OAPEN-UK: an Open Access Business Model for Scholarly Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences :
« This paper presents the initial findings of OAPEN-UK, a UK research project gathering evidence on the social and technological impacts of an open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences. »
URL : http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/13912/
Free E-Books and Print Sales :
« Digital technologies now enable books and other digital resources to be openly available to those with access to the Internet. This study examined the financial viability of a religious publisher that put free digital versions of eight of its print books on the Internet. The cost to put these eight books online was $940. Over a 10-week period, these books were downloaded 102,256 times and sales of these books increased 26%. Online sales increased at a much higher rate. Comparisons with historical book sales and sales of comparable titles indicate that that this increase may have been connected to the free books being available. There was a modest correlation between book downloads and print sales. »
URL : http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3336451.0014.109
OAPEN Final Report :
« OAPEN started its activities on September 1, 2008 and has now completed its project phaseco-funded by the European Commission. The final stage of the project focused on the launch
of the OAPEN Library, usability, and especially sustainability after the project period. The results were presented during the final conference in Berlin in February 2011.
In the future OAPEN will continue as an independent foundation governed by representatives of the participating institutions. The objectives for the foundation are to stimulate further OA
publishing of academic books, to further develop OAPEN as a platform for OA books and to develop a sustainable business model. In the meantime, OAPEN is conducting a number of experiments in Open Access book publishing, in the form of pilot projects. The first pilot is conducted in the Netherlands with support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Ministry of Education. For the UK a similar pilot project is being prepared by JISC Collections. »
URL : http://project.oapen.org/images/documents/oapen_final_public_report.pdf
Open Access monographic publishing in the humanities :
« In recent years, it has become widely recognized that in the case of monographs, the traditional business model for books is losing its sustainability. Academic publishers have been forced to become more selective in the books they publish, and authors, in particular young researchers and first time authors, have found it harder to find a press willing to publish their work. In response to the economic restraints of printed monographs, many publishers and academic institutes, in particular research libraries, have started to experiment with digital and Open Access publication of monographs.
OAPEN is the first international project to develop an Open Access model for publishers and stakeholders in scholarly communication. OAPEN stands for Open Access Publishing in European Networks. It is a 30 month project co-funded by the European Union, to develop and implement an Open Access (OA) publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). »
URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/l6wg61l0mg6426w8/
Repurposing MARC Metadata for an Institutional Repository: Working with Special Collections and University Press Monographs :
« This paper describes the processes and workflows that transform Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) records found in The Ohio State’s University’s library catalog into Dublin Core records for digital resources batch loaded into the Knowledge Bank, The Ohio State University’s institutional repository. Two projects are described to illustrate the processes and workflows: the open access monographs of The Ohio State University Press and the oral history collections of The Ohio State University Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program. »
URL : https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/47564
The OAPEN library and publication platform is online :
« OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe. «
URL : http://www.oapen.org/xtf/home?brand=oapen
Free exchange of ideas.Experimenting with the open access monograph :
« Editor’s note: Maria Bonn’s essay, a review of the challenges of applying open access models to monograph publishing, is based on her presentation at the ALA 2010 Midwinter SPARC-ACRL Forum in Boston, MA. The entire Forum, “The ebook transition: Collaborations and innovations behind open-access monographs,” may be viewed online at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala10mw/ »
URL : http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/8/436.full
Report on Best Practices and Recommendations :
« This report is the third in a series of studies conducted by OAPEN on digital monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The first report focused on the needs of users and stakeholders, and the second looked at the existing (and developing) publishing and business models. The aim of this report is to provide the different players—publishers, funders, librarians, readers, scholars and politicians—with a set of recommendations concerning the strategic issues in Open Access book publishing. For those already in the process of developing an Open Access policy, this report maps out the issues and decisions they may confront. »
URL : http://www.oapen.org/images/D316_OAPEN_Best_practice_public_report.pdf
The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales :
Increasingly, authors and publishers are freely distributing their books electronically to increase the visibility of their work. A vital question for those with a commercial stake in selling books is, “What happens to book sales if digital versions are given away?” We used BookScan sales data for four categories of books (a total of 41 books) for which we could identify the date when the free digital versions of the books were made available to determine whether the free version affected print sales. We analyzed the data on book sales for the eight weeks before and after the free versions were available. Three of the four categories of books had increased sales after the free books were distributed. We discuss the implications and limitations of these results.
URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0013.101