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