Open access monographs

[Paul Ashton <paul AT openhumanitiespress.org>]

Hello Everyone,

To kick off the discussion regarding OHP monographs (and to some extent OA
monographs in the humanities more generally) I thought that I might just
give a quick background to some of the discussion that has taken place so
far, and some of the questions that have been raised. Having said this, what
has taken place, and the questions raised, should not be seen as a frame or
limit, but as a beginning to a wider discussion.

Anyway...

The initial plan was to start thinking about monographs down the track
(after the journal strategy was well established etc.), however, the time to
discuss books seemed to spontaneously arise. In fact, a few people outside
of OHP publicly made the assumption that OHP was in fact moving into
monographs which seemed to add weight to an emerging discussion.
Furthermore, I guess the book form is to some extent more 'important' to the
humanities community than it is for those in the empirical sciences, and
thus it seems almost 'natural' that ohp should be setting the pace here.

The discussion has revolved around 'if' and how (in terms of editorial
process) we should move forward, and on what model (organizationally) we
should adopt to ensure sustainability. I say 'if' because we need to work
out if our goal is to become a player in OA humanities monograph production
or whether our goal is to help create OA book publishing as a more widely
deployed form, which may or may not entail ourselves producing any books. I
will thus put forward some of the ideas raise in two parts, a) editorial b)
organizational.


Editorial.
- How could/should the editorial process of OHP books be organized? We seem
to potentially have two great editorial resources  at our disposal (the OHP
editorial board and the journal's editorial structure). For example, would a
good way to kick things off be to invite someone established thinkers in
their field from the ohp EAB to start a series?
- assuming we go ahead and decide to publish books, should we start off
small with say one series and build from there, or should we develop a broad
plan and start with a more coordinated push?
- how should we structure our editorial process - including the sourcing of
new material?
-should ohp be a publisher in its own right or draw in and 'certify' other
OA book publishers in the same way journals are certified?
- is there scope to join up with other projects? -- for example J. Willinsky
raised the Avant Garde Lab.
...

Organizational
- The POD (print on demand)/OA model is widely recognized as one possible
structure that can bring 'some', albeit limited, funds back into the
project.
- could a subscription model where libraries subscribe to OHP books work as
a source of funding? Or could we rely on some libraries 'sponsoring' OHP
books through some kind of funding scheme (basically donations). There was
some discussion about how 'controlled' the library distribution market is
and how it would be quite difficult to break into it even if we did produce
titles that could be considered essential reading and that a more direct
transfer of funds may be needed.
- how can we even get funding--any at all?
- how can we structure the process of the production of the books within
what would be considered 'normal' academic activities? That is, just as
commercial publishers effectively outsource large parts of the production
process to unpaid scholarly labour, can or should OHP do the same? That is
can we develop a model that really keeps the costs right down?
- How can we deploy technologies (I guess all of the discussion here has
been on OMP, but there may be others technologies worth bringing into the
discussion: blogs, forums ...) to aid the process
- how can we use the organizational structures that are already part of OHP
and its affiliates (i.e. the journals) to assist.
...


This discussion is a bit all over the place, but hopefully it will spark
some ideas or initiate a more focused line of thought.

Best

Paul