A recent article on Inside Higher Ed describes one person’s experience with web publishing.
Professor Douglas Amy had written a new book, Government is Good – one that, he felt, would appeal to a broader market than his previously published academic books. He had difficulty, though, in finding a mainstream publisher. So, he decided to publish the book himself on the web. (more…)
There is a debate occurring in post-secondary education circles around open access. Open access (OA) publishing provides free online access to articles that have traditionally been published in scholarly journals. With library collections budgets being stretched, and with the high cost of subscribing to scholarly publications, OA journals are well-liked by librarians and others in the academic world.
As reported by Inside Higher Ed, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) has recently come out against OA, due to fears about its financial impact. This opinion, however, does not reflect the view of all university publishers; ten directors of university presses (including the directors of the presses at the University of Calgary and Athabasca University) have issued a statement in favour of OA.
OA is something you’re going to be hearing more and more about. It is starting to come up not just in conversations between libraries and publishers, but also in conversations between faculty members and tenure committees (is publishing in a peer-reviewed OA journal equivalent to publishing in a peer-reviewed print journal?) and faculty and students (are articles from OA journals valid sources for papers?). Also, some granting agencies are starting to make OA publishing of results a condition of funding.
Where do you stand in the debate?
