Open access monographs

[Shana Kimball <kimballs AT umich.edu>]

Hi all,

I'm quite keen about the distributed model Sigi describes below, and am
excited about the role that SPO might be able to play in the development of
OHP. In order to give a bit of context about SPO and our flavor of scalable
library-based publishing, I've attachd two documents: a portion of a paper I
gave at the O'Reilly TOC conference, and a poster that my colleague Kevin
Hawkins created. (There is also our website, at http://lib.umich.edu/spo/).
I'm happy to field questions from the group about our operations and
services.

Our work on digitalculturebooks (http://digitalculture.org/), a joint
imprint with the University of Michigan Press, comes closest to the kind of
collaboration you envision here, in that we published high-quality, vetted,
open access scholarly monographs. The major difference of course is that the
OHP model would have libraries working directly with scholars, distributing
some of the traditional publishing functions between these groups--scholars
overseeing acquisitions and editorial work, and libraries overseeing
production and distribution. Copyediting, design, and marketing are the main
areas where support would be needed; you've already discussed copyediting,
and it sounds to me that the tools that are built into OMP could help
considerably with design (via customizable templates) and marketing (via the
social networking functions).

One thing to consider about the distributed model is how the forward
migration and preservation of monograph content (and perhaps the
administrative apparatus?) would work. If each book series is to be run and
hosted on a separate installation of OMP, it seems that it would be
important to centralize the development and customization of the software.
One of the ways that we've kept things scalable at Michigan is that all of
our digital library content and SPO content shares the same delivery system
(DLXS) and repository. By doing so, we are able to migrate the content as a
whole through changes in technologies and standards, rather than having to
migrate many systems and upgrade many technologies. ( I'm just getting up to
speed on where things stand with OMP, so forgive me if this topic has been
raised.)

In any case, I'm glad to be here and look forward to the discussion.

Good weekends, all--
Shana


On 8/29/08 6:56 AM, "Sigi Jöttkandt" <sigij AT openhumanitiespress.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> The list has been quiet over the summer but there have been some
> interesting developments and discussions off-list among some of us. The
> most important development is Shana's generous offer to publish a pilot
> series for OHP through SPO - I've now begun putting out feelers to some
> of our editorial advisory board members to see if anyone would be
> interested in running a series for us.
> 
> But talking with Shana about SPO's operations has got me thinking about
> the possible 'business' models we are exploring here, and one idea might
> be to see if other libraries would entertain the SPO model. For me, what
> makes SPO so fundamentally innovative is that it offers its services to
> any faculty member, not just to those from UMichigan, so this has the
> potential to scale, representing a major break-through.
> 
> I'm wondering what people think of the feasibility of forming an entity
> similar in structure to Open Content Alliance. In our case, we would
> need donations of labor from partner libraries  - part-time (or maybe
> eventually full-time) Scholarly Publishing positions within the
> libraries that are supporting OHP. Such jobs would be similar in nature
> to managing editors who, ideally, would combine administrative work with
> production (using OHP-developed processes and templates). My hope is
> that once Open Monograph Press is released, a lot of the grunt office
> work would be automated, but there will always be a need for some people
> dedicated to administrative responsibilities. However, if this was
> shared out, say, one per series, it might not be such a huge burden for
> any one person or job description. (In some cases, faculty themselves
> might be willing to assume this role for their series.)
> 
> For its part, OHP would offer editorial oversight, providing the
> participating libraries with high-profile series editors and
> editorially-vetted content - in fact, one idea is to conceive OHP as an
> elite but not exclusive community-owned "brand" under which any number
> of independently-run series could publish once their project has been
> approved by OHP's main board. Each series would then have its own
> internal editorial boards, much like OHP's journals do. As for
> copy-editing - if the OHP libraries were unable or unwilling to provide
> this, perhaps a central subvention fund  provided by those libraries who
> want to support OHP but do not have the human resources to do so might
> be established, or there may be subvention options for authors at their
> own departmental or institutional levels.
> 
> In short, the idea would be to achieve economies not through
> centralization and scale but by distributing the work (and the OHP
> brand) across a much larger number of institutions and people than is
> typical, - with PKP's Open Monograph Press software maintaining a
> central "electronic office" where all the files, templates,
> correspondence etc. are kept.
> 
> What I like about this is that it pushes back the immediately pressing
> question of how to get money to fund our projects, and how to sell the
> OA product once its published, while giving participating libraries
> greater control over how their contribution gets used.
> 
> Does it seem practical? Would be very interested to hear your thoughts.
> 
> Sigi
>  
> _______________________________________________
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> OHP AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ohp

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