Textbook Authorship

Open Access Publishing

Well, here I am, back again after a long hiatus (a long winter's nap?). Now, with lengthening days at last, I'll pick up where promised, on the topic of open access publishing. The open access movement, which began in the mid-1960s, has gathered momentum, not only in academic circles, with Harvard University recently joining MIT in offering free online access to scholarship and courses, but even to commercial publishing. With the rapid growth and acceptance of open access textbooks, for example, traditional publishers have moved either to provide hybrid online custom publishing (such as McGraw-Hill Higher Education's deal with MERLOT) or to divest themselves of their soon to be unprofitable textbook divisions altogether (such as Thomson Learning).

Surviving higher education publishers likely will remain profitable only by reducing costs through digitization and electronic delivery and by taking advantage of the tremendous growth in online advertising. (Perhaps the second edition of my book, Writing and Developing Your College Textbook, just out, will become obsolete! I think I'll start a revision of my other book, Writing and Developing College Textbook Supplements, which has chapters on creating e-texts, or maybe I'll start a new book on creating instructional content for the digital age!)

The following paragraphs come from Chapter 1 of my second edition book:

"For participants in the open access movement, however, profitability simply is not an issue. Typically, the participants are scholars, scientists, researchers, and educators with funding from grants, endowed chairs, philanthropic organizations, institutional salaries, and the like. Publishing or self-archiving in an open access journal or repository is already paid for--that is, paying the bills does not depend on publishing revenues but on attracting funding from other sources."

"Research has hinted that the chief attraction of open access for academics (aside from the philosophical) is 1) the easy searchability of content through keywords and metatags, 2) the far greater number of “hits” one gets than from readership through library patronage or paid journal subscriptions, and 3) the resulting increase in citations, which boosts visibility, credibility, and standing in the grant-getting world as well as with one’s academic department, tenure committee, or institution. Scholarship criteria for promotion and tenure will have to change to reflect the new publishing model of open access."

"Other new publishing models include blogs—chronological personal writings, including researchers’ field notes; wikis—collaborative web sites that anyone can edit; and crowdsourcing—online publishing of content to which readers are invited to contribute. For better or worse, some social science researchers already are using crowdsourcing as a way to collect qualitative data. For a perspective on the Open Education Resource movement in higher education, explore the database and pages at oedb.org/, especially oedb.org/library/features/80-oer-tools."

Social bookmarking--saving bookmarks to a public web site and tagging them with keywords to share--is another new model that extends to academic publishing (see, for example, de.lirio.us and citeulike). That revered catchphrase in education--"Let us establish learning communities"--is finally taking on real meaning! Meanwhile, is anyone else besides me starting to feel panicky about keeping up with all these changes?

Labels: custom publishing, digitization, open access publishing, open access textbooks, open education

posted by Mary Ellen Lepionka @ 12:44 PM