Project Will Share Scholarship Freely, More Broadly
Washington DC and New York NY — The Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and Association of American University Presses (AAUP) are implementing a new initiative to advance the wide dissemination of scholarship by humanities and humanistic social sciences faculty members by publishing free, open access, digital editions of peer-reviewed and professionally edited monographs.
The AAU/ARL/AAUP Open Access Monograph Publishing Initiative, expected to launch this spring, will benefit scholars, the public, universities, libraries, and presses in several ways:
• Open access, digital monographs will make new research freely available online, thereby increasing the presence of humanities and social science scholarship on the web and opening up this content to more readers, putting it into the venue where many scholars are working.
• Publishing costs will be met by university-funded grants and other revenue sources. These publication grants will enable open access publishing and will send a strong signal to humanities and social sciences faculties that universities value and wish to promote their scholarship.
• The expanded dissemination of scholarship within and beyond the academy advances the core mission of universities to create and transmit new knowledge for public benefit.
• This initiative may enable the incorporation into digital monographs of new capacities, such as the integration of multimedia with text and the application of annotation and commenting tools, and can encourage the development of innovative forms of digital scholarship.
The funding model based on publication grants will allow presses to publish important, high-quality scholarship freely accessible to readers and independent of market constraints. The universities and colleges directly participating in this initiative will incorporate three components into their digital monograph publishing projects: provide a baseline university publishing grant of $15,000 to support the publication of an open access, digital monograph of 90,000 words or less (with additional funding for works of greater length or complexity to be negotiated by the author, institution, and publisher); set a target of awarding at least three publishing grants per year; and commit to participating in this initiative for five years.
To date, the following 12 institutions have committed to participate in this initiative.
(See institutional list expanded to include individual representatives.)
- Emory University
- Indiana University Bloomington
- Michigan State University
- New York University
- The Ohio State University
- Penn State University
- University of California, Davis
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Michigan
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities
- Virginia Tech
AAUP is actively compiling a list of member publishers that are currently ready to accept grants under the terms of this initiative, 57 publishers as of March 16, 2017. This list is expected to grow.
This initiative is the result of extensive planning conducted by a joint AAU/ARL task force, later joined by AAUP and then by interested, invited institutions. View a roster of the AAU/ARL/AAUP Open Access Monograph Publishing Initiative Task Force members guiding this project.
For more information, contact Jessica Sebeok at jessica.sebeok@aau.edu, Elliott Shore at elliott@arl.org, or Peter Berkery at pberkery@aaupnet.org.
About the Association of American Universities
Founded in 1900, the Association of American Universities (AAU) comprises 62 distinguished institutions that continually advance society through education, research, and discovery. Our universities earn the majority of competitively awarded federal funding for academic research, are improving human life and wellbeing through research, and are educating tomorrow’s visionary leaders and global citizens. AAU members collectively help shape policy for higher education, science, and innovation; promote best practices in undergraduate and graduate education; and strengthen the contributions of research universities to society.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations.
About the Association of American University Presses
The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) is an organization of over 140 international nonprofit scholarly publishers. Since 1937, AAUP advances the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association holds integrity, diversity, stewardship, and intellectual freedom as core values. AAUP members are active across many scholarly disciplines, including the humanities, arts, and sciences, publish significant regional and literary work, and are innovators in the world of digital publishing.