1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing

OAPEN workshop: new models in Open Access book publishing

Wednesday the 16th of September from 14:00 - 16:00 at the Scandic Star Hotel

The project OAPEN (www.oapen.org) stands for a network of scholarly publishers working on Open Access Publishing of books. The focus of this workshop will be on Open Access book publishing and business models for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). The workshop seeks to identify new cooperation models, developments and future directions in scholarly book publishing. These should lead to sustainable Open Access business models for eBooks and hybrid publishing.

OAPEN invites publishers who are working or experimenting with Open Access book publishing models and experts in the field of Open Access business models, as well as other interested people, to take part in a 2 hour workshop. During the workshop a new model will be presented and discussed. A panel of experts will reflect on the model and afterwards we will have a plenary discussion in which there will be possibilities for the audience to participate.

Questions leading the discussion

• What are the main benefits and drawbacks of the proposed model?
• What are the main possibilities (for cooperation) to attain funding for the model?
• What are the main possibilities to attain additional remits after funding (for instance POD, additional services, advertisements)?
• What are the possibilities of other business models and their benefits and drawbacks?
• How do we guarantee that in this model quality and trust is preserved?
• Which steps should be taken to implement such a model and to achieve acceptance by stakeholders?

If you are interested in joining the panel or attending the workshop, please contact:
Janneke Adema (j.t.l.adema@hum.leidenuniv.nl)

Background:

Over the last few years new modes of cooperation between stakeholders in formal scholarly communication and publishing have become more prevalent. The digital technology increasingly offers possibilities to rethink the key functions in the publishing value chain. Therefore new business and funding opportunities for Open Access publications have arisen. However the questions remain which new forms of cooperation and business/funding models will especially benefit the HSS community and how sustainable strategies for the HSS book in an Open Access environment are achieved.

Changes in the realm for Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) publishing have significant influence on HSS publishing. On one hand rising publication costs for STM journals for example decrease library acquisition budgets, and resources to provide publishing subsidies for HSS books are getting scarce because funders had to shift priorities. This has lead to increased economic restrictions for the publication of scholarly books, threatening the dissemination and access to and the impact of scholarly research in the book-oriented fields. On the other hand digital publishing techniques and sustainable alternative business models for STM journals become more and more successful. However, the adoption of Open Access models for scholarly books in HSS poses specific challenges such as economic differences for HSS book publishing, from royalty options to subsidy and funding schemes. Moreover, further questions arise from the (digital) production process in itself, (digital) rights management of books, and the consumption of scholarly HSS books still relying heavily on the print or print-analog format.

Clearly the digital developments offer specific advantages to the field of scholarly book publishing like media-immanent features such as search options and hypertextuality and process-oriented aspects such as cross-media publishing or cross-institutional collaboration. University presses for instance can establish a publishing program for their university by joining collaborative online publishing platforms or forming alliances with libraries or ICT services. Several experiments with different publishing and business models for Open Access books are already underway such as hybrid or delayed Open Access, shifts from print-only to combinations of digital access and Print on Demand (POD) books or new modes of funding, financing and pricing for publications on the internet.