Re: Business models for U. presses

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

I share Joe's assessment of this report, which is one of the best 
ever issued by the AAUP. Among its valuable contributions are its 
clarification of the kinds of "value added" that publishers bring 
to the scholarly communication process (still not well understood 
by many librarians, as comments on this and other listservs have 
revealed), its analysis of how the OA approaches of two 
non-profit presses at RAND and the National Academies are unqie 
in ways that make their direct application at most university 
presses problematic or at least not straightforward, and the 
emphasis on the need for greater collaboration than ever among 
all the participants in the scholarly communication ecosystem if 
the system is to survive and flourish in the future. Also, if you 
ever harbored the illusion that e-publishing is a whole lot 
cheaper than print publishing, this report will be a wakeup call 
for you!

Sandy Thatcher

>The AAUP has just released a report on business models on 
>university presses.  It is a very good report, which I recommend 
>to everyone involved with scholarly communications.  The report 
>can be found here:
>
>http://bit.ly/e89vfe
>
>I commented on it at the Kitchen here:
>
>http://bit.ly/gyKL9z
>
>And an article on the report by Jennifer Howard appears here:
>
>http://bit.ly/fV0pNR
>
>Joe Esposito