Monographs are doing OK: a response to Louise Adler

"These publishers, ANU ePress in particular, are leading the way in innovative and -effectivcoste production processes including the use of XML-driven workflows, digital archiving, meta-tagging, content-indexing, ePub etc. They have been involved in publications that include research data and multimedia, and have expanded the boundaries of traditional publishing and scholarship. And they’ve been successful in making sure that the Australian research output is promoted to the world using scholarly networks, bibliographic data systems, university repositories and social media. SUP’s top-downloaded book by Simon Chapman has had over 10,000 downloads since its release in 2010. In 2011, there were 4,280,168 total downloads of ANU ePress titles. The traditional, print-based model of scholarly publishing is losing touch with the modern researcher who is increasingly interested, and often required, to have the research publications available in open access mode. Academics want their books to appear fast, in a digital format and with a creative commons licence so that they can share them with colleagues and students without breaking the copyright law....A model developed by non-for-profit university publishers seems to be a better use of taxpayer money. With the focus on innovative and cost-effective production and distribution processes, the open access model is cheaper, more efficient and successful way to publish and disseminate research output of Australian scholars...."