Monday, July 9, 2007

"Moving beyond the print versus electronic binary in scholarly publishing"

PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2007 1:45-2:45 July 12, 2007

Blogs will be done live and initially posted errors and all. Please return after the conference dates to view edited discussions of the presentation.

Maria S. Bonn and Shana Kimball spoke about different aspects of their experiences of building a publishing model in relationship with the University Library. The Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) was formed in 2001. Maria spoke about the history that propelled the development of library publishing and Shauna spoke on the experience of practicing a Library open access publishing model

After the case history by M. Bonn was presented, S. Kimball analyzed the print versus online issue. The purpose of OA publishing is to help scholars take advantage publishing options. OA publishing is not a one size fits all. Different approaches are beneficial. The SPO is developing serial publications that are simultaneously published as print, dual format publication. The goal was to create a wide as possible distribution of the material. The SPO became an intermediate between the printer and the producer. They found that although books are free and online many readers prefer to have a print copy to work with or read for either convenience or other long term reading preferences.

The challenge of moving toward online publications is potentially one of familiarity and comfort with technology. There is a tension between the sense of prestige of a bound, print form, and the reality of a page number versus the availability of the article along with quick searches within the material that can be done. It may be that the tension between print and online publishing is more perception of feelings rather than facts.


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