At InsideHigherEd, Scott Jaschik looks at a recent report issued on “University Publishing in a Digital Age” that proposes radical changes in the way publishing works in that sector. The report – from Ithaka, a nonprofit group that promotes research and strategy for colleges to reflect changing technology – is based on a detailed study of university presses, which morphed into a larger examination of the relationship between presses, libraries and their universities.
The bottom line of the Ithaka report suggests that university presses focus less on the book form and consider a major collaborative effort to assume many of the technological and marketing functions that most presses cannot afford, and that universities be more strategic about the relationship of presses to broader institutional goals. “We’re trying to look at the whole ecosystem,” said Laura Brown, a lead author of the report and a consultant who was formerly president of Oxford University Press USA, “and it was instructive to see how much dysfunction is there.”
Brown said that the idea is not to eliminate the book, but to recognize that not many people are reading monographs, period – and that a new digital format could change that and add readers for the work and revenue for presses. She suggested that monographs might be formatted for use in parts – searchable online. All of the people who would never buy the book, but might find a chapter or even a passage useful, now become potential readers, she said. Of course, that is easier said than done, but the report at least is a good first step in possibly implementing change down the line.