishing governance and administrative structures;

Identifying funding models that accommodate the objectives of both libraries and presses;

Defining a partnership’s objectives to align the missions of the library and the press;

Determining what services to provide; and

Demonstrating the value of the collaboration.

Also see SPARC's new Campus-based Publishing Resource Center.

Stanford's HighWire Press Hits 5 Million Article Mark

With the addition of a backfile 1884 article, "Dermatitis Herpetiformis," in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, hit the five million article mark. Over two million of those articles are freely available.

Podcast: Library Publishing Services: An Emerging Role for Research Libraries—An Interview with Karla Hahn

EDUCAUSE has made available a podcast recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting: "Library Publishing Services: An Emerging Role for Research Libraries—An Interview with Karla Hahn." Hahn is the Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at the Association of Research Libraries.

Six New Open Access Books Available from Michigan's digitalculturebooks

The University of Michigan's digitalculturebooks, a joint imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library, has published six open access books: The Best of Technology Writing 2008; This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities; The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age; Broadcasting, Voice, and Accountability: A Public Interest Approach to Policy Law, and Regulation; Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism: Teaching Writing in the Digital Age; and Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China.

The books are also available for purchase in print form.

Catherine Mitchell Named as Director, eScholarship Publishing Group at CDL

Catherine Mitchell, Acting Director of the eScholarship Publishing Group at the California Digital Library, has been named as the permanent occupant of that post. In this capacity, Mitchell is responsible for the eScholarship Repository, eScholarship Editions, the Mark Twain Project Online, and other ventures.

In her statement about the appointment, Laine Farley, CDL Interim Executive Director, said:

Catherine has held the position on an interim basis since November 2007. During that time, she has led the group to develop a new services-oriented vision and to launch an ambitious redesign of the eScholarship interface. She was also the project manager for the Mark Twain project which successfully launched last November. Catherine’s dedication, deep understanding of scholarly communication, publishing issues, and professionalism are admired by all of us who work with her.

University of Tennessee Libraries' "Newfound Press Business Plan, 2008-2011"

The University of Tennessee Libraries' "Newfound Press Business Plan, 2008-2011" is available.

Here's an excerpt:

The University of Tennessee Libraries launched its digital imprint, Newfound Press (www.newfoundpress.utk.edu), in 2005 to develop a framework for making peer-reviewed scholarly and specialized works available worldwide. Building on local digitization investments, Newfound Press has published two monographs, with two more in production and a third in the referee process. The Press currently hosts one born-digital journal and is considering a proposal for a second. To experiment with digital multimedia publication, the Press has compiled text, recordings, and ephemera from two scholarly conferences for public access. Through Newfound Press, the University of Tennessee demonstrates an open access publishing model that explores issues such as creating a process for peer review “on the fly,” exploring new channels for the discovery of research results, and establishing credibility as a viable scholarly publications venue.

ETC-Press Launches at Carnegie Mellon University Publishing Works Under Creative Commons Licenses

The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University has launched ETC-Press, which will publish books and other works under either the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivativeWorks-NonCommercial or the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

Here's an excerpt from the About ETC Press page:

We publish books, but we’re also interested in the participatory future of content creation across multiple media. We are an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com. ETC Press has an affiliation with the Institute for the Future of the Book, sharing in the exploration of the evolution of discourse. ETC Press also has an agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to place ETC Press publications in the ACM Digital Library. . . .

We are looking to develop a range of texts and media that are innovative and insightful. We are interested in creating projects with Sophie, and we will accept submissions and publish work in a variety of media (textual, electronic, digital, etc.).

Critique of the National Archives' The Founders Online Report

Peter Hirtle has posted a sharp critique of the National Archives' The Founders Online report on the LibraryLaw Blog that, among other points, questions whether the digitized works that result from the project will be free of copyright and access restrictions.

Here's an excerpt:

5. Perhaps the most problematic issues in the report surround its use of the term "open access." For some, open access means "digital, online, and free of charge." The report, while saying it wants to provide open access to the material, appears to recommend that all material be given to UVA's Rotunda system for delivery. Rotunda follows a subscription model—not open access—that is remarkably expensive considering that citizens have already paid for all of the editorial work on these volumes. How could this be open access? Apparently Rotunda might be willing to give up its subscription approach if a foundation were willing to pay for all of its costs. Unless such a commitment is in place, I find it disingenuous to describe a Rotunda delivery option as "open access." There is no discussion of other, free, delivery options, such as the willingness expressed by Deanna Marcum of the Library of Congress at the Senate Hearing to make all of the Founding Fathers papers accessible through LC (which already has a good site pointing to currently accessible papers).

6. Others argue that for true open access, information must be accessible outside of specific delivery systems (such as Rotunda) and made available in bulk. Open data and open interfaces allow for all sorts of interesting uses of material. For example, someone might want to mashup George Washington's papers to Google Maps in order to be able to easily visual geographically the spread of information. Others might want to mesh manuscript material with published secondary literature. Rather than anticipating the widespread dispersal and re-use of the Founding Fathers papers, however, and hence the need for harvestable data, open APIs, distributed access, etc., the report calls instead for "a single, unified, and sustainable Web site"—apparently the locked-down Rotunda system.

Digital Library Federation Spring Forum 2008 Presentations

The Digital Library Federation has released presentations from its Spring Forum 2008.

Here's a selection of the presentations:

Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources: An Ithaka Report Released

The Strategic Content Alliance has released Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources: An Ithaka Report.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This paper was commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is the first step in a three-stage process aimed at gaining a more systematic understanding of the mechanisms for pursuing sustainability in not-for-profit projects. It focuses on what we call 'online academic resources' (OARs), which are projects whose primary aim is to make content and scholarly discourse available on the web for research, collaboration, and teaching. This includes scholarly journals and monographs as well as a vast array of new formats that are emerging to disseminate scholarship, such as preprint servers and wikis. It also includes digital collections of primary source materials, datasets, and audio-visual materials that universities, libraries, museums, archives and other cultural and educational institutions are putting online.

This work is being done as part of the planning work for the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA), so it emphasises the development and maintenance of digital content useful in the networked world. In this first stage, we have conducted an initial assessment of the relevant literature focused on not-for-profit sustainability, and have compared the processes pursued in the not-for-profit and education sectors with those pursued by commercial organisations, specifically in the newspaper industry. The primary goal of this initial report is to determine to what extent it would make sense to conduct a more in-depth study of the issues surrounding sustainability.

Kate Wittenberg to Leave EPIC (Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia)

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Kate Wittenberg, Director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC), will leave that post on June 30. Wittenberg says that she was told that Columbia University plans to shut down its electronic publishing operation.

Read more about it at "Is E-Publishing at Columbia U. on the Ropes?"

ARL Publishes Research Library Publishing Services: New Options for University Publishing

The Association of Research Libraries has published Research Library Publishing Services: New Options for University Publishing by Karla L. Hahn.

Here's an excerpt from the "Executive Summary":

To foster a deeper understanding of an emerging research library role as publishing service provider, in late 2007 the Association of Research Libraries surveyed its membership to gather data on the publishing services they were providing. Following the survey, publishing program managers at ten institutions participated in semi-structured interviews to delve more deeply into several aspects of service development: the sources and motivations for service launch, the range of publishing services, and relationships with partners.

The survey verified that research libraries are rapidly developing publishing services. By late 2007, 44% of the 80 responding ARL member libraries reported they were delivering publishing services and another 21% were in the process of planning publishing service development. Only 36% of responding institutions were not active in this arena.

These libraries are publishing many kinds of works, but the main focus is journals; 88% of publishing libraries reported publishing journals compared to 79% who publish conference papers and proceedings, and 71% who publish monographs. Established journal titles dominate this emerging publishing sector and are the main drivers of service development, although new titles are also being produced. Although the numbers of titles reported represent a very thin slice of the scholarly publishing pie, the survey respondents work with 265 titles: 131 are established titles, 81 are new titles, and 53 were under development at the time of the survey. On average, these libraries work with 7 or 8 titles with 6 currently available. . . .

Peer reviewed works dominate library publishing programs and editors or acquisitions committees typically maintain their traditional roles in identifying quality content. Libraries often provide technical support for streamlined peer review workflows, but they are not providing peer review itself. The manuscript handling services provided by some publishing programs were a significant attraction to the editors of established publications.

Library publishing program managers report substantial demand for hosting services. Libraries increasingly are positioned to provide at least basic hosting services. Open source software such as the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Journal Systems and DPubs along with new commercial services such as those offered by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) through Digital Commons allows libraries to support basic journal hosting relatively easily.

Advice and consulting regarding a variety of publishing practices and decisions are perhaps even more popular services. There are pressing demands for information and advice about issues such as moving print publications into electronic publishing, discontinuing print in favor of electronic alternatives, publishing works with limited revenue-generating capability, revenue generation, standards of various sorts, markup and encoding, metadata generation, preservation, contracting with service providers, and copyright management.

Ball State University Libraries Move Ahead with Ambitious Digital Initiative Program

The Ball State Libraries have nurtured an ambitious digital initatives program that has established an institutional repository, a CONTENTdm system for managing digital assets, a Digital Media Repository with over 102,000 digital objects, a Digitization Center and Mobile Digitization Unit, an e-Archives for university records, and a virtual press (among other initiatives). Future goals are equally ambitious.

Pitt's Libraries and University Press Establish Open Access Book Program

The University of Pittsburgh University Library System and the University of Pittsburgh University Press have established the University of Pittsburgh University Press Digital Editions, which offers free access to digitized versions of print books from the press.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The University of Pittsburgh’s University Library System (ULS) and University Press have formed a partnership to provide digital editions of press titles as part of the library system’s D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program. Thirty-nine books from the Pitt Latin American Series published by the University of Pittsburgh Press are now available online, freely accessible to scholars and students worldwide. Ultimately, most of the Press’ titles older than 2 years will be provided through this open access platform.

For the past decade, the University Library System has been building digital collections on the Web under its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, making available a wide array of historical documents, images and texts which can be browsed by collection and are fully searchable. The addition of the University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions collection marks the newest in an expanding number of digital collaborations between the University Library System and the University Press.

The D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program includes digitized materials drawn from Pitt collections and those of other libraries and cultural institutions in the region, pre-print repositories in several disciplines, the University’s mandatory electronic theses and dissertations program, and electronic journals during the past eight years, sixty separate collections have been digitized and made freely accessible via the World Wide Web. Many of these projects have been carried out with content partners such as Pitt faculty members, other libraries and museums in the area, professional associations, and most recently, with the University of Pittsburgh Press with several professional journals and the new University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions. . . .

More titles will be added to the University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions each month until most of the current scholarly books published by the Press are available both in print and as digital editions. The collection will eventually include titles from the Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies, the Pitt-Konstanz Series in the Philosophy and History of Science, the Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture, the Security Continuum: Global Politics in the Modern Age, the History of the Urban Environment, back issues of Cuban Studies, and numerous other scholarly titles in history, political science, philosophy, and cultural studies.

Here's Your Chance to Comment on University Publishing in a Digital Age

The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library has released a CommentPress version of University Publishing in a Digital Age.

Using this CommentPress version, you can provide paragraph-level commentary on this provocative report.

Athabasca University Establishes AU Press, an Open Access Publisher

Athabasca University has established AU Press, which will publish open access books, journals, and other digital publications.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

AU Press, Canada’s first 21st century university press, is dedicated to disseminating knowledge emanating from scholarly research to a broad audience through open access digital media and in a variety of formats (e.g., journals, monographs, author podcasts).

Our publications are of the highest quality and are assessed by peer review; however, we are dedicated to working with emerging writers and researchers to promote success in scholarly publishing.

Our geographical focus is Canada, the West, and the Circumpolar North, and we are mandated to publish innovative and experimental works that challenge the limits of established canons, subjects and formats. Series under development in several subject areas will promote and contribute to specific academic disciplines, and we aim to revitalize neglected forms such as diary, memoir and oral history.

At AU Press, we also publish scholarly websites with a particular focus on distance education and e-learning, labour studies, Métis and Aboriginal studies, gender studies and the environment.