From: Colin Steele <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 00:56:13 +0000
Some history is required here, but if a new government is elected in
Australia next week the fate of these recommendations may change, as
David alludes.
In July 2012, the Australian Government established the Scholarly Book
Publishing Expert Reference Group within the BICC framework to help
the publishing industry and the research sector to gain a more
holistic understanding of the role of scholarly book publishing,
particularly in the HASS disciplines. I was a member of the that
committee, and like the Finch committee, the ERG group had to
accommodate divergent interests in scoping a scholarly book publishing
ecosystem that best enables maximum reach, influence and commercial
success for publishers and their works. At the time of this email, the
final report was not officially released according to the Department,
due to the caretaker nature of the Australian election, but it was
released this week by the Minister's office and is widely available.
The opening section of the Minister's statement is as follows
“Australia’s book industry will have a brighter future and publicly
funded research will be more accessible under a re-elected Rudd Labor
Government.
The Rudd Labor Government will invest up to $12 million to help
Australia’s book industry thrive, partnering with the university
sector to establish a national publishing consortium. Australian
Universities Press (AUP) will help academics and students share their
work with their peers and the public, by providing a new avenue for
scholarly book publishing in Australia”.
The full report, which is more than the scholarly publishing section
is available at
http://www.senatorkimcarr.com/uploads/1/8/8/8/18881120/book_industry_collaborative_council_final_report_2013.pdf
Other sections of the report cover such issues as copyright and
e-books in libraries.
The recommendations of the Scholarly Book Publishing Expert Reference
Group were summarised in the Report as follows:
1. Forum for ongoing policy engagement: Government agencies, book
industry groups and
research sector bodies should maintain productive stakeholder dialogue
to favour timely
responses to emerging challenges and opportunities, through regular
meetings of a
roundtable of similar constitution to the Scholarly Book Publishing
Expert Reference Group.
2. Infrastructure collaboration: Through the roundtable, universities,
scholarly book publishers and
the Australian Government should continue to explore the development of a shared
platform, which could be used by all Australian scholarly book
publishers for the production,
marketing and dissemination of Australian scholarship.
3. Recognition of the importance and cost of publication and
dissemination: Scholarly book publishers
and university research leaders should engage with Australian
Government agencies and the
Australian Research Committee (ARCom) to ensure both the role of and
cost involved in
publication and dissemination are recognised, and to work towards
building these costs into
funding programs as a legitimate research expense.
4. Format neutrality: Policy-makers, funders, regulators, universities
and researchers should
ensure that all procedures, approaches, funding and regulatory
arrangements regarding
scholarly publishing are neutral with respect to format of
publication, to the extent possible.
This includes considerations such as academic attitudes towards the
value of the work,
recognition by research assessment processes and formulae, and funding
support for
publication.
The Minister has now announced A$4 million for three years with
matching funds to be sought from the universities, presumably with
particular reference to recommendation two. The details of what the
money is to be used for and the nature of the matching funds by
universities, if they eventuate, have yet to be debated and worked
through. It is interesting that a previous request, originating from
the four more ‘commercial” University presses back in 2011 for $10
million from the government and $6 million from the universities for a
not dissimilar proposal did not gain support.
There is now, however, more of a spirit of cooperation amongst the
varied university publishers but the devil will be in the detail ,for
example, in the balance in terms of financial outlays on
infrastructure, the nature of subsidies and payments for monographs
and long-term business models. Certainly the Australian open access or
hybrid open access presses are already achieving significant global
distribution in terms of downloads and in 2012 they published more
than double the academic titles of the presses at Melbourne,
Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia. Expenditure should
be minimal on bureaucratic structures and de novo developments of
software. The main focus should be on publishing monographic content
from the Australian research sector and its subsequent effective
global distribution.
Overall, this is a welcome development, which reflects the global
interest in the fate of the monograph and wider distribution
opportunities within peer-reviewed frameworks. It is to be hoped that
some of the Australian developments can be taken on board by the UK
HEFCE/Arts and Humanities Research and Economic and Social Research
Council's reference group on monographs and open access under the
chairmanship of Professor Geoffrey Crossick.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Colin Steele
Emeritus Fellow
Copland Building 24
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
Australia
Email: [log in to unmask]
*******
From: David Groenewegen <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2013 18:17:03 +1000
Good questions.
It is not actually a press - it is designed to "collaborate on
cutting production and marketing costs" across a range of university
presses already existing (Monash University, my employers, have an
excellent one - http://publishing.monash.edu/). See here for more:
<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/labors-12m-a-page-turner-for-shared-press/story-e6frgcjx-1226710011106>
<http://au.artshub.com/au/news-article/news/publishing-and-writing/labor-presents-next-page-in-publishing-196526>
(2) I think he is meaning that it will expose more research by making
it available, but not necessarily Open Access - again, to use the
Monash example, we have both open access and "traditionally" published
monographs, and so there will be a mix.
It's worth noting that we have election this weekend - so this plan
may change next week.
David
David Groenewegen
Director, Research Infrastructure
Monash University Library
Victoria, 3800
AUSTRALIA
[log in to unmask]
On 4/09/2013 11:14 AM, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2013 09:57:37 -0500
>
> I have two questions about this initiative:
>
> 1) Why set up a new university press when there is already an
> open-access university press successfully operating in Australia?
> http://epress.anu.edu.au/
>
> 2) Does Kim Carr really mean "in the public domain," or is he (she?)
> just confusing this with open access?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>
>> From: Ann Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 8:25 PM
>>
>> Labor offers $12m lifeline to halt decline in Australian publishing.
>> Support includes an Australian Universities Press to showcase
>> publicly funded research and a permanent industry council
>>
>> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/02/labor-lifeline-to-halt-p
>> ublishing-decline
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