JISC Collections is embarking on a new project called OAPEN-UK to explore the issues impacting the publishing of scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences. Funded by JISC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the project seeks to take a collaborative and real time approach to addressing the challenges, risks and potential opportunities of unfettered online access to scholarly monographs.
Palgrave Macmillan, Taylor & Francis, Berg Publishers, Liverpool University Press and University Wales Press are also project partners. Each has submitted pairs of similar monographs for the project pilot. With one title in each pair randomly assigned to either the experimental group (available through open access) or the control group (available through the publishers' standard routes to market) the pilot will, over the next three years, gather and compare sales and usage data for each group. The resulting data is expected to provide an invaluable evidence base for the use of monographs under contrasting modes of access.
Planned further activities include annual benchmarking surveys, focus groups, interviews, and surveys with research funders, authors, publishers, libraries and researchers. These will supposedly allow investigation into whether an open access model for scholarly monographs could take hold in the minds of humanities and social sciences scholars; what funding policies and technical processes would need be developed to support an open access model; and what the impacts of an open access model would be on key stakeholders.
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