Étiquette : business models

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Open Access monographic publishing in th…

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/

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Rethinking The Role and Funding of Acade…

Rethinking The Role and Funding of Academic Book Publishing :

« 500 years ago the Cambridge University had a collection of 122 volumes, each of which cost as much as a vineyard. Today, a book costs as much as a bottle of wine. With the advent of online publishing, customers want books that cost only as much as a glass of wine, and some times, not even that much. However, producing quality content comes with a cost.

This ho-hum attitude of expecting everything for less (or even for free) has discouraged the sales of monographs. As a result, the production of these pieces of scholarly work has become less viable. This is especially true of long-form publications such as those in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) where there is reliance on the book form as the required length to convey an idea or present an argument.

What would be an economically sustainable business model to make these publications available as open access journals? Who would fund such a venture? Following the Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) model of publication where the author pays to have the article published is not agreeable as the costs of getting to first copy (in long form publication) are prohibitive. Migrating all monographs to ebook form will not solve the problem either.

A new business model is needed. While options abound, none of them are economically justified. Frances Pinter thinks she has cracked the puzzle, with a bit of help from Albert Greco and Harold Wharton who gave her the idea. Her proposal is to form a coalition of libraries, pool the money from their budgets and use that money to pay the publishers to meet the first copy costs, let the publisher publish the content as open access, and then sell POD versions. By the way, here’s a brain teaser. If you can come up with a better name than International Library Coalition for Open Access Books (ILCOAb) for the library consortia she envisions, she promises to send you a bottle of champagne. »

URL : http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4754.html

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The size distribution of open access pub…

The size distribution of open access publishers: A problem for open access? :

« I stumbled across the question of publisher size while preparing for an earlier article. From the viewpoint of an economist, the size distribution of open access publishers looked inefficient. In this article I first explore reasons to be sceptical to a situation with a large number of small publishers. Then I go through the numbers from the Directory of Open Access Journals, also discussing problems inherent in the material. The results are then compared to similar data about toll access publishing. A conclusion is that, even though numbers may lack in exactitude, there seems to be a need for institutions to look at how they organize their publishing activities. »

URL : http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3208/2726

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E-only scholarly journals: overcoming th…

E-only scholarly journals: overcoming the barriers :

« In recent years, publishers, librarians and academics have seized the opportunities offered by the electronic publication of scholarly journals. Despite the popularity of e-journals, however, content continues to be published, acquired and used in physical printed form. In the UK, we are still some way from a wholly electronic journal environment. This study is prompted by a concern from publishers and librarians that the retention of both printed and e-journal formats adds unnecessary costs throughout the supply chain from publisher to library to user. In view of the many advantages of electronic journals, this report sets out to understand the barriers to a move to e-only provision of scholarly journals in the UK, and to investigate what various players within the scholarly communications system could do in order to encourage such a move. »

URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/E-only_report_for_screen.pdf

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Submission Fees – A tool in the transiti…

Submission Fees – A tool in the transition to open access? :

The study consisted of an initial literature survey, followed by an exploration of the experience of those currently using submission fees conducted via interviews (primarily with journal editors and publishers). We then developed some possible models for submission fees within open access that were tested and refined through discussions with relevant stakeholders. Finally the potential viability of these models was explored through a series of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders
including publishers, libraries, research funders, research institutions and individual researchers. In
total some 40 interviews were conducted. »

URL : http://knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOpen+Access%2fKE_Submission_fees_Short_Report_2010-11-25.pdf

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Stage Five Book Publishing

Author : Joseph J. Esposito

In order for university presses to ensure their financial success, they have to become innovators: Simply cutting expenses will get them nowhere. The key area for innovation for presses today (a point they share with all other book publishers) is in the area of marketing.

The five stages of book publishing outlined here describe the arc as publishers move from the traditional model (where print books were sold mostly in bookstores and to libraries) through a range of developments using online media, culminating in new forms of subscription marketing.

Among the assumptions for this strategy are: publishers will increasingly seek direct relationships with their readers, often bypassing libraries; publishers will have to become experts in metadata creation in order to make their publications discoverable online; and publishers, even university presses, will begin to create customer databases and become concerned about the life cycles of their customers.

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0013.204

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Free Technology Academy : a Joint Ventur…

Free Technology Academy : a Joint Venture of Free Software and OER :

« The decision to publish educational materials openly and under free licenses brings up the challenge of doing it in a sustainable way. Some lessons can be learned from the business models for production, maintenance and distribution of Free and Open Source Software. The
Free Technology Academy (FTA) has taken on these challenges and has implemented some of these models. We briefly review the FTA educational programme, methodologies and organisation, and see to which extent these models are proving successful in the case of the FTA. »

URL : http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/handle/10609/4850