From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 10:11:15 -0400 To respond more directly to Colin's call, I would like to mention that CLACSO, the Latin American Council for social sciences, has almost 800 titles available in open access. http://www.clacso.org.ar/libreria-latinoamericana/inicio.php Most are in Spanish, but Spanish is a widely practised language nowadays, and going global does not necessarily mean going English, especially in the social sciences and the humanities. Dominique Babini could certainly provide more information if needed: <[log in to unmask]>. Jean-Claude Guédon ******* Le mercredi 09 octobre 2013 à 18:00 -0400, LIBLICENSE a écrit : 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. -------------------------------------------------------------- Colin Steele Emeritus Fellow The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Tel +61 (0)2 612 58983 Email: [log in to unmask]