The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) and Ithaka S+R have jointly released a comprehensive report titled "Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study." This study, funded by a Level I Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), delves into the impact of open digital editions on the sales of print monographs, shedding light on an evolving landscape in academic publishing.
The primary objective of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the sales performance of print monographs within the context of open digital editions. To accomplish this, data from 26 university press members of the Association were collected, encompassing a total of 976 open access (OA) titles published between 2005 and 2022. The findings provide valuable insights into the economic dynamics of scholarly book publishing in the digital age.
One of the standout revelations from the research is that print sales play a pivotal role in offsetting the costs associated with publishing such works. The study found that the median print sales revenue for these OA titles approached $6,000, with an average of nearly $8,000 when excluding outliers. This suggests that print editions continue to be a significant contributor to the sustainability of scholarly book publishing programs.
The report dives deeper into the data, examining disciplinary differences, high-sales outliers, print format preferences, and the potential for consumer ebook sales to support OA book publishing initiatives. While the study did not encompass comparable data for non-OA monographs from participants, it has made the OA-titles dataset freely accessible, providing publishers with a valuable resource to analyze their own publication lists and sales figures.
The complete report has been published by Ithaka S+R, and an anonymized dataset is available on Humanities Commons. The authors of the report include the study's co-principal investigators, John Sherer (University of North Carolina Press) and Erich van Rijn (University of California Press), along with Ithaka S+R researchers Laura Brown, Maya Dayan, and Roger Schonfeld, as well as AUPresses project staff Brenna McLaughlin.
Members of the study team will present their research findings at various conferences in the coming months, including the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association 2023 Conference on Open Scholarship on September 19 and the Virtual Charleston Conference in mid-November. During Open Access Week 2023, team members will host a public webinar on Tuesday, October 24, from 10-11 AM Eastern. Registration details for this event can be found at https://aupresses.org/resources/oa-impact-on-print-book-sales/.
This report adds valuable insights to the ongoing conversation about the evolving landscape of academic publishing, particularly the interplay between open access digital editions and print sales. It promises to guide future decisions and strategies in the realm of scholarly monograph publishing.
Click here to read the original press release.
