Open access monographs

[Birgit Schmidt <bschmid1 AT gwdg.de>]

Dear Sigi,

thanks for your warm welcome and your elaboration on OHP’s activities 
and the ideas
of the grant proposal. We will be happy to discuss this in our OAPEN 
consortium and
the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Universitätsverlage”.

With regard to your question: Over the last decade several university 
libraries in Germany have founded new university presses. The main idea 
is that it should be feasible to support Open Access for books as 
combination of a low cost electronic publishing process with print on 
demand. Of course, all of us are well aware that this optimistic 
approach implies hard work on establishing production and quality 
assurance processes.
What is the part of our library in this scenario? Basically, the library 
provides the infrastructure with its institutional repository, working 
environment and staff (in general not trained in publishing when they 
start, but of course librarians have valuable experiences in handling 
books and bringing information to the awareness of users).

Most of these presses are thus funded by the library and offer their 
services mainly to scholars affiliated to their mother university.
Overall, they are small scale presses which do not operate 
internationally. However, all members do reach out for networking and
cooperations.

Further information about our press and the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft der 
Universitätsverlage" could also be found here -
http://wess.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Germanists_Discussion_Group_Minutes,_Annual_2008_(Anaheim)
a ppt presentation for the ALA meeting (which we haven't been able to 
attend) and an article written for the APE Proceedings

Best regards,

Birgit




Sigi Jöttkandt schrieb:
> Dear Birgit,
>
> Thanks for this. I'm very happy to tell you where we are at - (I'm 
> also posting this to the list as a quick round-up for the other new 
> members, Elliott Shore from CLIR and Renze Brandsma from University of 
> Amsterdam library who are very warmly welcomed into our discussion!).
>
> We're conceiving of OHP as a virtual international "press", whose 
> chief contribution to the publishing process is an editorial one. In 
> this first phase, our monographic series will focus on critical and 
> cultural theory and will be edited by high-profile members of OHP's 
> board. This reflects our strategy for getting the still very lethargic 
> humanities academic community to sit up and start paying attention to 
> OA. :)
>
> Our grant proposal is intended to explore the feasibility of 
> partnering each of these OHP-edited series with a library publisher 
> who would ideally contribute labour in the form of a part-time 
> managing and production editor. For the technical side of things, we 
> intend to use PKP's Open Monograph Press software, and are hoping this 
> grant proposal will also enable us to contribute (financially and from 
> a user perspective) to its development. There are still lots of open 
> questions at this point about how these library partnerships might 
> actually work, what kinds of support the participating libraries are 
> able to offer, etc.
>
> But our chief aim in this project is a cultural one: to help effect a 
> change in humanities scholars' negative attitudes towards OA 
> publishing, which is contributing to the slow take-up of OA in our 
> fields. My hope is that by setting up an infrastructure of supporting 
> library publishers, and by demonstrating the leadership of top 
> scholars in one field of humanities scholarship, more scholars will 
> start to embrace OA publishing and set up other, similar 
> self-organizing editorial boards for OA monographs in other fields. In 
> fact, the OHP imprint is conceived as a community academic brand - one 
> that any scholar can edit a series for (once approved by OHP's 
> editorial board).
>
> To answer your question, our contacts so far have mostly been with the 
> library community (UMichigan's Scholarly Publishing Office, and a 
> number of the UC libraries and the Council for Library and Information 
> Resources). We have not connected yet with any of the American UPs, 
> although as you say, several of them already starting to do some very 
> interesting things in this area. (By the way, we don't in any way see 
> OHP in competition with these other projects - our driving aim 
> throughout all OHP activities is to encourage the adoption of OA in 
> humanities.)
>
> I was very interested to learn about the Arbeitsgemeinschaft 
> www.ag-univerlage.de) - can you tell me a little more about the role 
> that libraries play in this? What practical support in the publishing 
> process do they offer?
>
> Best wishes,
> Sigi


--
*************************************************************
Dr. Birgit Schmidt
Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
- Elektronisches Publizieren -
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 1
D-37073 Göttingen

Tel.: (+ 49) 551 - 39 5228 / 91188
Fax: (+ 49) 551 - 39 5222
E-Mail: bschmidt AT sub.uni-goettingen.de
Internet: www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/0_e-publishing.html.de
          www.univerlag.uni-goettingen.de
_____________________________________________________________

DRIVER
www.driver-community.eu
www.driver-support.eu/en/studies.html

Open-Access-Netzwerk
www.dini.de/oa-netzwerk

Open Access
www.open-access.net

*************************************************************