Open access monographs

[Sigi Jöttkandt <sigij AT openhumanitiespress.org>]

Hi everyone,

Thanks Paul and David, for getting things off the ground like this.

I'll do another quick round of introductions, since we've added a few 
more people to the conversation in the meantime.

Welcome Tom Cohen and Kyoo Lee, from OHP's Editorial Advisory Board,
Larisa Castillo, a friend and associate of Barbara Cohen's who has a 
special interest in copyright law,
and Sean Cubitt who, among many other activities, edits the Leonardo 
books series at MIT.

Two things jump out at me from Paul's summary,

1. what should OHP's goals be if we were to move into OA monograph 
production?

I'm curious to hear what others think - for me, given our resources, I'm 
thinking any monographs effort might best aim to be a "demonstration 
project" for OA publishing in the humanities, rather than OHP trying to 
become a fully fledged publishing "house" with all that would entail. I 
personally like the idea of OHP remaining nimble and able to make 
different interventions as the scholarly communications environment 
mutates.

What this might imply is a number of carefully considered, high-profile 
interventions that would ideally support, complement and seed other open 
access projects in the humanities as people's resistance to digital 
publishing decreases, hopefully in part through OHP's activities. In 
fact we originally conceived OHP as an OA advocacy group or movement 
(rather than a "press," which was simply the tactic we chose as best 
suited for the humanities community).

2. Regarding "sustainability" (or as J-C I think rightly prefers, 
"viability"): my hunch is that our best chance for funding is for 
specific actions that have wider, long-term implications for scholarly 
communications. So our project(s) would contribute to a wider OA 
publishing platform that can be used by anyone (e.g. PKP's Open 
Monograph Press).

There's a strong need to remain current about other activities so that 
we position OHP's efforts in complementary rather than overlapping ways. 
Right now, there seems a fair amount of activity in digital publishing 
at the individual university level, (e.g. ANU ePress and Sydney UP, 
Karlsruhe UP, Rice UP). With the exception of Rice, the missions appear 
to be faculty publications and it's not immediately clear to me if they 
are being conceived specifically as OA efforts.

The OAPEN project (http://www.oapen.com/) is a group of European 
university presses who are working on developing a shared infrastructure 
for OA publishing. We're in contact with them, and I imagine there will 
be opportunities to share experiences and expertise.

In their 2007 report, University Publishing in a Digital Age, (available 
here http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br252-253.shtml )the Ithaka 
group seemed to imply that JSTOR might get involved in creating "a 
powerful technology, service and marketing platform that would serve as 
a catalyst for collaboration and shared capital investment in 
university-based publishing" - I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows 
whether anything is being concretely planned around this (or other) efforts.

Finally, there's a very interesting report by Diane Harley in the JEP on 
a meeting at UC Berkeley where different roles for the academy as a 
publisher are explored. See in particular Mark Rose's suggestion of a 
distributed publication network among Humanities centers which I've 
extracted below:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;cc=jep;rgn=main;view=text;idno=3336451.0011.208

Mark Rose, Professor of English, UC Santa Barbara and Director Emeritus, 
UC Humanities Research Institute

"One interesting development in the humanities is the appearance of 
research units such as campus humanities centers. Centers have also 
developed from the activities of individual departments—the Center for 
Early Modern Studies in the UCSB English Department is an example—and 
various multi-campus research groups have developed to bring scholars 
together from across campuses.

I think that there is an opportunity to build on these distributed 
research centers to create a new publishing model for specialized 
monographs based on print-on-demand technology and short-run technology. 
Faculty associated with such a research unit could develop a specialized 
monograph series with the quality secured by an editorial board and peer 
evaluation accomplished in much the same fashion as it is done at a 
university press. Publications would bear the joint imprint of the 
research center and a university press and both would accrue prestige. 
The monographs could be distributed by digital subscription with 
printing on demand. Individual scholars could access a copy through 
their libraries, download a PDF, or buy print-on-demand version."

Could there be a role for OHP in such a model?

Best,
Sigi

(and apologies for the double posting for some of you - it was the most 
efficient way I could think of to convey who is part of the discussion 
to the new list members)