From: Colin Steele <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 02:20:19 +0000
As Sandy correctly says in his post below, Canada and Australia face
many of the same challenges and issues in scholarly communication as
evidenced in the contacts over the years between the Council of
Australian University Librarians and the Canadian Association of
Research Libraries. In the Canadian monographic report, however,
Australian once more seems to have suffered from the historical
tyranny of distance in terms of a knowledge of developments in the
southern hemisphere.
As I write in my upcoming article, “Open Access in Australia: an
Odyssey of Sorts?”, to appear in the November issue of Insights, the
UKSG journal :
“While Australia follows Northern hemisphere OA developments quite
closely, the same cannot always be said in reverse. Thus, neither the
‘Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences’
conference, held at the British Library in early July 2013, nor the
relevant chapters in the British Academy’s 2013 symposium, Debating
Open Access, revealed knowledge of Australian OA monograph
developments.
Currently, the four long-standing presses, at Melbourne, New South
Wales, Queensland and Western Australia universities , largely publish
‘trade’ books because of their commercial imperatives. The new, or
reconstituted, presses, at Sydney, Adelaide, Monash and Swinburne
universities, ANU and the University of Technology, Sydney, focus on
academic publishing embedded in the scholarly infrastructure of their
university. These ‘new’ presses, with their full or hybrid open access
models, published significantly more ‘academic’ books in 2012 than the
four established presses.
In 2012, the ANU E Press, had nearly 700,000 complete monograph PDF
downloads with 34% of downloads from Oceania (including Australia),
23% from North America, 23% from Asia 23% and 18% from Europe. Compare
these downloads to the average print sale of an academic monograph,
usually estimated to be around 200-300 copies. In addition to the OA
downloads, in 2012 ANU E Press sold nearly 5,000 print copies through
its Print on Demand (POD) service.In the ANU and Adelaide University
Press models, monographs are freely available for download in HTML,
PDF, and mobile device formats.
The ANU E Press, which will publish 55 titles during 2013, has a
distributed editorial model, supported centrally by a set of IT
services. The ANU academic colleges and their 22 editorial boards take
responsibility for all processes from commissioning publication
proposals through peer review to final copy editing. Individual
academics or academic areas take responsibility for most, if not all
costs, associated with these processes. The University also provides a
small fund to which authors can apply for copy-editing and related
costs. Central E Press services include quality assurance in relation
to style and editorial standards.
Monash University Publishing, which released 20 titles in 2012 and 12
titles by August 2013, is located physically and administratively in
the Monash University Library. This reflects the Library’s
conceptualisation of its activities within scholarly research cycle of
the university. Like the ANU, proposals by Monash authors are
forwarded to Editorial Boards based within faculties or research
centres. The Sydney University Press, which published 20 titles
between January 2012 and August 2013, is part of a wider framework,
Sydney eScholarship, also located within the University of Sydney
Library”.
The ‘new’ Australian models, in fact they hark back to the beginnings
of university press publishing, are located in the scholarly
infrastructure of the University rather than standalone commercial
presses within university environments
As part of the preconference to the major open access conference
organised by the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane at
the end of October, with speakers including Stevan Harnad, Alma Swan,
Cameron Neylon, Heather Joseph, John Houghton and Bernard Rentier,
there will be holding a workshop as below relevant to the issues in
the Canadian report .Details at http://www.oar2013.qut.edu.au/program/
Open Access Scholarly Books: Australian Perspectives
Chair: Colin Steele, Emeritus Fellow | Australian National University
Facilitator: Dr Lucy Montgomery | Knowledge Unlatched
Description: “This three-hour workshop tackles the crucial question of
whether globally coordinated, market based approaches to funding open
access monographs can support the unique needs of Australian research
communities. The workshop takes place in the context of the release in
August 2013 of the Book Industry Collaborative Council (BICC) report
and especially the recommendations included in the chapter on
scholarly book publishing in the humanities and social sciences.
This workshop, with expert speakers from the BICC Committee and from
across the scholarly publishing industry, will discuss the policy
issues most likely to ensure that Australian scholarly communities and
audiences are best served in an era of digital technology and
globalisation. Australia must think globally and support developments
that enhance the accessibility of publicly-funded research.
The workshop asks whether it might be possible to shape Australia’s
engagement with international open access projects in order to ensure
that the needs of Australian authors and publishers are served in a
global context. As the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social
Sciences and Humanities stated in 2013, “The academic monograph
remains a very significant means of articulating complex arguments and
concepts, and of demonstrating new arguments”.
Speakers will outline recent developments in scholarly monograph
publishing including new Open Access initiatives and developments.
Knowledge Unlatched, is one example of an attempt to create an
internationally coordinated, market-based route to open access for
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) monographs. Knowledge
Unlatched, a not-for-profit London-based company is piloting a global
library consortium approach to funding open access monographs and
released its pilot program in early October with 28 titles from 13
publishers.
The workshop invites discussion and debate from librarians,
publishers, researchers and research funders on the role of
international coordination and markets in securing a more open future
for Australian HASS scholarship”.
The issues here are indeed global, so thanks once more to Sandy for
reminding the list of OA publishing developments down under. best
Colin
--------------------------------------------------------------
Colin Steele
Emeritus Fellow
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
Australia
Tel +61 (0)2 612 58983
Email: [log in to unmask]
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