I'm very pleased to announce that I am joining Jisc's National Monographs Strategy Expert Advisory Panel. As the project's website puts it:
The scholarly monograph - the book-length result of dedicated research, the gold standard for authorative academic publication – finds itself in a precarious position. It’s no longer sustainable, facing a number of grave challenges.
Understanding these challenges is a key part of this project to explore the potential of a national strategy: a collaborative approach to the collection, preservation, supply and digitisation of scholarly monographs.
The project aims to rapidly deliver:
- A landscape study: A report that provides a coherent picture of the monographs issue that encompasses the recent, relevant work done to explore the monograph issue.
- The monograph problem: A report defining and assigning value for the problems that need to be addressed by a national monograph strategy.
- The monograph solutions: An outline of the possible solutions which could address the problems identified.
I'm extremely excited by this opportunity to continue the dialogue surrounding the ways in which the digital impacts upon the object that we refer to as the "monograph" and to explore the ways in which we can preserve this form, and the systems of labour that underpin its production, while also gaining the benefits to contemporary practice afforded by open accessibility and re-use of these texts.