When the Data hits the Fan!

Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, Imhotep (Imuthes), ca. 332–200 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/551786 The recent final reports for the Academic Book of the Future are a revealing, well balanced account of the current and future state of scholarly monograph publishing in the UK. One feature is the close attention given to Open Access in books ( pages 175-195 in Michael Jubb's report ) . In this blog I want to unpack the consequences of Book Processing Charges in a Gold OA environment and how they would be utterly unsustainable in a future OA mandated REF environment.

The importance of books is clear for the Arts and Humanities in the UK as indicated by approximately ¼ of all submissions to the REF in book form and in addition book chapters remain an important factor in submission. These heatmap visualisations for the Academic Book of the Future quickly illustrates the stark differences in forms of scholarly communication across UK HE.

Barnes & Noble is shutting down its Nook app store , (effective from March 15, 2016) through which it sold ebooks for its e-reader, the Nook. Unless Nook owners in the UK take action immediately then their ebooks (& films) could be lost to them. It is yet another example of how you don’t own your ebooks with DRM - you’re merely licensing the right to read them for a time. This announcement is a bit like a commercially driven virtual Fahrenheit 451 "fireman" is going to disable your eBooks in a fast digital fire.