Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
within universities. Hahn (2008) noted in a survey of the 123 members of
the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) that the majority were 'either
producing publications or developing publishing services'.
The Association of American Universities (AAU), the ARL, the
Coalition for Networked Information and the National Association of
State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges issued a collective call for
action in early 2009 that urged universities to become leaders in
spreading research and scholarship (AAU et al., 2009): 'Digital technol-
ogies have opened the door to a host of new possibilities for sharing
knowledge and generated entirely new forms of content that must be
made broadly available. This shift demands that universities take on a
much more active role in ensuring dissemination of the knowledge pro-
duced by their institutions - both now and in the future' (Lynch, 2009).
The main drawbacks in terms of immediate change are the
conservative and rigid concepts of judging excellence for tenure and
promotion that are embodied by the topic. Another Ithaka report has
highlighted the problems between the potential of new models of
scholarly communication and the fact that 'anything that doesn't look
like a traditional work of scholarship is not a scholarly work; thus the
immutability of traditional publishing models becomes axiomatic'
(Maron and Smith, 2008). The topic is still seen as the metric par
excellence for the humanities and parts of the social sciences in the
international research assessment exercises.
We thus are confronted by a situation in which the mechanisms for
the digital distribution of academic monograph are increasing, yet
academic conservatism and research evaluation standards currently
negate a variety of forms of e-production. E-books, in particular, have
been viewed as less 'academic' than their print counterparts, yet they
experience the same peer-review processes and can be available just as
easily as print, through POD outlets.
A University College London (2009) survey on the role and future of
the monograph in the arts and humanities notes, in the words of one inter-
viewee, that 'monographs are like the main course of a meal, journal
articles and other scholarly communication are like tapas and the mono-
graph represents the “gold standard” '. The physical appearance of the
monograph, however, is not enough to constitute the intellectual meal.
Effective distribution of the content will ensure that all get their just
desserts.
