For those of us who could not make the RUSH meeting this morning!
1289 days ago
A copy of Di Hillman's presentation ....
RUSH Meeting: Friday 13 November 2009 : discussion of ASSAF Report
I doubt whether any of us has managed to read the actual ASSAF report, but I did think that the second article distributed to everyone to read for today’s meeting does a good job of summarizing the contents of the report, so that is the one that I will focus on here.
According to this article, the ASSAF report recommends a more focused approach to the production and promotion of scholarly books published in South Africa. (These are to be differentiated from other academic books such as textbooks)
It recommends the establishment of a National Scholarly Book Publishing Forum, as well as a sustainable book publishing support system.
It further recommends that there should be more of an effort made to promote the increased use of these scholarly books in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, in order to make them more visible to the public.
The report also recommends the extension of open access publishing to the book publishing industry.
It goes on to mention some of the questions which need to be considered :
1. Whether there is any duplication of research in both forms of publishing.
2. The difference in the peer review process in both forms of publishing.
3. The difference in time delays in both forms of publishing.
4. Whether all fields of scholarly enquiry make equal use of scholarly books as a means of disseminating research.
5. Whether it would be possible to encourage publication of research in scholarly books through a different form of “weighting”, which is traditionally used to calculate research output subsidies.
6. Whether the trend of open access, if applied to the publication of scholarly books, would have similar positive effects as in the publication of scholarly journals? Would such a step actually enhance the dissemination and use of the scholarly knowledge that has traditionally appeared in print published works?
A quick Google search on the last point led me to quite a few very recent articles and blogs, some of which I quote from here:
“The rise and success of Open Access journals in scientific and biomedical fields has spread to the Humanities and Social Sciences, promising similar benefits in access and outreach for Open Access Books …most important is the increasing realization that the traditional book publishing model is no longer sustainable. A new approach is needed to ensure the publication of academic books and to improve their accessibility and dissemination.”
https://www.lib.uwo.ca/blogs/digitalscholarly/2009/10/open-access-boo.html
Finally, I would like to take a quote from an article which reports on the main findings of a new study soon to be made available OAPEN’s website: (OAPEN = Open Access Publishing in European Networks)
“Print remains important…………………” (See link below)
Thanks very much.
Di
This post has not been tagged
|
Trackback URL No trackbacks were found for this post | Comments 0 | 
|
Archives