Will the Monograph Experience a Transition to E-Only? Latest Findings. | The Scholarly Kitchen

" ... In terms of business models, there is great interest in transitioning to e-only monograph publishing, driven not least by the prospect of a shift to open access models. Traditional models are in many cases struggling, with sales declining at many presses and institutional subventions coming under regular scrutiny, such that many presses have been merged into libraries as a way of protecting them from market forces. At the same time, there is an abiding interest in how access to the core knowledge production of the humanities can be expanded to suit their public purpose. We are starting to see new open access options, such as Lever Press, where academic institutions support presses and thereby subsidize the publishing costs, rather than authors having to pay. My colleagues at Ithaka S+R have examined the costs of publishing a monograph, with the goal of informing the dialogue about a possible transition to new publishing models at traditional presses ... But in a competitive marketplace — competitive certainly for attracting star authors — reading practices and user needs are not to be trifled with. My colleagues and I at Ithaka S+R have been studying these issues for scholarly content (and others touching on teaching, research, and discovery practices) for more than 15 years, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Today, we release the latest cycle of The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey, which covers a random sample of faculty members at institutions that grant a bachelor’s degree or higher. We designed this project to allow for the examination of practices and needs of individual disciplines and disciplinary groups, such as the humanities, as well as providing the means for tracking change over time. In this cycle, we have strengthened our coverage of monograph-related issues ... Our most recent findings are out today. They show that a higher share of respondents now prefer print formats for five of the six monograph use cases than they did three years ago, alongside an across the board decrease in the share that finds it easier to perform the activities in digital format. Reading cover to cover in depth was the one behavior that hardly changed at all ..."