Category: Scholarly Books

"Announcing LSE Press—A New Open Access Publishing Platform for the Social Sciences"

Kieran Booluck has published "Announcing LSE Press—A New Open Access Publishing Platform for the Social Sciences" in LSE Impact of Social Sciences.

Here's an excerpt:

In addition to journals, LSE Press intends to publish a range of book publications, including more traditional research monographs, short-form monographs, and even textbooks. Again, offering authors viable open access routes to publication is of increased importance here, in response to a changing policy environment and the announcement by HEFCE—now Research England—that future Research Excellence Framework assessments will extend open access requirements to include books as well as journals.

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Open Access and Monographs: Where Are We Now?

The British Academy has released Open Access and Monographs: Where Are We Now?.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Academy argues that any future model for open access monograph publication needs to be properly funded with additional money. And a generous list of exceptions will need to be defined—for example 'crossover' books which merit submission to the REF but which also make an important contribution to the UK’s 'trade' publishing industry.

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"The Academic Book and Its Digital Dilemmas"

Paul Spence, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at King's College London, has published "The Academic Book and Its Digital Dilemmas" in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.

Here's an excerpt:

Focusing in particular on the arts and humanities, this article asks how, and under what conditions, the digitally mediated long-form academic publication might hold a viable future. It examines digital disruption and innovation within humanities publishing, contrasts different models and outlines some of the key challenges facing scholarly publishing in the humanities. This article examines how non-traditional entities, such as digital humanities research projects, have performed digital publishing roles and reviews possible implications for scholarly book publishing's relationship to the wider research process. It concludes by looking at how digital or hybrid long-form publications might become more firmly established within the scholarly publishing landscape.

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"Digital Delivery Breathes New Life into Professional Books and Scholarly Monographs"

Simba Information has released "Digital Delivery Breathes New Life into Professional Books and Scholarly Monographs."

Here's an excerpt:

Scholarly and professional e-books sales increased globally by 5.6% in 2017 and will grow an additional 4.8% in 2018, revitalizing a medium publishers once wrote off, according to the latest report from Simba Information.

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"Congress Funds $5 Million Open Textbook Grant Program in 2018 Spending Bil"

SPARC has released "Congress Funds $5 Million Open Textbook Grant Program in 2018 Spending Bil."

Here's an excerpt:

In a landmark victory for the Open Education movement, the U.S. Congress has included funding for a $5 million open textbook grant program in the Fiscal Year 2018 omnibus appropriations bill unveiled today. This marks the first major investment by Congress explicitly in open educational resources (OER) as a solution to the high cost of college textbooks, and underscores that course materials are a significant factor in making higher education affordable. The FY18 omnibus is expected to proceed swiftly to votes in the House and Senate and get signed into law this week.

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"What Should We Do with All These Books? A Feasibility Study on Collaborative Monograph Solutions"

Hazel Woodward and Helen Henderson have published "What Should We Do with All These Books? A Feasibility Study on Collaborative Monograph Solutions" in Insights: The UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic libraries in the UK are under increasing pressure to reduce their estate footprint or increase learning space in the library. Following the success of the UKRR, the National Monographs Steering Committee commissioned Information Power Ltd (IPL) to explore potential solutions for the collaborative management of monographs in the UK. Desk research and interviews with existing collaborations worldwide showed that there were three potential models in use: distributed storage and shared collection, physical consolidation of print materials into a shared repository and shared or co-operative storage facility. Interviews with key stakeholders in the UK HE sector and an online survey established that there was an appetite for collaborative management. The key issues include funding, sustainability and business models; shared bibliographic data; collection analysis; governance, leadership and administration; duplicate materials policy; and storage and retrieval from storage. IPL recommended that a national membership organization be formed (UKRR-M) which would offer a national solution with physical consolidation of print materials into a shared repository collection with central administration.

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UW Press Joins UW Libraries

https://uwpressblog.com/2018/02/21/uw-press-joins-uw-libraries/

Keywords: University of Washington Press, University of Washington Libraries

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The Visibility of Open Access Monographs in a European Context: A Report Prepared by Knowledge Unlatched Research

Knowledge Unlatched Research has released The Visibility of Open Access Monographs in a European Context: A Report Prepared by Knowledge Unlatched Research.

Here's an excerpt:

This report explores the extent to which Open Access (OA) specialist scholarly books can be seen by the communities that might make use of them. It also identifies the key challenges that will need to be tackled in order to ensure that OA books are fully integrated into digital landscapes of scholarship; as well as the steps that need to be taken to achieve this goal. The report focuses on Open Access books made available by publishers and platforms that are part of the OPERAS network, which is focused on the development of European research infrastructure for the development of open scholarly communication. Specialist scholarly books are the core research output of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Ensuring that they are integrated into digital landscapes of scholarship will play a decisive role in the future of these disciplines, and their impact on the world. Identifying gaps in existing infrastructure and creating a roadmap to address them is vital groundwork.

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"Reimagining the Digital Monograph Design Thinking to Build New Tools for Researchers"

The Journal of Electronic Publishing has released "Reimagining the Digital Monograph Design Thinking to Build New Tools for Researchers."

JSTOR Labs, an experimental product development group within the not-for-profit digital library JSTOR, undertook an ideation and design process to develop new and different ways of showing scholarly books online, with the goal that this new viewing interface be relatively simple and inexpensive to implement for any scholarly book that is already available in PDF form. This paper documents that design process, including the recommendations of a working group of scholars, publishers, and librarians convened by JSTOR Labs and the Columbia University Libraries in October 2016. The prototype monograph viewer developed through this process—called "Topicgraph"—is described herein and is freely available online at https://labs.jstor.org/topicgraph.

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"Cost Estimates of an Open Access Mandate for Monographs in the UK’s Third Research Excellence Framework"

Martin Paul Eve et al. have published "Cost Estimates of an Open Access Mandate for Monographs in the UK's Third Research Excellence Framework" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

The recent ‘Consultation on the second Research Excellence Framework' (REF) in the UK contains an annex that signals the extension of the open access mandate to monographs. In the service of promoting discussion, rather than prescribing a forward route, this article estimates the costs of implementing such a mandate based on REF 2014 volume, taking the criteria signalled in the annex, and identifies funding sources that could support it. We estimate that to publish 75% of anticipated monographic submission output for the next REF would require approximately £96m investment over the census period. This is equivalent to £19.2m per year. Academic library budgets as they are currently apportioned would not support this cost. However, these sums are but a fraction of the total quality-related funding, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council budgets. We close with a series of provocative suggestions for how the mandate could be implemented.

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"Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2105, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories"

Anna Marie Johnson et al. have published "Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2105, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

Only a small percentage of books published as dissertations were found in ProQuest and then subsequently in IRs. The number of libraries holding book titles with corresponding dissertations in IRs dropped between 2014 and 2015.

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"Sustainable Open Access Publishing: Preconditions, Dialog, and Continuous Adaptation: The Stockholm University Press Case"

Birgitta Hellmark Lindgren has published "Sustainable Open Access Publishing: Preconditions, Dialog, and Continuous Adaptation: The Stockholm University Press Case" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing..

Here's an excerpt:

Given the demand for open access publishing in the context of expensive article processing charges and acquisition costs scholarly publishing needs to be transformed. I believe that university libraries are in a good position to contribute to this change. I begin with describing what Stockholm University Press is, what we do and how. I continue with describing why we do it and for whom. I conclude by pointing out some lessons learned.

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"Sustainable Book Publishing as a Service at the University of Michigan"

Jason Colman has published "Sustainable Book Publishing as a Service at the University of Michigan" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

To solve this problem [publishing open access books], Michigan Publishing Services has developed both a house service publishing imprint, Maize Books, and a white-labeled book publishing program, branded by University units, all running on the same technical and financial infrastructure. With an emphasis on Open Access with flexible Creative Commons licensing and affordable Print on Demand and EBook options combine workflow efficiencies with a menu of chargeback services to cover the costs of their production and allow staffing to be scaled to meet emerging needs.

This brief case study details Michigan Publishing Services’s program for books as it stands today, explains its approach to sustainability, and offers a few thoughts about when this model is suitable and when it is not.

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"Why Book Selection by Librarians No Longer Matters"

David W. Lewis has self-archived "Why Book Selection by Librarians No Longer Matters."

Here's an excerpt:

Prediction about the future use of a book and using this prediction as the basis for a purchase decision only matters if the time required to acquire the book is greater than the time the user who needs the book is willing to wait for it. . . .. With print-on -demand and overnight shipping most print books can be delivered in 24 to 48 hours, which meets the needs of many users. This means that prediction of possible future use whether by expert librarian selectors or by algorithms, such as approval plans, is unnecessary. No prediction is necessary if the needed books can be delivered quickly enough to satisfy the person needing the book.

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Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing

Ithaka S+R has released Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing.

Here's an excerpt:

There is widespread frustration within the academic library community with the seemingly uncontrollable price increases of e-resources, especially of licensed bundles of scholarly journals. The scholarly communications movement has vastly expanded academic and indeed public access to scholarly content. Yet prices for certain scholarly resources continue to outpace budget increases, and librarians do not feel in control of budgets and pricing. What if libraries found ways to bring together the whole library behind the objective of stabilizing or reducing what they pay?

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"The Surge in New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK"

Janneke Adema and Graham Stone have published "The Surge in New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

This article outlines the rise and development of New University Presses and Academic-Led Presses in the UK or publishing for the UK market. Based on the Jisc research project, Changing publishing ecologies: a landscape study of new university presses and academic-led publishing, commonalities between these two types of presses are identified to better assess their future needs and requirements. Based on this analysis, the article argues for the development of a publishing toolkit, for further research into the creation of a typology of presses and publishing initiatives, and for support with community building to help these initiatives grow and develop further, whilst promoting a more diverse publishing ecology.

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Changing Publishing Ecologies: A Landscape Study of New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing

Jisc has released Changing Publishing Ecologies: A Landscape Study of New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 2016 we commissioned a research project focused on institutional publishing initiatives which includes academic-led publishing ventures (ALPs) as well as new university presses and library-led initiatives (NUPs). We are pleased to announce the publication of the report 'Changing Publishing Ecologies. A Landscape Study of New University Presses and Academic-led Publishing', which charts the outcomes of this research. . . .

The NUP and ALP strands of the research study were co-ordinated and run in tandem by [Janneke] [Graham] Stone and Adema. This study was informed by a desk top review of current library publishing ventures in the US, Europe and Australia and an overview of international academic-led initiatives and their existing and future directions. The NUP strand consisted of a survey, which collected 43 responses, where the ALP strand was informed by interviews with 14 scholar-led presses. Taking different approaches for these two types of press, the report captures the take-up, reasoning and characteristics of these initiatives, as well as their future plans.

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"Open Access Publishing Models and How OA Can Work in the Humanities"

Martin Paul Eve has published "Open Access Publishing Models and How OA Can Work in the Humanities" in the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Here's an excerpt:

Open access (OA) has been shaping and benefiting the scientific community for years now, but this new wave of disseminating research freely has not quite taken hold in the field of humanities. Though humanities publishers could also benefit from an OA model, many have been resistant, citing possible issues with plagiarism or appropriation of an author's work for less than ideal uses. There are also challenges with the cost of publishing OA content, which for humanities could be much higher than in the scientific community due to the length of works produced.

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"E-book Usage: Counting the Challenges and Opportunities"

Angela Conyers et al. have published "E-book Usage: Counting the Challenges and Opportunities" in Insights: the UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This article summarizes how libraries and library consortia are acquiring and evaluating e-books, how usage statistics feature within library workflows, the issues faced in doing so and the resulting impact of these issues on understanding usage and informing purchasing of new titles. Discussions with publishers indicate how usage data are being used within the organization, the requirements of customers and the challenges involved in providing usage data for e-books. Assessing and evaluating e-book usage is a complex and challenging task with processes and workflows in development. A transition from print to e-books represents a significant change for libraries, and the availability of reliable usage statistics to support purchase decisions is vital.

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"Inconsistencies between Academic E-book Platforms: A Comparison of Metadata and Search Results"

portal: Libraries and the Academy has released and e-print of "Inconsistencies between Academic E-book Platforms: A Comparison of Metadata and Search Results."

Here's an excerpt:

This article presents the results of a study of academic e-books that compared the metadata and search results from major academic e-book platforms. The authors collected data and performed a series of test searches designed to produce the same result regardless of platform. Testing, however, revealed metadata-related errors and significant variation in search results that could impact the user experience. This article describes how other libraries could perform this type of testing and how this information could be used to inform the selection of e-books that are available on multiple platforms.

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Final Version: Reimagining the Digital Monograph: Design Thinking to Build New Tools for Researchers

JSTOR has released the final version of Reimagining the Digital Monograph: Design Thinking to Build New Tools for Researchers .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This new version retains much of the structure of the previous one, and it still includes the ethnographic user profiles showing how six scholars do research with print and digital monographs. It also includes minor changes throughout addressing both specific and general questions we received and clarifying many points. We have gone from twelve to thirteen principles for the reimagined monograph. Most significantly, we have added as an appendix a new landscape review of related projects, which helps to situate our work on this project amongst a number of other important initiatives.

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"Digital Public Library of America to Pilot eBook Lending in Fall"

DPLA has released "Digital Public Library of America to Pilot eBook Lending in Fall."

Here's an excerpt:

Planned for this fall, DPLA will be lending ebooks in what it hopes is a streamlined, non-proprietary and vendorless platform.

While ebook lending has grown fast among US public libraries, the process is not always seamless. Book discovery, borrowing, and consumption must happen within the provide'’s app or website. DPLA wants to create a process that isn’t as specific, and one that works with a broader range of content producers for better access to ebooks.

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"Rhyme or Reason?: Patterns in Book Pricing by Format"

Jonathan Harwell has published "Rhyme or Reason?: Patterns in Book Pricing by Format" in the The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

This study illuminates the differentials in book pricing by format, which can appear arbitrary and unpredictable. Using the paperback list price as the base, the research uses a sample of 500 titles selected for purchase by a small, private liberal arts college library during a defined time period. I have recorded the prices of paperback, hardcover, single and multiple-user e-books from Ebrary, EBSCO, and Amazon Kindle. The mean pricing differential is calculated for each version across all titles in the sample, as well as for the top five publishers represented in the sample, in order to identify patterns in pricing decisions.

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