Just a couple of remarks on this track. I fully agree with Jean-Claude
Guedon's views on the issue (he definitely has the long view there). I will
not repeat his points.
Mandating OA for books might be more complicated than for articles, but for
essentially psychological reasons not economic ones (any experience in a
university press shows that printing only pays for itself not for the MAKING
of the book. It is high time that publications costs be simply integrated in
research costs, just as plane tickets.). Indeed the book retains an aura
which goes much beyond its (superbe) ergonomy. And it is its ergonomy which
will make it viable for a long time to come (at least I guess). As printing
hundreds of pages and binding them oneself is totally absurd if one can find
the book at a reasonable price (and often difficult when visuals are
concerned), paper-cum-digital publication is not only viable but will become
the norm.
Indeed the OAness of books is just as important as that of articles for the
very reason that OA is not simply a means of allowing the (human) reading of
content but is the sine-qua-non for any kind of "hyper/meta-research"
whether you call it Web 2.0 or data mining or else which is already the
present of research.
This is what the EU as very well understood when it lauched E-Content Plus.
I am glad to announce that OAPEN consortium (Amsterdam UP, Firenze UP,
Göttingen UP, Museum Tusculanum Press of Copenhagen, and Presses
Universitaires de Lyon) has won a call for project in E-Content plus whose
aim is to develop a model (economic model, workflow) as well as tools for
the publication of digital/printed/printed-on-demand monographs in the
social and human sciences.
JK
--
Jean Kempf
Presses universitaires de Lyon
86, rue Pasteur
F-69365 Lyon Cedex 07
France
http://presses.univ-lyon2.fr/
Université Lumičre Lyon 2 is a signatory the Berlin Declaration
Received on Wed Jan 23 2008 - 21:24:26 GMT