BISG announces new research initiative to study subscription models of selling published content

January 29, 2014

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) is pleased to announce a major new research initiative to study subscription models of selling published content.

Given the success of digital subscription services in the film, television, and music industries, publishing industry stakeholders have wondered how and when these services will affect book content distribution. While the range of possible models is vast, it is unclear whether the current needs and trends suggest a “Netflix” model with a deep and broad catalog or whether more focused verticals will continue to develop. And what are the attitudes of agents, authors, publishers, and librarians toward these new distribution models? What factors will motivate or dissuade them from participating?

To answer these questions, BISG has contracted with Ted Hill of THA Consulting working with Emilie Delquie of Publishers Communications Group (PCG), a division of Publishing Technology, to conduct a research study to identify the various business models employed by US-based digital content subscription services. This research will provide a clear picture of how content producers and others in the publishing value chain are reacting to these new forces in the marketplace.

“There is enough interest in and activity around digital subscription models right now,” said BISG executive director Len Vlahos, “that it became clear to us that research was warranted. We’re delighted to be working with Ted Hill and PCG on this project and look forward to what will be the first really comprehensive look at this landscape.”

A report of the findings will be published in summer 2014, with preliminary findings presented at BISG’s Making Information Pay Conference at IDPF’s Digital Book 2014 at BEA.

Safari Books Online, the on-demand digital learning library for technology, digital media, and business professionals, has joined as the lead Sponsor for BISG’s subscription research survey. Other Sponsors to date include Wiley, the American Library Association, and Sally Dedecker Enterprises. For more information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jeanette Zwart at Jeanette@bisg.org. For more information about the Subscription Research Study, email Nadine Vassallo atNadine@bisg.org.

EBSCO Information Services Chosen as eBook Supplier for American University of Kuwait

January 29, 2014

The American University of Kuwait (AUK), an independent, private and coeducational liberal arts institution of higher education, has selected EBSCO Information Services(EBSCO) as its e-book supplier for 2014.

The university spent many months evaluating different e-book collections from various suppliers. American University of Kuwait Collection Development Librarian Mr. Thomas Cherian Kutty says that the outstanding features offered by EBSCO were the deciding factor. “EBSCO has outstanding features standing in line with its peers. Our patrons are pleased with the full-text features and easy to used enhanced user tools including downloading, printing and exporting. The patrons are very happy with EBSCO’s versatility.”

AUK is a long-time EBSCO customer and they subscribe to many EBSCOhost^® databases. Being able to search e-books alongside databases will be a huge benefit to the university. Mr. Thomas explains, “We already have many EBSCO databases but only recently ventured into e-books. Searching the e-book content with databases is ideal to our users. A single platform to search across any combination of databases and e-books is a great feature and our users love the friendly interface.”

The advantages of EBSCO’s PDA program as well as EBSCO’s eBook management tool, EBSCOhost® Collection Manager (ECM) were also a draw for AUK. To help libraries build a collection with guaranteed usage, EBSCO offers a Patron Driven Acquisition program. A title on the PDA list is triggered for purchase when a patron directly accesses the title, guaranteeing that only those titles with significant usage are purchased. ECM can be used to search or browse for e-books and audiobooks by title, author, publisher and more or make selections from the Subject Sets or Featured Collections created by EBSCO’s collection development experts.

EBSCO eBooks offers more than 500,000 e-books and audiobooks. EBSCO proactively acquires new content in critical areas, based on the dynamic needs of libraries. Accessing the EBSCOhost platform for e-books and audiobooks saves librarians training time and adds a well-known search platform to the end user’s experience. Allowing end users to search for e-books and audiobooks along with their EBSCOhost database content improves the discoverability of library collections. Lowering the cost for libraries makes the decision to focus on or add to e-book and audiobook collections easier and more cost-effective.

Taylor & Francis extends green Open access zero embargo pilot scheme

January 29, 2014

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, has been running a Library & Information Science Author Rights pilot scheme that allows authors to post their peer-reviewed Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to an institutional repository immediately after publication. The two year pilot scheme, first introduced in 2011, has now been extended for at least a further year to enable Routledge to consider alternative approaches to copyright and to find sustainable ways of extending author rights.

As part of the pilot, a survey was conducted by Routledge to canvas opinions on the Library & Information Science Author Rights initiative and also investigated author and researcher behaviour and views on author rights policies, embargos and posting work to repositories. The survey, eliciting over 500 responses, offers a fascinating insight into the current thinking of authors & researchers globally across the discipline of Library & Information Science. Having the option to upload their work to a repository directly after publication is very important to these authors: more than 2/3 of respondents rated the ability to upload their work to repositories at 8, 9, or 10 out of 10, with the vast majority saying they feel strongly that authors should have this right.

The implementation of the author rights pilot saw the number of respondents who would recommend Routledge as a publishing outlet increase by 34% while the average willingness to publish with Routledge on a scale of 1 to 10 increased from 6.6 to 8.3. The shift in response from Library and Information Science professionals towards Routledge’s publishing program before and after the launch of this initiative practically demonstrates the enthusiasm for immediate upload of non-embargoed content within the library community. Routledge is dedicated to developing publishing models that suit the needs of the Library & Information Science community.

Tracy Roberts, Editorial Director comments “It is clear that the ability to upload articles to a repository directly after publication is a key concern for LIS authors. We are delighted to announce that we have now extended this pilot to the end of 2014 supporting research within this discipline, as well as affording us additional time to monitor the effects of this pilot study.”

PeerJ Institutional Plans Are Now Available to UK Institutions via Jisc Collections

January 29, 2014

Bristol- From today UK universities will be able to centrally fund their researchers’ publication plans for biological and medical sciences journal PeerJ following an agreement with Jisc. This will allow authors to publish articles in the award winning journal for free, for life.

PeerJ is open access and affordable for both researchers and their universities. It provides academics with two open access publications: PeerJ (a peer-reviewed academic journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (a ‘pre-print server’). Both cover the whole of the biological and medical sciences and the PeerJ journal peer-reviews content only for scientific and methodological soundness.

Carolyn Alderson, acting head of licensing at Jisc Collections said: “The PeerJ tag line is: “Your Peers, Your Science. Academic Publishing Is Evolving” and we are delighted to be part of the enabling process for UK authors and institutions to participate in this new way of working.”

PeerJ’s pioneering new model was recognised in 2013 by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers when it was awarded the “Publishing Innovation” of the year. This model is increasingly relevant as the importance of open access comes to the fore in research funding policy.
Neil Jacobs, head of scholarly communications Jisc said: “UK institutions can now give their authors an advantage as open access grows, as it inevitably will, with the forthcoming Higher Education Funding Council for England’s Research Excellence Framework. As well as being innovative, PeerJ is a first class publication option. It provides authors with a great publishing service, visibility for their research and significant impact.”

With the new arrangement institutions pre-pay for publication plans and individuals take advantage of that pre-payment when they come to publish. As a result institutions now have an easy, frictionless, and cost-effective way to provide their faculty with a world class open access publication option.

Peter Binfield, co-founder and publisher of PeerJ said: “we are excited to be offering our publication plans through Jisc. With this arrangement, UK institutions are now able to easily purchase a publication package that is tailored to their needs and which will provide large numbers of their faculty with the lifetime ability to publish their open access articles.”

McGraw-Hill Professional Launches Access Product Suite on SCM6

January 28, 2014

(Charlottesville, VA) January 28, 2014—Silverchair announced today the launch of McGraw-Hill Professional’s Access medical product suite on the SCM6 platform, bringing enhanced features, an updated and responsive user interface, a more powerful search, and more robust curriculum-building tools to medical students, residents, and practitioners who have come to rely on the products’ high-value content and functionality for education, training, and patient care.

The first generation of the Access products was launched on Silverchair’s custom publishing platform beginning in 2004. This second generation on SCM6 will allow the products’ worldwide users to even more effectively use content from more than 180 leading medical textbooks to learn, make better clinical decisions, and achieve better patient outcomes.

The Access medical sites also feature hundreds of videos, interactive self-assessment and cases, and tens of thousands of images, all of which are semantically tagged to create dynamic topical relationships. The Custom Curriculum module allows instructors to create and assign learning modules to groups of students using these rich content resources across all the Access products, expanding its capability as a learning management system that is well established as a powerful training and reporting tool by residency program directors in multiple specialties.

In addition to the migration of AccessMedicine, AccessSurgery, AccessPharmacy, AccessAnesthesiology, AccessPediatrics, AccessPhysiotherapy, and AccessEmergency Medicine, Silverchair developed the new OMMBID as part of the project, featuring the world’s most respected textbook on genes and the genetic mechanisms underlying human disease.

The continuous updating of the textbook resources on the Access sites will be supported by Silverchair’s Zipline content publishing tool, which includes automated semantic enrichment, while Silverchair’s Silvermine analytics module will provide dynamic usage statistics for McGraw-Hill Professional to use in planning further enhancements to the products.

“While we’re proud of the success of the first generation of Access products, we’re even more pleased that SCM6 was so well positioned to meet the needs of these products as McGraw-Hill Professional wanted them to evolve in response to their careful attention to customer needs,” said Thane Kerner, CEO of Silverchair Information Systems. “We admire their energy for customer-focused innovation and are excited to begin this new era of our close collaboration to provide these market-leading medical education products.”

Visit the new site at mhmedical.com.

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About Silverchair Information Systems
Founded in 1993, Silverchair delivers advanced semantic technologies, publishing platforms, and e-learning solutions to scientific, technical, and medical publishers; professional societies; and the federal government. Silverchair is headquartered in Charlottesville, VA. See www.silverchair.com.

For More Information Contact:
Robert G. Murray
Vice President, Business Development
Silverchair Information Systems

Call for submissions for the Brill/IFLA Open Access award

January 28, 2014

Brill and IFLA are pleased to announce the 2014 Brill/IFLA Open Access award.

The IFLA/Brill Open Access award is created to reward initiatives that facilitate and/or promote Open Access Scholarly Monographs in the humanities or social sciences. This is in line with IFLA’s stated position on Open Access, which aims to promote open access across its membership. This is also in line with Brill’s open access policy. “Open Access” in the context of this award refers to any structural publication model, where the reader does not have to pay a fee to access the leading version of a monograph and where the content is made available without embargo.

The award will be given to the person/institute behind the initiative in recognition of outstanding work and effort in facilitating, promoting, advocating, raising awareness in regard to and/or disseminating Open Access Scholarly Monographs published with an open license.

In 2013 the award was given to Open Book Publishers, Cambridge (UK).

The prize consists of:

Cash prize (€ 1000)
IFLA World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) 2014 registration (€ 500)
Travel to and accommodation at the IFLA WLIC in Lyon, France (up to a maximum of € 1500)
The winner will be invited to attend IFLA Lyon in person, or may identify a person to collect the prize on their behalf.

The winner is responsible for registering for the congress, and booking own travel and accommodation. Reimbursement of costs will be arranged between the winner and the Brill/IFLA contact persons.

The following groups are eligible:

Initiatives that facilitate and/or promote Open Access scholarly monographs such as projects or organisations
Individuals who have authored, facilitated or promoted Open Access scholarly monographs

Nominees can be suggested by the owners of the project, but also by third parties, e.g. by authors, who published their monograph in the framework of the OA initiative.

Application procedure:

Applications should be submitted to the identified contact persons below. They should include a text of max 1 A4 page which contains:

An explanation of how far the proposed initiative facilitates and/or promotes Open Access Scholarly Monographs.
Name and contact details of nominated project
Name and contact details of nominator (if different)

Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2014

Applications to be sent to: stuart.hamilton@ifla.org

Content providers worldwide partner with OCLC to improve library workflows for e-content

January 28, 2014

OCLC has finalized agreements with 17 publishers around the world to add valuable electronic collections to the WorldCat database, the most comprehensive online catalog of resources available through libraries worldwide.

Incorporating bibliographic data that link to these collections into WorldCat and the WorldCat knowledge base will reduce the cost of managing these resources and provide immediate access for libraries that subscribe to or want to purchase these collections.

The following new agreements with leading content providers have recently been signed and their collections will be added to WorldCat over the next few months:

American Mathematical Society based in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, with its 30,000 members, is dedicated to furthering mathematical research and scholarship. The AMS provides programs and services that promote mathematical research and its uses, strengthen mathematical education and foster awareness and appreciation of mathematics. The American Mathematical Society is one of the premier publishers of advanced mathematics worldwide and will be providing OCLC with books and journal content.
American Society for Microbiology based in Washington, D.C., USA, is the largest single life science society, with more than 39,000 scientists and health professionals. Its mission is to advance the microbiological sciences for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide. American Society for Microbiology will be providing OCLC with journal and book content.
CRC Press based in Boca Raton, Florida, USA, is a global publisher of scientific, technical and medical content. CRC Press publishes reference works, handbooks and textbooks, as well as the award-winning CRCnetBASE e-book collections. CRC Press is a member of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business.
CSIRO Publishing based in Collingwood, Victoria, Australia, operates as an independent science and technology publisher with a global reputation for quality products and services. The publishing program covers a wide range of scientific disciplines, including agriculture, the plant and animal sciences and environmental management. CSIRO Publishing will be providing OCLC with their books and journals.
Digitalia based in New York, New York, USA, is the premier Hispanic database of e-books and e-journals with the broadest access to high-quality content in Spanish Language. Thousands of e-books from the most renowned Spanish and Latin American publishing houses, as well as relevant journals that cover all topics of interest are included in Digitalia. Digitalia is a global leader providing selected titles and bringing to libraries qualitative content driven by information technology and the best practices in content management.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) based in Catonsville, Maryland, USA, is the largest society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics, publishing 13 scholarly journals that describe the latest O.R. and analytics methods and applications.
JSTOR based in New York, New York, USA, is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. JSTOR helps people discover and use a wide range of content on their research platform and preserves this content for future generations. OCLC will create and distribute bibliographic records for JSTOR’s digital library of more than 1,500 academic journals, books and primary sources.
Knowledge Unlatched is a collaborative, not-for-profit initiative based in London, UK. By working with libraries, publishers, researcher funders and foundations, Knowledge Unlatched seeks to make scholarly books freely available to readers on an open access license, while retaining the best aspects of the existing publishing system. The initiative enables libraries to work together to reach a sustainable open future for specialist academic books. Their vision is a healthy market that includes free access for end users.
Liverpool University Press (LUP), Liverpool, UK, is one of Europe’s oldest university presses. LUP’s mission is to disseminate high quality scholarly research and to promote learning and culture through the publication of books and journals. OCLC will index metadata and full text for Modern Languages Open (MLO), a peer-reviewed online platform for the open access publication of research from across the modern languages to a global audience.
The Metropolitan Opera based in New York, New York, USA, has introduced an online video and audio streaming service available to universities and colleges, connecting academic users to a digital catalog of more than 450 full-length Met performances. Met Opera on Demand: Student Access is available to colleges worldwide through a license subscription. OCLC will create and distribute bibliographic records for the video and audio performances.
Mintel Group Ltd based in London, UK, is a leading global supplier of consumer, product and market intelligence. For 40 years, Mintel has provided insight into key worldwide trends, offering exclusive data and analysis that directly impacts client success. OCLC will index data for the Oxygen Collection.
Morgan & Claypool Publishers LLC based in San Rafael, California, USA, is an innovative new company formed by experienced publishing professionals to serve the global research and development communities in science and technology. Its mission is to create “next-generation” digital information products that combine authoritative content with state-of-the-art technology and a customer-oriented business model. OCLC will include The Synthesis Digital Library of Engineering and Computer Science the Colloquium Digital Library of Life Sciences.
Naxos of America, Inc. based in Franklin, Tennessee, USA, is the world’s leading classical music labels. Naxos’ catalogue includes classical music CDs and DVDs as well as genres, such as jazz, new age, educational and audiobooks.
NBC Learn based in New York, New York, USA, is the educational arm of NBC News dedicated to providing resources for students, teachers and lifelong learners. NBC Learn has created online resources for the education community leveraging historic news coverage, documentary materials and current news broadcasts. NBC Learn also offers primary source materials, lesson plans and classroom planning resources. NBC Learn will be providing OCLC data for their NBC Learn K-12 and NBC Learn Higher Ed collections.
Publishers Row based in Skokie, Illinois, USA, is one of the industry’s e-book pioneers with more than 15 years of e-book development experience. Publishers Row is a wholly owned subsidiary of Varda Graphics and serves as a technology platform solution for digital editions of books for hundreds of publishers from conversion to invoicing. OCLC will receive data for the ALA’s CHOICE E-Collection e-books and Judaica Studies.
Recorded Books, LLC based in Prince Fredrick, Maryland, is a leading provider of library services around the world, one of the largest independent producers of unabridged audiobooks, and a distributor of other audio products. Recorded Books delivers its products as both physical media (CDs and Playaway digital players) and via OneClickdigital, a downloading service featuring e-books and professionally narrated English and Spanish Language audiobooks for adults, children and young adults. Through RBdigital, Recorded Books also offers a host of educational and entertainment services, including digital magazines, language-learning programs, software training and database services.
Thieme Medical Publishers based in Stuttgart, Germany, is an award-winning international medical and science publisher serving health professionals and students for more than 125 years. Thieme promotes the latest advancements in clinical practice, publishes the latest research findings and advocates medical education. OCLC will index metadata for Thieme journals.

Both WorldCat and the WorldCat knowledge base continue to grow with new providers and collections. For more information on current content lists, see the WorldCat and WorldCat knowledge base pages on OCLC.org.

Louisiana Library Network Selects EBSCO Discovery Service

January 28, 2014

The Louisiana Library Network has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) to improve discoverability and help promote LOUIS resources to students and other departments. LOUIS is a partnership with academic libraries, state & private libraries, and museums & archives in the state of Louisiana and combines the collective resources of all members to produce a dynamic library consortium. EDS was chosen because of its ability to pull together LOUIS resources while also delivering a simplified search experience that provides quality results.

LOUIS members wanted a single search that is similar to a “Google” search for scholarly material. EDS takes LOUIS’s vast collection of electronic resources and brings it together in one place while also offering better discoverability. In a recent poll to library staff and faculty, one LOUIS member said, “Our users were missing a lot of good information from databases that they didn’t know about and EDS put them on track to find more quality information.”

Feedback from the library staff and faculty has been positive, specifically with regard to the robust features and functionality of EDS. Lisa Stigall, a network analyst with LOUIS, says, “Many of our members have been pleased with the EDS search experience. Popular features include the automatic citation feature, ability to limit searches to a specific discipline and the fact that the results screen is easy to use and manipulate.”

EBSCO support is in the process of working with LOUIS to customize EDS by modifying the colors, adding custom widgets and using a custom search box to search from the library’s home page. Further customizations will be implemented based on user feedback.

Looking to the future, LOUIS hopes that EDS will become a good tool for information literacy instruction and also hope to integrate EDS with another resource to create reading lists for students. They also believe the implementation of EDS will be a huge benefit to off-campus students. A LOUIS poll responder said, “Our off-campus students will have easy access to online resources from wherever they have Internet access. They can find what they need easily without the help of a reference librarian, when the library is closed.”

EBSCO Discovery Service brings together the most comprehensive collection of content—including superior indexing from top subject indexes, high-end full text and the entire library collection—all within an unparalleled full-featured, customizable discovery layer experience.

Springer Science+Business Media acquires Planète Permis SAS

January 28, 2014

Springer Science+Business Media (Springer) has acquired the French publisher of driving school materials, Planète Permis SAS, based in Gertwiller (Alsace), France. The acquisition complements the existing driving school and road safety publishing activities of Springer.

The founder and owner of the French company, Christophe Schneider, said on his own behalf and that of Planète Permis’ employees, “I am looking forward to continued growth of the company within an international publishing house.”

Peter Lehnert, Springer’s EVP for Professional Transport, said, “This acquisition is a positive signal from within our European publishing units and strengthens the company in the key French market. We welcome Christophe Schneider and his team.”

Major Product Enhancements Mark 2013 as a Banner Year for Knovel

January 27, 2014

2013 was a year of significant change for Knovel. Highlights include the acquisition by Elsevier announced last January, the launch of a new Knovel platform and significant content growth. Historically focused on being the first place engineers turn for trusted answers, Knovel continues to execute on this vision to meet the needs of today’s engineer.

With a focus on the user experience, Knovel’s new platform, launched in September, features advanced search and simplified navigation that ensure engineers can more easily discover the content they need and readily use it in their workflow. The overall experience is seamless, enabling engineers to use Knovel in conjunction with other engineering applications, customer knowledge bases and enterprise software tools. Interactivity is a core part of Knovel’s offering, and in 2013, Knovel substantially improved the user interface and functionality of its Equation Plotter, Graph Digitizer, Graph Plotter, Phase Diagram Viewer and Parameterized Graph tools.

“The new Knovel platform has a fresh look, is easy to navigate, and the improved data search is particularly impressive and user-friendly,” said Linda Fawcett, Information Manager for AMEC, the international engineering and project management company. “Knovel is already well embedded in AMEC and the new platform is opening up the content to our engineers in an even more accessible way.”

In 2013, Knovel added more than 20 new content partners, including Taylor & Francis and ICE Publishing. Knovel added two new subject areas and the content collection grew more than 20 percent across the board, and at least 10 percent in existing subject areas. Knovel’s cloud-based application integrates technical information from more than 100 engineering publishers and societies with analytical and search tools used by engineers worldwide

“Elsevier has long valued the important role that Knovel plays in the community of engineers worldwide, and when we acquired Knovel last year, we committed to the high standards that the Knovel team set for delivering value to customers and continually improving the user experience,” said Ella Balagula, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Technology Markets at Elsevier. “A year later, we’ve achieved significant milestones. I am proud of the team’s focus, drive and accomplishments that pave the way for more successes in 2014.”

Knovel continues to support the engineering community through a variety of programs and initiatives that encourage life-long learning and career advancement. More than 4,400 students worldwide participated in the 2013 Knovel University Challenge. This program encourages students to get hands-on experience with engineering resources available to them. Through sponsorship of Engineers Without Borders (EWB-USA), Knovel provided a grant to support the work of a University of South Carolina student project in Ecuador, and two additional grants are planned for 2014 via Knovel’s ongoing sponsorship of EWB. The 2013 Knovel Virtual Conference featured a variety of presentations from engineering leaders and industry experts to support career development and awareness of Knovel.

ProQuest joins Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association

January 27, 2014

ProQuest has joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), which represents the interests of Open Access (OA) journal publishers globally in all scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines. ProQuest is renowned for innovative content and technology solutions that increase the productivity of students, scholars, researchers, professionals and the libraries that serve them. In addition to integrating and aggregating open access content in many of its information solutions, ProQuest publishes Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, an open access journal advancing and supporting environmental research since 2005.

“Open access plays an important role in academic publication and I am delighted that SSPP has received the commendation of OASPA,” Maurie Cohen, Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Society, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Editor, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy. “The journal aspires to consistently meet a rigorous standard of quality control while simultaneously bringing to light the pioneering work undertaken by scholars and policy practitioners seeking to address the sustainability challenges of the 21st century.”

Through an exchange of information, OASPA promotes OA innovation and education, develops industry standards, and advances sustainable OA publishing models. ProQuest’s membership in the group enables the company to contribute to and benefit from its rich exchange of ideas, helping to advance OA content and policies.

Learn more at www.proquest.com, oaspa.org and sspp.proquest.com/.

Palgrave Macmillan launches open peer review trial for book proposals

January 27, 2014

An open and transparent peer review trial for academic books in the humanities and social sciences has been launched today by Palgrave Macmillan.

The trial, which is live at www.palgraveopenreview.com, will run for six weeks and is the first open peer review trial for book proposals. Academics from all disciplines, in all locations and at all stages in their career are encouraged to take part.

It will include seven monograph proposals, one edited collection, and one proposal for a Palgrave Pivot, the mid-length ebook format from Palgrave Macmillan.

Carrie Calder, Director of Market Development said: “Rigorous peer review is at the heart of academic publishing. However, ‘traditional’ peer review, while effective in many ways, has some limitations. We see this experiment as an opportunity to contribute to the emerging debate on opening up the closed peer review system, and increasing transparency in academic publishing.”

The works which will be included in the experiment are:

· Creating Economic Growth: Lessons for Europe, by Dr Marco Magnani at Harvard University, US

· Asylum Seekers, Social Work and Racism, a Palgrave Pivot by Dr Shepard Masocha at the University of Kent, UK

· Serious Leisure and Self-Fulfilment by Professor Robert Stebbins, University of Calgary, Canada

· Rosa Luxemburg: Theory of Accumulation and Imperialism by Tadeusz Kowalik, translated by Jan Toporowski and Hannah Szymborska, SOAS, University of London

· Cuban Women and Salsa by Professor Delia Poey at Florida State University, US

· Race and the Brazilian Body by Professor Jennifer Roth-Gordon at the University of Arizona, US

· Thinking through Digital Media, by Dale Hudson at New York University, Abu Dhabi, UAE and Professor Patricia Zimmerman at Ithaca College, US

· Embodiment and Horror Cinema, by Professor Larrie Dudenhoeffer at Kennesaw State University, US

· Digital Leisure, the Internet and Popular Culture, by Professor Karl Spracklen at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

· Intimacies, Critical Consumption and Diverse Economies, a collection edited by Dr Emma Casey at Kingston University, UK and Professor Yvette Taylor at London South Bank University, UK