Re: Book Refereeing (fwd)

[Jean-Claude Guedon <jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

Although I do not think that monograph royalties matter so much 
to authors as Stevan seems to believe, I agree that imposing a 
mandate on authors of monographs would be a bit difficult at this 
time in history. However, when books are subsidized, as they are 
in Canada by the ASPP (about 1.5 million dollars per year, $8,000 
per accepted title), I believe that requiring an electronic 
version to be placed in Open Access is reasonable. It is all the 
more reasonable that, from what I have learnt, Yale U. Press does 
exactly this with $10,000 subsidies from a foundation. Also, ANU 
in Australia and HSRC in South Africa both provide free books in 
electronic format and we all read Jean Kempf's announcement 
yesterday in American Scientist about OApen in Europe.

I also believe that when a subsidized, peer-reviewed, monograph 
goes out of print, with no prospect of second editions, it should 
be digitized and made OA. This does not mean a change of 
ownership, only a change of licensing. In fact, doing so would 
allow university presses to gauge the demand for these books and 
it might warrant the development of a print-on-demand industry 
for those who want paper. Of course, the rapid progress of e-ink 
and light-reflected interfaces may well announce the end of paper 
altogether and make us shift radically into really functuional 
e-documents. The page, after all, has been the line of defence of 
print, as J.C. R. Licklider saw it as early as 1965 in his 
Libraries of the Future.

Best,

jc