University Times

Open access publishing has been in the limelight as recent developments have encouraged more free publication of scholarly literature.

This is the second in an occasional series on the impact of the digital age on academic publishing.

Among the digital publishing partnerships on the rise in scholarly circles are those between libraries and university presses.

A 2007 survey by the Association of Research Libraries showed that 38 percent of the 80 university libraries surveyed had some kind of joint project with a press; while 31 percent did not, another 31 percent were exploring such partnerships.

The collaborations don’t necessarily come easily, thanks to the partners’ funding models which tend to be diametrically opposite. Campus libraries are funded up front through university budgets; presses may be subsidized by their institutions, but they’re typically expected to raise a majority of their budgets through book sales.

“When you start talking about giving stuff away for free, presses don’t understand how that’s going to work,” said University Library System director and Hillman librarian Rush G. Miller.

The University of Pittsburgh Press has overcome such qualms and in December 2007 partnered with ULS to launch digital versions of 39 titles (27 of which were out of print) from the Press’s Latin American series at http://digital.library.pitt.edu/p/pittpress/.

ULS Digital Research Library coordinator Ed Galloway, who worked with the Press to digitize the titles, said publishers feared that if print materials were available for free online, sales would drop. Those fears appear to be unfounded, Galloway said, noting that offering readers a sample (such as Amazon.com’s “search inside” feature) or offering the entire work online can whet a reader’s appetite.

Making books available online can prompt a reader to decide “I really need this book” and buy it, he said.

Anecdotal reports from other presses show books that are available online may be used more frequently in college classes, thereby boosting sales. Professors use the online version as a virtual review copy, Press director Cynthia Miller explained.

Another advantage is that placing material into an open access digital archive broadens access, especially outside the United States, where distribution historically has been difficult, she said.

“Getting it in open access gets it known,” said Rush Miller.

Indeed, ULS is finding that people are logging onto the Press’s digital editions site from all over the world. For example in March, ULS records show that 239 users of computers registered in 47 different countries as far flung as Morocco, Malaysia and Moldova checked out the Press’s digital editions site, viewing a total of 6,000 pages.

The digital editions pages allow users to search by keyword, giving the searched-for term in context, including the page and section of the book in which the term is found. Visitors can view the books page by page, and can print a single page at a time.

But they can’t download the entire book, at least not very easily. “More power to you,” said Cynthia Miller bemusedly for anyone who would prefer to take the time and effort to print an entire book page by page rather than simply buy it for about $20.

The constraint of printing just one page at a time is due to the technology rather than a deliberate decision, Galloway said. “That’s just the way the system works.” He said the constraint helped to quell any qualms about a negative impact on book sales.

Conveniently, for the titles that are in print, users can click to reach the Press page where the books can be purchased. Users of out-of-print books are directed to the page that outlines usage rights.

Cynthia Miller said about 18 or 20 other presses are digitizing books and that their representatives are keeping in contact to compare notes. They also may organize a group meeting with their librarian partners to more formally discuss the impact.

It’s too early to gauge the effect of open access on the Press’s print sales, Cynthia Miller said — that could take a year or two. But so far she’s seen no adverse impact. “I’m going to be extremely surprised if it affects our sales,” she said.

The decision to launch the digital editions with the Press’s Latin American series “seemed very obvious,” Cynthia Miller said, noting that the choice played to the strengths of University’s Latin American program as well as the library’s renowned Latin American holdings.

Additionally, the content was something she thought would be attractive to scholars in Europe and Latin America.

In choosing the titles, the Press began with the low-hanging fruit — books to which it could easily clear the rights.

The rise of digital media has created situations never dreamed of when copyright laws initially were put into place. The Press now secures electronic rights to everything it publishes, but that’s typically not the case for backlist titles, which means the copyright holder must give permission in order for the work to be included online in digital form.

Galloway said ULS wants to be sure they have the right to digitize material, either by ensuring the proper rights have been secured or that the material is in the public domain.

Cynthia Miller said typically it’s no problem to obtain the rights from individual scholars. Anthologies are more difficult, she said, noting that each of the individual authors and publishers of the works contained in the anthology must be contacted — a difficult task when a book was new, but made even tougher by the passage of time.

She said that although most of the Press’s backlist titles eventually will be digitized, those with too many authors or authors who can’t be located likely will not.

The rights to images also must be secured, which is a challenge for books in which photos are a key part of the content — such as art or architecture publications. Understandably, museums and others who hold rights to such images often are reluctant to release the artwork online, but there are solutions that would allow an image to appear without making it reproducible — posting it in a low-resolution format or with a watermark, for instance.

The Press plans next to digitize some 200-300 out-of-print books from the list of scholarly titles for which it has the rights. Future additions to the digital editions web page will be organized by series, Galloway said, noting that the site was designed to be easily expandable to accommodate other collections in addition to the Latin American series.

Cynthia Miller said that digitally publishing backlist titles is a useful bridge to acclimating professors to books in digital form. She compares the rapidly developing possibilities in digital publishing to the early days of computers arriving in offices. Initially, computers were purchased to accomplish a handful of functions. Today that list has expanded in ways unimaginable at the outset. “We’re now at the stage of ‘what else could you do with it?’” she said.

The next big thing, she said, are works that are “born digital and print, versus born print and turned digital.” What she sees as most exciting is creating publications designed specifically to be digital, rather than merely migrating print works online.

With a little thought, Cynthia Miller noted, it’s easy to see the value in releasing books from the constraints of print. “You couldn’t bind an 1,800-page book,” she said, but could easily put an equivalent amount of electronic data into a digital publication. Art, music and video clips can be added and links to related information included. And digital books are easily expanded and updated, she said.

The advent of digital technology hasn’t eliminated the market for print books, but has added some new twists. Among those Cynthia Miller sees value in exploring are print-on-demand options, noting that Press books aren’t a good fit with the big booksellers whose goals are volume sales. Having alternative distribution systems to make print books available on demand to those who want to buy them carries the advantages of eliminating shipping expenses, reducing paperwork and cutting waste — there’s no killing trees to make unwanted copies.

Print-on-demand “Espresso Book Machines” are being marketed to bookstores and libraries to allow users to choose a book title and have it printed and bound while they wait. Cynthia Miller noted that such options eliminate the sales and paperwork issues that become cumbersome when only a few people are interested in buying a specific title.

Still, she said, university presses are concerned about change. The question is whether they should be more afraid of change or of not changing, she said. “The technology’s going to move forward with or without us.”

Put simply, adapting to the technology aligns with the Press’s purpose, she said.

“Our mandate is to disseminate scholarship. We’re just adding a digital component.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow