Free Books: Bloomsbury Publishing Launches “Radical” New Academic Imprint
Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 9/23/2008 2:14:00 PM
| Go back to the Academic Newswire for more stories |
Bloomsbury Publishing this week announced that is launching an academic imprint with a radical new open access model: all titles will be made available free of charge online, “with free downloads, for non-commercial purposes immediately upon publication, using Creative Commons licenses.” The works will also be sold as books, using an array of short-run print-on-demand (POD) services. Bloomsbury Academic will initially publish in the humanities and social sciences, releasing approximately 50 new titles by the end of 2009.
While open access scholarly journals have surged in popularity—rather uneasily for many traditional publishers, who question the sustainability of open access journals—open access academic books have lagged significantly behind. Bloomsbury’s venture is a groundbreaking, bar-raising, initiative. It is the first commercial book imprint to base its entire publish operation on an open access model.
The imprint will be led by Frances Pinter, most recently publishing director at the Soros Foundation, who will serve as Bloomsbury Academic’s publisher, and Managing Director Jonathan Glasspool. The imprint has also assembled an advisory board, which includes Lynne Brindley, CEO of the British Library, and Winston Tabb, dean of University Libraries at Johns Hopkins University.
“We’re leaping ahead by using the latest solutions in digital publishing and open access,” Pinter said in a statement. The imprint will provide editorial selection, peer-review, copy-editing, and formatting, along with marketing and distribution worldwide. For academic authors, for whom recognition is more the currency than royalties, the benefits are many: “their works can come faster to publication, because we are not hidebound by long production and promotion cycles,” Pinter said, and titles “can be searched more easily, and need never go out of print.” Of course, the big question is whether open access books will be self-sustaining. Look for more on the Bloomsbury Academic launch in upcoming issues of LJAN.
