Despite the inroads into publishing made by the open-access journals highlighted by the News articles in Nature (445, pp 347 and 351; 2007), there is one domain where traditional for-profit publishers still reign supreme: the academic edited book containing a set of chapters written by individual authors. Such books continue to be valuable to the scientific community. Many provide a collection of works on a single topic by authors with different perspectives, all guided by an editor who is one of the leading experts in the field. Today, publishers still churn them out, but increasingly books suffer in comparison to electronic journals. By the time all the authors send in their chapters and the book is typeset, printed, and purchased by libraries and individuals, the content is likely to be out of date. Unfortunately, the academic edited book is also usually expensive and not as widely available as most journals.
To save the academic edited book, it could be reinvented as an online open-access web resource. Speedy publication would result, publication costs would be low, and the “chapters” would be free to all. The only critical losses might be that of the promotion provided by the traditional publisher and the publisher’s imprint, which certifies quality. But these roles could easily be taken on by open-access publishers or professional societies. By promoting the book in their publications and website, and lending their imprimatur to the website of the book, the society or publisher would signal that they were satisfied that the editor and authors met the standard of an academic book. Furthermore, online reader annotation tools could allow the book’s value to grow with time rather than dwindle.
A possible objection to this scheme is that some open-access journals publish special issues, which already provide a collection of related articles, like the chapters of an edited book. But a special issue is a somewhat different animal, because for that the journal’s editors expect the same peer review process and criteria as for the normal issues of the journal. The online edited “book” – a collection of invited manuscripts – would allow the book’s editor and authors to better realize their vision, with a far greater audience than with a traditional book.
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