LJ Talks to Niko Pfund

by Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 2/6/2007

At ALA Midwinter in Seattle, Oxford University Press (OUP) announced that it would put almost all of its scholarly monographs on the web through its ambitious Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) program. At a time when Google is roiling the marketplace with its library scan plan, prompting lawsuits and forcing publishers and authors into sometimes uncomfortable choices, OSO represents a significant strategic investment by OUP. LJ caught up with OUP vice president and publisher Niko Pfund to discuss OSO, and the press’s forward-thinking philosophy.

Your press release at ALA Midwinter said OUP will be putting almost all of its monographs into OSO, a major expansion. Can you give us some sense of what’s gone into OSO in terms of time, money, etc?

Hundreds of hours certainly, and likely thousands of hours when you count the effort being invested in the expansion by the authors of the books going in. Money, you ask? C’mon now, you know I’m not telling you that! How’s “lots?” Does “lots” work for you? We’re including all new scholarly monographs in nine core disciplines: Math, Physics, Biology, Psychology, Business/Management, History, Literature, Classics, and Linguistics. In addition to the four existing modules in Economics, Politics, Religion, Philosophy, this in effect doubles the number of new titles we’re putting into OSO to approximately 400-450 new books a year. Also, we’re going back and digitizing about 350 recently published monographs across the new disciplines for inclusion.

Any plans to expand OSO to include any trade or academic trade titles?

One of the animating principles behind OSO is to maximize exposure for our books. So, yes, if we think that inclusion of a specific academic trade or trade title in OSO would make for a good fit, we’d include it. But, as you know, inclusion—or exclusion—can depend on a host of factors, from third-party rights complications to a resistant author, of which there have been surprisingly few, actually.

How have your authors reacted to OSO?

On the whole, I’d say 90-95 percent of authors are initially positive, with about 20-25 percent having substantive questions that involve a few rounds of conversation. Only a very few authors have said they don’t want to be included in OSO. In fact, it’s been positively inspirational to see how many are willing to put in extra work on drafting abstracts and keyword lists to ensure not only that their work is included but well-represented. I scarcely need to tell you that neither academic authors nor academic publishers are in it for the bling. If dissemination and influence is our primary currency, then having books available via OSO, or via netLibrary, Google, Print on Demand, or included in Amazon’s Search Inside the Book and digital download programs means that more people can access your works in more ways from more places than ever before. And that does translate to dollars.

Your press release notes a hefty 450 percent jump in usage of OSO. Has this affected traditional book sales?

It’s hard to say. We’ve certainly seen no downturn in monograph sales since launching OSO but the recovery of the library market probably plays a larger role here than anything else. I would venture that some titles, especially deep backlist titles, have seen a modest uptick in print sales since they went live in OSO but that’s a bit speculative since there are simply too many factors at play here. I think we’re still a long, long way away from the point where print sales will not constitute the main source of author income. But one of the great benefits for academic authors is, as I said, that their work is now available to more people, in more formats, than ever before. That is, assuming they’ve published with presses that have been acting on the same philosophy of “format agnosticism” as OUP. And, yes, that’s an explicit plug for Oxford, but because I think we deserve it in this instance.

“Format agnosticism,” meaning what exactly?

As I’m sure you hear all the time at LJ, librarians speak of wanting content free of format discrimination, in other words, in print, online, etc. The book format as a vehicle of transmission is undoubtedly fragmenting, and there are opportunities—for authors, for readers, for publishers—in that fragmentation. But the book is not dying. We’re not seeing the end of the book, but we are seeing the galloping diversification of how its message can be conveyed. Thankfully, we’ve come out of the era of either/or speculation about the book’s future. As we morph from book publishers to multi-format publishers, our basic contributions as providers and creators of content remains the same, even as the methods and tactics we employ to make them change. We’re in the early stages of a long-term, multi-generational transition. We think OSO will play a part in that transition in certain disciplines. But simply because we are being deprived of the luxurious simplicity of merely publishing printed books and having to think about a whole mess of other things, that doesn’t mean that the book doesn’t continue to be a great technology, too.

Have you seen evidence that this multi-format effort is increasing access to and perhaps citations to OUP works?

Our user statistics are heartening, suggesting steadily increasing usage at the growing number of institutions subscribing to OSO. And many of these institutions do not have our print books, so this represents a clear and tangible expansion of our readership. It’s hard to say about citations, since authors will presumably cite a book but not directly link the citation to the book’s presence in OSO. What excites me about the promise of OSO and, even more generally, of the digital library, is that we have the opportunity to combine our mission as scholarly and cultural institutions with our responsibilities as disciplined agents of commerce. The New York Times Sunday Magazine had this great quote a few months ago that I cut out and stuck on my door: “Some of us have thousands of books at home, can walk to wonderful big-box bookstores and well-stocked libraries and can get amazon.com to deliver next day. The most dramatic effect of digital libraries will be not on us—the well-booked—but on the billions of people world-wide who are underserved by paper books.”

I have to say, I’m a little surprised that a university press can drive such an intensive effort, as opposed to a larger, private company with more cash and resources.

I see OUP as perfectly positioned to work with scholars and libraries as we all make our way through this transition. OUP is big enough but not too big. We have the infrastructure and the working relationships within the industry to push these changes forward. We have to be financially disciplined, but we exist very much within the ecosystem of the academy and are ultimately beholden to professors and scholars. Even with the daily pressure of having to do our old jobs better while also figuring out what forms this new world is going to take, it’s a tremendously exciting time. I’m propelled by a great curiosity as to how our world will look in 10, 15, 20 years as well as a determination that we—both the university press world in general and Oxford specifically—will play a significant role in determining that.