A new project has been launched to help universities, researchers, libraries and publishers make better use of open access book publishing in humanities and the social sciences. Campus Technology brought this interesting topic to our attention in their article, “Project Working to Improve Open-Access Publishing.”
The Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) is a partnership led by Coventry University in the United Kingdom and including the University of California Santa Barbara Library, among other institutions.
The main focus of the open access movement is peer reviewed research literature. Historically, this has centered mainly on print-based academic journals. Conventional (non-open access) journals cover publishing costs through access tolls such as subscriptions, site licenses, or pay-per-view charges.
Most publishers own the rights to the articles in their journals. Anyone who wants to read the articles must pay to access them. Anyone who wants to use the articles in any way must obtain permission from the publisher and is often required to pay an additional fee.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
