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Research in scholarly communication practices indicates that in the humanities the publication of research in a book format is particularly important not only as a means of scholarly communication, but also for professional development, since writing a monograph is usually a prerequisite for professional development in the academic ladder in the humanities. On the other hand, in natural and medical sciences scholarly communication is mostly practiced through publication in journals.

In recent years, with the electronic medium gradually becoming a norm in scholarly communication, especially in the sciences, electronic journals dominate scholarly communication in all disciplines. The book, possibly as a feature of the less technologically advanced humanities, is not yet very popular in its electronic form.  However, the increasing significance of digital scholarly communications as well as financial reasons, gradually lead to the adoption of the e-book, and indeed open access books, in the humanities.  Studies in Europe and the U.S.A. show a steady decline in print books. This means that it is hard for young scholars to publish their research in a book format with publishers who are respected in their field. Thus, it happens that research that should be published in a book format does not get published in this way.  Open access monograph publishing affords, in the long term, saving of economic resources, and allows for books intended for specialized audiences to continue to be published augmented with multimedia material and presented in ways that are not possible in a print book.

University presses, often in collaboration with research libraries and/or computing centers are swiftly moving towards open access book publishing. Read, for example, the interesting case of www.digitalculturebooks.org, a collaboration between University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library. More collaborations can be found in the webpage of the Association of American University Presses.

In Europe, the project Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN), a collaboration between universities, university presses and other institutions, experiments with the creation of open access books for social sciences and humanities. Its goal is to contribute to the creation of tools and services connected to a publishing infrastructure, to the creation of common standards of operation and business models, as well as a portal for access to books by institutions participating in the project. The National Documentation Centre participates in the OAPEN network.

Useful Links

American Association of University Presses, Electronic Publishing at university Presses  

Open Access Publishing for European Networks (OAPEN)

Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)

Useful Texts

Conference Proceedings: The Specialized Scholarly Monograph in Crisis: Or How Can I Get Tenure If You Won't Publish My Book?, 11-12 September 1997, http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/specscholmono/papers.shtml , Association of Research Libraries.

Communicating Knowledge: How and Why UK Researcher Publish and Disseminate Their Findings, A Research Information Network (RIN) Report, September 2009, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/communicatingknowledgereport.pdf

Cronin, B and La Barre, K (2004) Mickey Mouse and Milton: book publishing in the humanities. Learned Publishing, 17 (2), 1 April, pp. 85-98(14)

Crow, R. ‘University-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues', SPARC, January 2009, http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/pub_partnerships_v1.pdf

Digital Monographs in the Humanities and the Social Sciences: Report on User Needs , OAPEN, January 2010

Greco, A. N. and Wharton, R. M. 2008. ‘Should University Presses Adopt an Open Access (Electronic Publishing) Bussiness Model For All of Their Scholarly Books?' , Proceedings ELPUB 2008 Conference on Electronic Publishing- Toronto-Canada-June 2008, 149-164 http://elpub.scix.net/data/works/att/149_elpub2008.content.pdf

Griffiths, R. and Rascoff, M. 2005. The Evolving Environment for Scholarly Monographs, Ithaka 2005, Washington, D.C. http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/strategy/Environment%20for%20digital%20monograph%20publishing%20and%20distribution.pdf

Steele, C. 2008. "Scholarly Monograph Publishing in the 21st Century: The Future More Than Ever Should Be an Open Book." Journal of Electronic Publishing 11, no. 2, 2008 http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0011.201.

J. Willinsky, ‘Toward the Design of an Open Monograph Press', in Journal of Electronic Publishing, 12, 2009 200 http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0012.103.