Abstract
In the light of new digital production and dissemination practices, the scholarly publishing system has seen significant and also disruptive changes, especially in STM (science, technology and medicine) and with regard to the predominant format “journal article”. The digital transformation also holds true for those disciplines that continue to rely on the scholarly monograph as a publication format and means for reputation building, namely the Humanities and the Social Sciences with a qualitative approach (HSS). In our paper we analyse the reasons why the monograph has not yet reached its full potential in the digital paradigm, especially in the uptake of Open Access and innovative publishing options. We highlight some of the principal underlying factors for this, and suggest how especially practices, now more widespread in HSS but arising from the Digital Humanities, could play a role in moving forward the rich digitality of the scholarly monograph.
Highlights
In recent years the scholarly publishing system has seen significant and at times disruptive changes
Roosendaal and Geurts (1997) identified the four core functions of scholarly communication (Figure 1) as “registration, certification, awareness, and archiving,” whereby a) registration includes aspects of intellectual property, b) certification comes with the aspect of information being eligible as scientific information via selection and review, c) awareness is achieved through dissemination and d) archiving supports the dialogical process in science publication of citing the previous work of peers through standardised referencing and citation practices
Acknowledge and keep track of the different versions of the creation of a topic model, the effort of data compilation, annotations to digitised primary sources in archives, refactoring software or creating software as such based on the paradigm of publishing methods and formats that are still in the main tied to the printing process? Such a limited view of publishing formats prevents direct traceability of research as well as a media usage lifecycle fully representing the knowledge contained in the discipline and would call for more fluid and complex approaches
Summary
In recent years the scholarly publishing system has seen significant and at times disruptive changes. In respect of the awareness function, apart from the overall possibility of the digital dissemination aspect itself, for STM authors the variety and number of Open Access publication routes has reached significant coverage and still continues to grow. The majority of scholarly books focusing on the target group “professional colleagues” rely on being subsidised by authors, as publishers operate in niche markets, and sales revenues are too small to cover production and dissemination costs This puts authors in the position of either cofinancing the dissemination of their research results with funds they have to apply for, drawing on their research budget, or streamlining their research for economic exploitation
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