|
Increasing numbers of departments and academics are switching on to the idea of electronic publishing at ANU, attracted by the possibilities of a global audience for their work.
|
|
|
|
The E Press team: Duncan Beard, Teresa Prowse, and Lorena Kanellopoulos. |
More than 300,000 published titles have been downloaded from ANU E Press this year already, including works that had fallen out of print but are now proving popular in Print on Demand (PoD) format.
“We exist to get scholarship out there to people,” Electronic Publishing Coordinator Lorena Kanellopoulos said. “If you want to download and print a copy of one of our books for free, you can. To print it at home or at work will cost you about the same amount as it would to order one of our professionally produced Print on Demand books. It won’t look as good, but it’s an option. We’re about making sure that scholarship is accessible to a global readership.”
In addition to original scholarly works and biographies, ANU E Press publishes theses, books adapted from theses, and reprints of out-of-print titles. Works are available in a free electronic format and can also be ordered in hardcopy via PoD for a fee.
“E Press is the only academic e-publisher in Australia that provides such variety,” Mrs Kanellopoulos said. “There are others around, but they tend to be focus on journals, and don’t provide publications for free.”
The quality of E Press titles is maintained through a rigorous internal and external peer review process. This stringent quality control was a contributing factor in the press becoming the first electronic publisher in Australia to be recognised by the Department of Education, Science and Training for academics to earn points under the Higher Education Research Data Collection scheme.
E Press also produces titles for other publishing houses, including the Asia Pacific Press and the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at ANU. The electronic publisher currently works with a number of editorial boards, which control the publication-vetting and peer-review processes at a College or departmental level. Mrs Kanellipoulos said E Press is keen to see more editorial boards established at ANU.
This year E Press has already published 14 titles, and plans to produce another 15 before 2007. Information Editor Duncan Beard said this level of productivity is well above that of traditional small academic publishers, and is made possible by an efficient production process.
“It’s a lean model which pares everything back,” Mr Beard said. “We’re a small team, and the PoD system means we can be much more flexible and agile than the traditional print-based publishing firms. In the traditional approach, you have to factor in the costs and delays for printing, storage and delivery. This doesn’t apply in the E Press model, where it’s possible to order the production of one book at a time.”
This flexible approach to publishing has provided a second lease of life for some out of print titles. Since it was recently reprinted by E Press, The Spanish Lake by former ANU academic Oskar Spate has been downloaded over 38,000 times this year alone in its English and Spanish formats.
But E Press is also a powerful distribution tool for new publications. CAEPR Director Professor Jon Altman said publishing with the press has led to a major growth in the number of their publications being downloaded in total, from just under 14,500 in 2005 to more than 26,000 in 2006.
“We need speed in publication because we address topical policy issues of national significance,” Professor Altman said. “We have found ANU E Press enormously accommodating and the results in terms of downloads have been outstanding; our website is a good benchmark for us and ANU E Press has surpassed its performance.”
For more information about establishing an editorial board or publishing with ANU E Press: http://epress.anu.edu.au/
^^
|
