OAPEN Newsletter – October 2009
OAPEN Project News
OAPEN has gained funding from the European Commission, and will be seeking partners at the Frankfurt Book Fair (08/10/2008)
Positive evaluation European Commission for proposal Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) (12/02/2008)

OAPEN Newsletter – October 2009

User needs study on Open Access Book

As part of the OAPEN project Prof.dr. Paul Rutten and Drs. Janneke Adema (Leiden University, The Netherlands) have carried out a study on user needs in relation to open access book publishing within the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).

The study will be made available through OAPEN’s website, www.oapen.org, by the end of October. Below are some of the main findings of the report. Please feel free to give your feedback on this summary to Janneke Adema (j.t.l.adema@hum.leidenuniv.nl).

Main Findings

Print remains important in HSS although a trend has been established to more digital consumption (more screen reading and E-Book use), more informal online communication (blogs and wiki’s) and a small rise of scholarly writing specifically adapted to the digital environment. It is felt print and E-Books will coexist and will be used side-by-side for the time being.
Accessibility and dissemination of scholarly content are key. It is felt Open Access promotes both and does not necessarily harm the quality of publications. Accessibility also opens research up further, enabling content enhancement and connections (links) between publications. A good and easy way to use search function remains indispensable.
In the online environment filter and selection mechanisms such as peer review remain of the utmost importance to establish quality, as are (publishers) brands and (scholarly) reputations. It is felt Open Access monographs should pay extra attention to quality control to ensure their legitimacy.
Experiments with new forms of collaboration and new (Open Access) business models in book publishing are necessary. The research shows users are still skeptical about the sustainability of these kinds of models but feel experiments are essential to save the monograph from the traditional (print) publishing model that is no longer sustainable.

The research is based on a state of the art literature study, round table discussions, one-on-one interviews across Europe, and an online survey.

OAPEN survey ‘Funding of Monographs in the HSS’

OAPEN is currently conducting a survey about the ‘Funding of Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)’

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GqUMvpUHKQ0zCQAXd5_2fDUg_3d_3d

The survey invites authors/editors, funders and publishers to estimate how books are currently funded and how this might be complemented by funding opportunities for Open Access publishing of books. We welcome you to take part in the survey or to send it on to others who might be interested. The outcomes of the survey will support OAPEN in the development and implementation of an Open Access publication model for peer reviewed academic books in HSS.

The survey is based on the observation that publishing of monographs (including anthologies) in HSS often relies on additional funding on the part of authors/editors as costs can not solely be met by revenues of sales. So far funding institutions have mainly supported the print production and based their funding models on the traditional book market. The combination of a free (open access) electronic version (access, searchability, quick citability etc.) with a convenient pay print version offers new opportunities in visibility and dissemination.

Meet us at Frankfurt Book Fair, 14-19 October 2009

Amsterdam University Press, stand 4.2 C410 (Man. Director Saskia de Vries, S.C.J.deVries@aup.nl / OAPEN coördinator Eelco Ferwerda, E.Ferwerda@aup.nl)

Museum Tusculanum Press, stand 4.2 C411 (Man. Director Marianne Alenius, alenius@mtp.dk)

Manchester University Press, stand 8.0 C921 (Man. Director David Rodgers, d.rodgers@manchester.ac.uk)

Universitätsverlag Göttingen, stand 4.2 M440 (Head of Publishing Margo Bargheer, bargheer@sub.uni-goettingen.de)

Firenze University Press, stand 4.2 M442 (Man. Director Patrizia Cotoneschi, cotoneschi@unifi.it)

OAPEN is a Targeted Project co-funded by the EC within its eContentplus Programme.
OAPEN aims to develop and implement an Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). Our goal is to achieve a sustainable European approach to improve the quantity, visibility and usability of high quality academic research and foster the creation of new content by developing future-oriented publishing solutions, including an Open Access Library for peer reviewed books in HSS. The 30-months project started in September 2008.
Learn more about OAPEN by visiting the website: www.oapen.org

OAPEN Project News

March 2009

Project in brief
The scholarly book in the digital age faces challenges such as economic constraints, changing attitudes of readers using the internet and new possibilities offered by electronic media. Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) as book-oriented sciences therefore are especially effected. This refers to their respective publishers, often organised as not-for-profit presses or small and medium size enterprises. At the same time the mentioned scholarly fields and publishers could benefit especially from Open Access publishing with its potential to reach new audiences and limit publishing costs.

OAPEN is a Targeted Project co-funded by the EC within its eContentplus Programme.
OAPEN aims to develop and implement an Open Access publication model for academic books in HSS. Our goal is to achieve a sustainable European approach to improve the quantity, visibility and usability of high quality academic research and foster the creation of new content by developing future-oriented publishing solutions, including an open access library for peer reviewed books in HSS. The 30-months project started in September 2008.
Learn more about OAPEN by visiting the website: www.oapen.org

Activities
In September 2008 the project started with a number of kick off meetings for the first work packages, held in Göttingen, Germany. Our first activities included the development of the overall architecture and standards for the e-publishing platform, setting up the research into user needs and existing Open Access models, and the promotion of OAPEN among stakeholders in scholarly communication.

Architecture and Standards
OAPEN's infrastructure encompasses a publication platform for e-books and an online library, which will be open to academic publishers, libraries and researchers.
The overall design of the production process in OAPEN will be based on a common architecture and international open standards to ensure easier cooperation between the partners and to make seamless integration of new partners possible. The vision for the architecture was described in an Architecture Standards Report. For further information on the technical aspects of the project please contact r.snijder@aup.nl

Research into user needs
The research into user needs and existing Open Access models will be an important foundation for OAPEN's OA publication model. The research includes a number of round table discussions with stakeholders. The first two have already been conducted: one at the APE conference in Berlin (January), another at the APM conference in Florence (March).
Currently, a number of face to face interviews are being held in six different countries. These interviews are with the main stakeholders for the project: representatives from academic presses, research libraries, research councils and individual scholars.
In addition, an online survey is being prepared, which will be sent to a large number of scholars in several European countries, and will also be presented on OAPEN's website.

Raising awareness
Different members of the consortium have presented OAPEN at conferences, among them 'Published Word, Public Pages' (September 2008, Copenhagen), 'Rethinking the university after Bologna' (December 2008, Antwerp), the 'Open Books' panel at Academic Publishing in Europe (APE, January 2009, Berlin) and most recently as part of a session on the role of University Presses, 'Strength in Numbers', at Academic Publishing in the Mediterranean Region (APM, March 2009, Florence).
OAPEN was also present at the Frankfurt Book Fair to talk with publishers and will be present at the London Book Fair in April.

We are pleased that OAPEN was regularly mentioned in the many articles on OA publishing and e-Monographs (a selection will be listed on oapen.org), and proud to be mentioned as one of the highlights of Open Access developments in 2008 by Peter Suber.

First meeting of the Scientific Board
The OAPEN project has installed two external bodies (External stakeholder Group and Scientific Board) to ensure that the needs of scholars, publishers, funders and universities are met by the project's findings and developments. The Scientific Board of OAPEN consists of several international renowned scholars known for their expertise in publishing. Among them are scholars promoting Open Access such as Jean Claude Guédon (University of Montreal) or Gerhard Lauer (University of Göttingen), publishers and editors making electronic publishing come true like Charles Henry (Rice University Press) or Siggi Jöttkandt (Open Humanities Press), but also representatives from funders and university associations like Sarah Porter (JISC) and Sijbolt Noorda (EUA).

The first meeting constituted the Scientific Board as an active part of OAPEN. The board members will serve as a consulting and inspiring body for OAPEN during the funding period and hopefully beyond. Conclusions from the first board meeting were for instance to account for widespread conservative publishing attitudes among HSS scholars and at the same time the need to promote new modes of publishing such as more fluid media forms. The board members emphasised the importance of publisher-organised quality control and Open Access experiments for the mentioned fields and encouraged the project partners to conduct OAPEN as planned.
For further information on scientific information please contact bschmidt@sub.uni-goettingen.de

Making Connections

Connecting with other European projects
OAPEN will integrate with existing and future European projects in the area of scholarly communication and digital content. OAPEN's partners are already represented in a number of projects. Georg-August Universität Göttingen and University of Amsterdam are both involved in DRIVER II, the project to further develop and expand the pan-European infrastructure for digital repositories. Georg-August Universität Göttingen is also a member of PEER, the collaborative project investigating the effects of so-called Green Open Access. Amsterdam University Press will take part in Europeana Connect, the project to build services around Europeana, the European digital library, museum and archive.

Engaging stakeholders
In order to create a sustainable approach to OA monograph publishing OAPEN will fully engage stakeholders in scholarly communication in the publication process. The External Stakeholder Group (ESG) has been created as a platform for discussion of the principles behind the Open Access publication model for books in HSS. The first meeting of the ESG will be held on June 12 in Amsterdam.

Building a Network
OAPEN aims to increase European collaboration through its network and encourages stakeholders in Scholarly communication, such as academic publishers, libraries, research councils and their representatives, to become network partners. Partners will be informed about the project and its results, involved in the development of models and standards, and invited to take part in discussions. At a later stage, partners will be able to use OAPEN's online publication platform to create and maintain e-books, and they will be invited to provide peer reviewed books for inclusion in OAPEN's Open Access library. Our goal is to create the largest collection of current Open Access publications in Humanities and Social Sciences by including titles from many scholarly publishers across Europe.

Since the start of the project, the network has grown steadily and includes academic institutions and publishers from various countries. We are pleased with the interest from both distinguished commercial publishers such as Brill and Akademie Verlag and recently established OA publishers such as Open Humanities Press and Open Book Publishers.

Stakeholders wanting to join OAPEN's network can visit our website, contact one of the members of the consortium or get in touch with Eelco Ferwerda at Amsterdam University Press.

Going Forward

The OAPEN project is now fully underway, with the commencement of Work Packages concerning the Open Access publication model, the e-publication services and the online library.

Open Access publication model for monographs
A central part of the project is the development of an OA publication model. The model needs to be sustainable and adoptable by Academic publishers across Europe. It includes the development of common funding models for the publication of e-books, and therefore involves stakeholders in the Scholarly communication process. The OA publication model will result in a workflow for the production of e-books, a set of services connected to the electronic publication of books, a business model to sustain the publication process, and a framework for licensing content.

OAPEN's Infrastructure
OAPEN's infrastructure encompasses a publication platform for e-books and an online library.
The publication platform will be used to create and maintain e-books and will include tools for the standardized production of e-books. OAPEN will offer various services connected to the platform, such as marketing services (data export and alerting mechanisms), a print-on-demand service and services for digitization and conversion into XML.
The online library will be based on the existing European repository infrastructure and include a central repository, a harvester for metadata of publications deposited in external repositories, aggregation services and full text multi lingual search features.

Upcoming events
London Book Fair, April 20-21, London
E-books and E-content 2009, http://www.econtent2009.com/, May 12, London
OAPEN's External Stakeholder Group, June 12, Amsterdam

Visit us at the London Book Fair
OAPEN will be present at the London Book Fair to talk to interested publishers and other stakeholders. Please contact Eelco Ferwerda, e.ferwerda@aup.nl, to make an appointment.

OAPEN Consortium Partners

Amsterdam University Press
Georg-August Universität Göttingen
Museum Tusculanum Press
Manchester University Press
Presses Universitaires de Lyon
Firenze University Press
University of Amsterdam
Leiden University

OAPEN has gained funding from the European Commission, and will be seeking partners at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

08/10/2008

The European Commission has reached agreement with the OAPEN consortium to fund the OAPEN project with €900,000 from the eContentplus Programme. The project started in September 2008 with a kick off meeting in Göttingen. A Scientific Board has been established and an External Stakeholders Group is currently being formed.

OAPEN is a 30-month target project to develop and implement an Open Access (OA) publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). The project, which is the first of its kind, aims to achieve a sustainable European approach to improve the quantity, visibility and usability of high-quality OA content and foster the creation of new content by developing future-oriented publishing solutions, including an online library dedicated to HSS, and new business models.

OAPEN consists of seven scholarly publishers and two Universities in six European countries (see partner list below) and is coordinated by Amsterdam University Press. The partners will work closely with stakeholders, such as authors, research councils, university libraries, policy makers, and scholarly publishers. The OAPEN consortium welcomes other publishers in the Humanities and Social Sciences to join OAPEN’s network, make use of OA publications models and to expand the available OA content.

OAPEN will use the latest solutions in Open Access digital publishing, whilst maintaining traditional publishing services. It will provide editorial selection, peer-review, copy-editing and formatting, along with worldwide marketing and distribution of print-on-demand titles. Authors will retain their copyright and benefit by attracting more readers and gaining greater peer recognition.

Representatives of OAPEN will be attending the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair, from October 15th to October 19th. Interested publishers and other stakeholders can visit the OAPEN stand in Hall 8, Stand C921 or contact one of the partners.

Download the English press release

Positive evaluation European Commission for proposal Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN).

12/02/2008

The European Commission announced that the proposal from Amsterdam University Press together with five European University Presses within the eContentplus Programme, has been selected for negotiations on funding. The opening of negotiations starts in March 2008. Completion of negotiations, award decision and signature of grant agreements are expected in May 2008.

OAPEN intends to develop and implement an Open Access publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This Open Access publication model will also serve as a model in other scientific domains and improve the spread of European research results. The project aims to achieve a sustainable European approach to improve the quantity, visibility and usability of high quality academic research and foster the creation of new content by developing future-oriented publishing solutions, including an Online Library.

OAPEN addresses the needs of small to medium enterprises and not-for-profit publishers and seeks to offer solutions to both publishers and others stakeholders, such as authors, libraries, research funding bodies, and policy makers.

OAPEN will also aggregate content from other publishers in the Humanities and Social Sciences in order to expand the available Open Access content by achieving critical mass and building up the OAPEN European Digital Library.

The project is the first of its kind and, if funded, is intended to start in September 2008.

Download the English press release
Download the French press release
Download the Dutch press release

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