RLUK Warwick Members' Meeting 2015 The Academic Book of the Future, Samantha Rayner, UCL

1. Dr Samantha J. Rayner
University College London
@samartha @AcBookFuture
#AcBookFuture
Project Progress
RLUK Members Meeting
November 20th 2015

2. • AHRC/BL collaboration
• Call launched by AHRC Feb 2014
• Project begins Oct 2014
Project team:
 Samantha Rayner, Nick Canty & Rebecca Lyons (UCL),
 Simon Tanner & Marilyn Deegan (KCL)
 Michael Jubb as key consultant
Context of Project
#AcBookFuture

3. Project Structure
Core Management GroupAdvisory Board
Stakeholders
Partners
Community Coalition
Strategy Board
Advisory Board Chair:
Professor Kathryn Sutherland
(Professor of Bibliography and Textual
Criticism, Oxford University)
Strategy Board Chair:
Anne Jarvis
(Cambridge University Librarian)

4. Starting Point
#AcBookFuture
To examine the roles and purposes of academic books to serve
scholarship and wider learning
To examine and analyse the dynamics of academic book
production, curation, and use
To investigate and assess the opportunities and challenges
associated with technological developments
( v i a 2 p h a s e s o f a c t i v i t y )
https://academicbookfuture.wordpress.com/
“What do scholars want?” We all want our cultural record to be comprehensive,
stable, and accessible. And we all want to be able to augment that record with
our own contributions.
Jerome McGann, Sustainability: the Elephant in the Room.
Paper for the 2010 Conference, Digital Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come.

5. Aims of the Project
“It is expected that this project will have a significant
impact on a wide range of stakeholders in research,
library and publishing communities and generate new
evidence and dialogue that will inform policy and
national approaches to this important area of scholarly
communications.”
- AHRC Press Release, 19th August 2014

6. In other words…
This project facilitates conversation with and between all
stakeholders in the academic book:
- Academics
- Publishers
- Learned Societies
- Librarians
- Booksellers
- Policy-makers
To interrogate and reflect current and emerging issues
around the academic book and its contexts.

7. So far…
The Project has engaged with:
• 22 publishers
• 12 libraries
• 40 academic institutions
• 3 bookselling chains
• 24 organisations and societies
• Over 200 individual collaborators

8. So far…
The Project Team has also:
• attended over 30 events
• given over 20 talks
• helped facilitate over 60 events and mini-projects
• published 25 blog posts, with an article and collection of
essays published this month
Project activity has extended across several countries, including:
• UK, Japan, USA, Canada, Australia, Spain
• Italy, Germany, Sudan, The Netherlands, Iceland, India

9. Examples and
Highlights
• University of Nottingham -SOFT Project Sprinting to the Open
FuTure
• University of Lincoln - [im]Possible Constellations: Publishing
in the digital age
• Katharine Reeve, Bath Spa Uni – Editors in Academic
Publishing
• International Arthurian Society – Iconic Books
• Anthony Watkinson – The Academic Book in North America
• Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities –
Training Camp – Peer Review
• New University Presses – Conference, March 2015
• The Future of Academic Bookselling – Conference, April 2015

10. Knowledge Unlatched
• A collaborative, award winning initiative between
global library community and publishers to
develop a sustainable route to OA for books
• Opportunity to make OA monographs a reality
• Participation costs less than purchasing
hardbacks or ebooks
• A space to learn together

11. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS REDUX
University Presses Conference
Hosted by Liverpool University Press | 16-17 March 2016 | University of Liverpool
Alison Mudditt
Director, University of
California Press
Prof. Mark Llewellyn
Director of Research, Arts and
Humanities Research Council
Dr. Steven Hill
Head of Research Policy,
Higher Education Funding
Council for England
Alison Shaw
Director, Policy Press at the
University of Bristol
Marike Schipper
Director, Leuven University
Press
Dr. Samantha Rayner
UCL, Principal Investigator,
Academic Book of the Future
Charles Watkinson
Director, University of
Michigan Press
Eelco Ferwerda
Director, OAPEN
Peter Berkery
Executive Director,
Association of American
University Presses

12. Investigating the
REF2014
#AcBookFuture
REF 2014 submissions provides a rich data set as a means of
learning more about the academic books created and deemed
worthy of submission in the last REF cycle (2009-2014).
Focus = Main Panel D for Arts and Humanities.
Within this Panel the data can be investigated by Unit of
Assessment Subject Area and by Research Output Type.
Likely outcomes:
Allow an identification of who are the publishers of the book
submissions
Other possibilities:- author gender, book format/length etc,
books per submitting institution, open access books
Results may stimulate discourse
Caveats abound...

13. REF 2014: Looking at Unit of Assessment 30: History
 1657 Books in the following output types
 Authored Books (1320),
 Edited Books (290) and
 Scholarly Editions (47)
 295 unique Publishers found
 Top 10 most used Publishers
= 930 books or 56%
 258 Publishers (87%) had 5 or fewer
books submitted
 171 Publishers (57%) had one book
submitted – mostly non-UK
 761 books submitted (46%) were from
a University Press.
 Outside the top 5 these were
mostly non-UK publishers.
Initial draft data – subject to change © Simon Tanner, 2015
Publishers with >10 books submitted
213 Oxford University Press
162 Cambridge University Press
143 Palgrave Macmillan
98 Manchester University Press
74 Ashgate
70 Routledge
52 Boydell & Brewer
51 Yale University Press
40 Brill Academic Publishers
27 Continuum International Publishing
27 Edinburgh University Press
21 I B Tauris
21 Pickering & Chatto
20 Harvard University Press
19 Bloomsbury Publishing
16 Penguin
14 Allen Lane
14 British Academy/Oxford University Press
14 Liverpool University Press
14 University of Wales Press
12 University of Chicago Press
11 Reaktion Books

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“Academic Book Week has provided an opportunity for the
University Bookshop to take centre stage as a place of discussion
on the future of the academic book”
Alan Staton, Booksellers Association
“ We’ve seen Academic Book Week evolve into something
powerful, engaging, interactive, thoughtful and at
times controversial. My favourite part of this week?
Evidence that the academic book is alive and kicking.”
Suzanne Kavanagh, ALPSP
Academic Book Week 2015 could not have come at a
better time to celebrate our industry and - as we move
into 2016 I’ve no doubt that in a year’s time we’ll be back
here with as much, if not more debate, passion and
indeed even more to celebrate.
Emma House, Publishers Association

52. Source: #AcBookW
Some Key themes emerging from
Academic Book Week:
• Where will the impetus for change come from?
• Confusion about OA models
• What will value be defined as in an OA world?
• Concerns about “digital death” through lack of
adequate preservation
• ECRs questioning shapes of outputs, like the
PhD
• Need for technology to create a better reading
experience for academic texts
• Physical book is still needed alongside ebooks

53. Some brief reflections &
directions from Michael Jubb’s
research for the Project
#AcBookFuture
Sales, acquisitions, licensing etc models. Neither publishers nor
librarians nor aggregators/intermediaries are satisfied with
current models, especially for e-books, despite recent
experimentation. Further examination of current models, the
constraints on all sides, and how they might be eased, could help
to signal ways forward and promote the further use of e-books
Relationships between publishers, intermediaries, libraries and
retailers. There is considerable concern both from publishers and
libraries about the complexities of the supply chain to end-users,
and about the concentration in the intermediary market. Further
examination of the relationships between the different kinds of
agents in the supply chain could help to point ways to reduce
complexity and thus to ease those concerns.

54. Some brief reflections &
directions from Michael Jubb’s
research for the Project
#AcBookFuture
The role of books in the digital scholarly infrastructure.
Books remain a critical part of the scholarly infrastructure in
analogue form. But we have not yet clearly articulated how to
present the broad range of scholarly resources in the humanities
in an effective and user-friendly way, integrating ‘books’ into the
wider range of resources and tools. Further examination of this
issue could provide powerful insights into how research in the arts
and humanities might most effectively develop for the future.
Incentives to publish books. No crisis in Scholarly Publishing.
There seem to be powerful incentives to write and to publish
books, even as volumes of sales of individual titles fall; and there
is concern that too many books with little chance of significant
sales or readership are being published. Further examination to
develop more evidence is needed.

55. CALL FOR CONTENT: BOOC
Outputs of the research project
Peer reviewed content published
as a ‘live’ book on platform
hosted by UCL Press
Presentation
Non-linear content presentation
Subjects
Concentrates on all aspects of
academic publishing and its
future e.g. peer review; role of the
editor; bookshops of the future;
libraries; open access; digital
publishing and technology
Formats
Formats may include: videos,
blogs, podcasts, short
monographs and articles
Authors invited from all areas of
the academic publishing
and bookselling communities
Authors
Authors invited from all areas of
the academic publishing
and bookselling communities
Launch Date
The BOOC will be launched in
spring 2016 and new content will
be added throughout the year.
The AHRC/British Library Academic Book of the Future Project invites submissions for its
BOOC (Book as Open Online Content)
To propose content, email 500 word (max.) abstracts to:
Dr Sam Rayner
Principal Investigator of the Academic Book of the Future Project
Email: s.rayner@ucl.ac.uk

56. Project Team’s
Recommendations
#AcBookFuture
The OA landscape
We urgently need a portal that allows for information about
different OA publishers and initiatives to be easily obtained,
compared, and understood.
Provide training for academics at every career level In
copyright and IP; in OA; in how to peer review effectively; in how
to work with librarians and publishers to create outputs that can
be found easily, preserved safely, and configured innovatively
Build more cross-community projects, like AcBookWeek, so that
deeper understanding of the interdependencies between sectors
can push progress forwards.

57. Project Team’s
Recommendations
#AcBookFuture
More discipline specific research:
Each discipline has different needs and uses for texts. Closer
working with Learned Societies needed.
Widening Accessibility to the Academic Book: Via further
investigation into the crossover book, a case study of the Academic
Book in the Global South, and looking at accessibility for the
visually impaired.

58. “ It is essential that the arts,
humanities and social science
community takes a lead in shaping
thinking about these issues to ensure
that the models that emerge sustain
and improve the communication of
scholarly information rather than
distorting it.”
Crossick Report, #AcBookFuturehttp://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/year/2015/monographs/
Why get
involved?

59. “ In the long history of humankind
(and animal kind, too) those who
learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have
prevailed.”
Charles
Darwin #AcBookFuture
Finally…

60. @AcBookFuture
#AcBookWeek
The Academic Book of the Future
http://academicbookfuture.org/
s.rayner@ucl.ac.uk
rebecca.lyons@ucl.ac.uk
http://acbookweek.com/