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for e-books,’ he said. ‘Given this serious split between print and e-books, we felt a need to take control of our digital destiny.’ And the organisation has. Using funds
from US-based private charity, The Andrew W Mellon Foundation, UMP developed an open-source publishing platform based on the University of Michigan Library’s existing research data repository framework. Then, in January, it launched The University of Michigan Press E-book Collection on the platform, with more than 1,100 titles, and more to follow. Watkinson is keen to emphasise that his
press hasn’t ‘left’ the aggregators. As he explains: ‘Our front list is withheld from the DRM-free aggregators for three years but we are still making it available on a single- user purchase model from EBSCO and ProQuest, for example.’ What is clear from UMP’s growing
e-book collection, many titles include digital enhancements such as zoomable online images or embedded audio and video, content not every aggregator would find easy to accommodate. What’s more, a handful of products have taken these
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“Many titles include digital enhancements, such as zoomable online images or embedded audio and video”
digital enhancements a step further, and are described as interactive scholarly works. For example, a digital archaeology report – A Mid-Republican House from Gabii – includes hyperlinks, spatial, descriptive and quantitative data, and a series of interactive 3D models of the reconstructed ancient site. Watkinson is certain that not every
scholarly publishing aggregator has been quick to embrace digital-rich content. As he puts it: ‘We have, for example JSTOR, Project Muse, and Alexander Street Press [a ProQuest company], doing really
interesting projects and understanding how scholars can work in new ways,’ he says. ‘But the problem is many organisations have to design systems to work for every [scholar], whereas we can customise our design for particular needs. ‘Interactive scholarly work [such as the
Gabii report] is the future and we have scholars wanting to create projects that expand the boundaries of the book,’ he said. ‘We’re interested in these new forms and felt we needed our own platform.’ Mandy Hill, director of academic publishing at Cambridge University Press – which uses aggregators and in-house platform, Cambridge Core, to provide scholarly works – agrees: ‘An aggregator groups all of its content together, which is great, but this also means [its systems] have to be designed to accommodate a range of content types. So the experience of using that content will not be as rich.’ Referring to CUP’s recently launched Elements, which provides an outlet for research that sits outside the traditional formats of book or journal article, she said: ‘You just couldn’t see the benefits
August/September 2019 Research Information
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