Interesting point. By the same token, I have for a while done some work
with a review publication (outside the classics) and at first I expected
to see exactly the pattern Jim describes below, vis à vis print books vs
Kindle/Epub or PDF e-books, but in the last couple of years the
difference in uptake between books available on paper and (otherwise
traditionally formatted) books available only in e-formats is pretty
close to zero.
Obviously an e-book isn't necessarily an open access publication, so
some of the social transaction that Jim notes is still present in this
anecdotal example. But I wonder if the difference noted below is rather,
or at least in part, that people are uncomfortable with how to go about
writing a review of a sophisticated web resource? Do they feel they
would need to be an expert in digital publishing, and comment on issues
like software, APIs, accessibility and so forth, as well as only the
ancient history content? If academics were (and I suspect they
increasingly, if slowly, are becoming) in the habit of reading scholarly
works on a Kindle or iPad, would the uptake of print vs e-book titles at
BMCR be as radically different as we're seeing now?
Best,
Gabby
On 2015-08-05 16:11, Jim O'Donnell wrote:
> All of us.
>
> By this I mean a distinct thing: the economics of pre-OA publishing
> make books $$-valuable. So if the publisher generously spreads a few
> free copies around to journals and we in turn offer them to reviewers,
> reviewers are glad to get the books and happy to write the review in
> return. We get the review quid for the publisher's quo. That's an
> economic transaction deeply embedded in the "commercial" model of
> things. We *all* benefit from that because we all get to read the
> book reviews, and a certain number of us get nice free books.
>
> At BMCR, we have repeatedly experimented with getting reviews for
> "non-commercial" resources, chiefly sophisticated web resources
> available for free on the open net. The take-up by would-be reviewers
> is statistically indistinguishable from zero. So nobody gets a "free
> book" and nobody at all gets to read a review of that resource.
>
> My point is only that the social embeddedness of the current system is
> intricate and has many benefits as well as many costs.
>
> jo'd
>
--
Dr Gabriel BODARD
Researcher in Digital Epigraphy
Digital Humanities
King's College London
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