Start Date

29-3-2015 10:30 AM

Keywords

monographs, humanities, collaboration

Media File:

Streaming Media

Description

Catherine Mitchell, California Digital Library, University of California and Erich van Rijn, University of California Press
Tackling the Humanities Book Crisis
At the center of debates over the future of scholarly communication – and the future of university presses – lies the humanities monograph. In the current model, libraries worry that they do not get enough usage to justify the cost of purchase; publishers complain that they do not get enough sales to justify the cost of production; and authors are ill-served by a model that consigns their work to the few hundred libraries still able to afford them. UC Press and the California Digital Library, as programs of the University of California, share the greater academic mission to support superior scholarship across the disciplines and, thus, are motivated to help solve this fundamental problem facing the humanities. We believe that open access publication of monographs will help extend the reach of critical scholarship, but we also recognize that this emergent model requires a dramatic reduction in the cost of book production in order to be sustainable. To this end, UC Press and the CDL recently submitted a joint application to the Mellon Foundation to fund the development of an open-source, web-based content management system to support monograph publication within the growing domain of open access academic publishing. Our grant application has been funded by Mellon, and we are now gearing up to develop a system that will achieve the dual goals of increased efficiency and significant cost reduction. We envision a comprehensive, cost-effective system that will streamline production by allowing users to manage content and associated workflows from manuscript submission or initial authoring through production to final publication of files. Such a system would allow publishers (both libraries and presses) to redirect resources back into the editorial process and to disseminate important scholarship more widely. UC Press and the CDL believe that a well-designed system can help us accomplish our mission of advancing humanities research by radically improving the way long-form scholarly content is produced and disseminated. We intend to offer the same features and functions – cloud-based content management, a collaborative writing and editing platform, digital formats as well as paged layouts suitable for print – as are provided by commercial tools. Yet unlike expensive proprietary systems, our low-cost, open-source solution will lay the groundwork for mission-driven publishers to make headway and remain viable in traditional markets while breaking new ground with born-digital content. Join Mellon grant co-PIs Catherine Mitchell (CDL) and Erich van Rijn (UC Press) to learn more about this project and how it stands to transform book publishing for libraries publishers and academic presses alike.

Kristen Ratanatharathorn, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Collaborations in Scholarly Publishing: Roles for Libraries and Presses
In 2014, the Scholarly Communications program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched a new grant-making initiative focused on the support of scholarly publishing. An important goal of the program is to encourage university presses to collaborate with each other and with other organizations to develop shared capacity and infrastructure for editing, production, marketing, dissemination, and discovery of digital content for long-form digital publishing in the humanities. Program staff at the Foundation were especially interested in proposals that would support new business models, such as those in which authors or their institutions, rather than readers, pay for the costs of producing and distributing works on the Web, or those that generate other new sources of revenue. After multiple campus visits and meetings with constituents, as well as a call for proposals, Foundation staff and external reviewers selected a small number of proposals to recommend to our Trustees. Several involve collaborations between university presses and libraries. The proposed talk/poster would situate these projects in relation to the broader set of grants in the new scholarly publishing initiative, highlighting the complicated division of labor between libraries and publishers related to technology development, image management, outsourcing, new genres of publishing, and preservation.

Charles Watkinson, University of Michigan
Redefining "the Monograph": How Libraries and Presses Can Work Together To Solve a Joint Problem
Monographs have sometimes been defined as "books that don't sell" and the experience of university presses in recent years suggests that this stereotype is becoming more and more true as library purchases drop dramatically. What may have sold 1,500 copies a decade ago now sells fewer than 500 and the need to substantially redefine the business model for how monographs are funded has been recognized in several recent reports, notably in the AAU/ARL Prospectus for an Institutionally-funded First-Book Subvention. The form of the monograph has also been a topic of critical discussion, as it becomes clear that print books (or their electronic facsimile equivalents) are less and less appropriate vehicles for the rich digital scholarship that scholars are producing. This presentation provides an overview of recent studies concerning the future of the monograph conducted on both sides of the Atlantic. It then describes work being done within the publishing division of University of Michigan Library, also the home of University of Michigan Press, to create a more sustainable model for digitally-enabled, open access presentations of long-form humanities scholarship that may potentially become the monographs of the future. The speaker will show how it is through combining infrastructure and skills from the library with the judgement and processes of the university press that the monograph can be best reinvigorated, and will suggest future areas for collaboration and joint problem-solving.

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Mar 29th, 10:30 AM

Library-Press Collaboration & the Future of the Monograph

Catherine Mitchell, California Digital Library, University of California and Erich van Rijn, University of California Press
Tackling the Humanities Book Crisis
At the center of debates over the future of scholarly communication – and the future of university presses – lies the humanities monograph. In the current model, libraries worry that they do not get enough usage to justify the cost of purchase; publishers complain that they do not get enough sales to justify the cost of production; and authors are ill-served by a model that consigns their work to the few hundred libraries still able to afford them. UC Press and the California Digital Library, as programs of the University of California, share the greater academic mission to support superior scholarship across the disciplines and, thus, are motivated to help solve this fundamental problem facing the humanities. We believe that open access publication of monographs will help extend the reach of critical scholarship, but we also recognize that this emergent model requires a dramatic reduction in the cost of book production in order to be sustainable. To this end, UC Press and the CDL recently submitted a joint application to the Mellon Foundation to fund the development of an open-source, web-based content management system to support monograph publication within the growing domain of open access academic publishing. Our grant application has been funded by Mellon, and we are now gearing up to develop a system that will achieve the dual goals of increased efficiency and significant cost reduction. We envision a comprehensive, cost-effective system that will streamline production by allowing users to manage content and associated workflows from manuscript submission or initial authoring through production to final publication of files. Such a system would allow publishers (both libraries and presses) to redirect resources back into the editorial process and to disseminate important scholarship more widely. UC Press and the CDL believe that a well-designed system can help us accomplish our mission of advancing humanities research by radically improving the way long-form scholarly content is produced and disseminated. We intend to offer the same features and functions – cloud-based content management, a collaborative writing and editing platform, digital formats as well as paged layouts suitable for print – as are provided by commercial tools. Yet unlike expensive proprietary systems, our low-cost, open-source solution will lay the groundwork for mission-driven publishers to make headway and remain viable in traditional markets while breaking new ground with born-digital content. Join Mellon grant co-PIs Catherine Mitchell (CDL) and Erich van Rijn (UC Press) to learn more about this project and how it stands to transform book publishing for libraries publishers and academic presses alike.

Kristen Ratanatharathorn, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Collaborations in Scholarly Publishing: Roles for Libraries and Presses
In 2014, the Scholarly Communications program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched a new grant-making initiative focused on the support of scholarly publishing. An important goal of the program is to encourage university presses to collaborate with each other and with other organizations to develop shared capacity and infrastructure for editing, production, marketing, dissemination, and discovery of digital content for long-form digital publishing in the humanities. Program staff at the Foundation were especially interested in proposals that would support new business models, such as those in which authors or their institutions, rather than readers, pay for the costs of producing and distributing works on the Web, or those that generate other new sources of revenue. After multiple campus visits and meetings with constituents, as well as a call for proposals, Foundation staff and external reviewers selected a small number of proposals to recommend to our Trustees. Several involve collaborations between university presses and libraries. The proposed talk/poster would situate these projects in relation to the broader set of grants in the new scholarly publishing initiative, highlighting the complicated division of labor between libraries and publishers related to technology development, image management, outsourcing, new genres of publishing, and preservation.

Charles Watkinson, University of Michigan
Redefining "the Monograph": How Libraries and Presses Can Work Together To Solve a Joint Problem
Monographs have sometimes been defined as "books that don't sell" and the experience of university presses in recent years suggests that this stereotype is becoming more and more true as library purchases drop dramatically. What may have sold 1,500 copies a decade ago now sells fewer than 500 and the need to substantially redefine the business model for how monographs are funded has been recognized in several recent reports, notably in the AAU/ARL Prospectus for an Institutionally-funded First-Book Subvention. The form of the monograph has also been a topic of critical discussion, as it becomes clear that print books (or their electronic facsimile equivalents) are less and less appropriate vehicles for the rich digital scholarship that scholars are producing. This presentation provides an overview of recent studies concerning the future of the monograph conducted on both sides of the Atlantic. It then describes work being done within the publishing division of University of Michigan Library, also the home of University of Michigan Press, to create a more sustainable model for digitally-enabled, open access presentations of long-form humanities scholarship that may potentially become the monographs of the future. The speaker will show how it is through combining infrastructure and skills from the library with the judgement and processes of the university press that the monograph can be best reinvigorated, and will suggest future areas for collaboration and joint problem-solving.