New JISC Collections ebook project: OAPEN-UK: OA scholarly monographs

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Graham Stone, via the JISC-Repositories list.  --Peter Suber.]

Dear Colleagues

 

As part of Open Access Week I would like to introduce you to a new eBooks research project that JISC Collections are running. It is called OAPEN-UK and over the next three years will be exploring open access scholarly monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences. It is joint funded by JISC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

 

OAPEN-UK is a collaborative research project gathering evidence to help stakeholders make informed decisions on the future of open access scholarly monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences (HSS).

 

The usage and sales of 60 titles matched into pairs by publication date, subject area, age to print sales ratio, price and format history will be studied. A title from each pair has been randomly placed in either the Experimental Group or the Control Group.

• The Experimental Group titles = available in open access under a creative commons licence.
• The Control Group titles = available as eBooks for sale under the publishers normal licensing and route to market models.

We encourage you to take a look at the list of authors and their affiliations for the experimental group which is available at: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/pilot/info-for-repository-managers/

 

We have included direct links to the OAPEN website, the publisher pages and most importantly the direct link to the PDF, which you can download under a Creative Commons license without the need to ask for further permission.

 

All we ask is that you let me or Caren Milloy, who is leading the project, (c.mi...@jisc-collections.ac.uk) know that you have done so in order for us to add the repository URL to the spreadsheet (http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/files/2011/10/Pilot-titles-by-group-for-UK-Librarians-and-IR-managers.xls).

 

As part of the data collection aspect to the project, we would also be interested to know if you are able to provide us with downloads, e.g. through IR Stats etc.

 

This will allow us to answer some key research questions

• how policies, processes and mechanisms might need to change to enable OA publication of monographs,
• what the measurable effects of a move to OA monographs are, and
• how perceptions of OA monograph publication change among participants during the project

The full research plan is available at: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/overview/research-plan/

 

Finally, we will be running a series of focus groups and surveys for IR Managers. If you are interested in participating, please do let Caren know – c.mi...@jisc-collections.ac.uk

 

How can you stay up to date with the project?

 

There are various routes:

• We will use this email list to send updates as the project progresses
• We will be adding news to the OAPEN-UK website – http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/
• Follow @OAPENUK on Twitter

I hope that you will find this project of interest and look forward to sharing more information with you as it progresses.

 

Kind Regards

Graham

 

 

 

Graham Stone
Information Resources Manager
CSB 5/23
Computing and Library Services
University of Huddersfield
Queensgate
Huddersfield
HD1 3DH

Tel. +44(0) 1484 472042
Fax. +44(0) 1484 473167
http://www.hud.ac.uk/cls/
http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/