On Aug 5, 2015, at 6:19 PM, Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Giving away free e-books in return for a prospective review has
exactly the same effect as giving away p-books:  same transaction.
Given a choice, more reviewers still prefer print, but when real
e-books become available, I suspect uptake will be even stronger.
("Real":  good solutions to the challenges of notes, maps, images,
navigation, etc.  What we have now is essentially a papyrus scroll
model.  The "Landmark" series tried one e-book, of Thucydides, and
hated the way it destroyed so many of the useful features of the
print; they've not allowed any of the other volumes to be Kindled vel
sim.)   I'd love to see examples of post-publication reviewing of open
access scholarly publication in the humanities that's actually been
done and to learn the tricks of getting it done.

jo'd


On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 9:03 AM, Gabriel Bodard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 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
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