Current Style: Yellow/Blue
Elucidate: Open Access Column
Gold Open Access Monographs
First, some broad definitions. Toll access is the common traditional subscription model, where content is hidden behind a pay wall. Green Open Access is delivered through self-archiving - authors’ deposit of manuscripts, in institutional or disciplinary repositories, of articles that have been published in traditional subscription journals. With Gold Open Access, the author or institution pays the costs of publishing; the content is immediately and freely open to all.
From its early days, Open Access has tended to focus on the scientific, technical and medical (STM) subjects, where the common scholarly currency is the journal article. The major Gold Open Access journals, such as PLOS, have followed this trend, partly because this is where the volume of business is, partly because, when compared to the humanities, the STM subjects attract large research grants that can fund article processing charges (APCs).
In the humanities and some social sciences, the common currency is the scholarly monograph. This format has been in decline for many years. Academic library book budgets have been squeezed almost out of existence by the huge inflation of journal prices; as a consequence, we have witnessed a downward spiral of falling sales and print-runs, leading to higher unit prices and hence even lower sales.
Now we are seeing the first green (or gold) shoots of a renaissance of the scholarly monograph through Gold Open Access. The publishers that are midwives to this renaissance are generally small and entrepreneurial (such as Ubiquity Press http://www.ubiquitypress.com/and Open Book Publishers http://www.openbookpublishers.com/). The challenge is to establish both a competitive scholarly publishing market and a viable business model for OA monograph publishing that will allow these smaller and OA-only publishers to compete and become established.
One main business model is to publish Gold Open Access (OA) monographs in: a) free to read, b) digital (downloadable) and c) printed editions. Revenue for these three editions is potentially derived from: a) monograph processing charges, b) added value services to libraries and individuals, and c) print-on-demand (POD).
A major hurdle is that the free-to-read edition is not visible to librarians and others through the established (e-)book suppliers. This inhibits visibility, and hence the hits and citations so valuable to authors and publishers; it also inhibits sales of digital and print editions arising from knowledge of the free-to-read edition.
Returning to the subject of my previous column, a major initiative has just been announced by Jisc Collections for developing e-textbooks: The Institution as e-textbook Publisher (http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/News/Institution-as-e-textbook-publisher-call-for-particiation/). The call is open to all UK higher education institutions and further education colleges “to participate in a three year national project to explore the viability of institutions becoming e-textbook publishers”. The project asks the following question:
Will the institution as e-textbook creator help students by providing a more affordable higher education, and promote a better, more sustainable information environment for libraries, students and faculty?
There is funding of up to £1m for the project over 3 years. The focus is on a small number of institutions each creating and making available 2 e-textbooks, and developing and testing business models. While it is not assumed that the e-textbooks will be OA, OA is recognised as one possible model.
There are some other recent textbook initiatives in the USA. The State University New York (SUNY) project is probably the most developed, currently making about 15 textbooks available as Open Access (www.opensuny.org). More on these initiatives next time.
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