This is the first ALPSP survey undertaken to establish current practices in scholarly book and e-book publishing, to provide detailed analysis and statistics in this rapidly changing market. Authors: Laura Cox & John Cox. Free to download for ALPSP members.
The how, what and why of the semantic web and why it matters to scholarly publishers.
A non-techie overview of Web 3.0 (AKA the semantic web), focussing on the buzz words, the practicalities, the challenges and most importantly the opportunities. Case studies will highlight key issues including workflow implications (for editorial and production), sales and marketing opportunities and ROI.
The word contest in my March newsletter is generating some enthusiastic responses. In the first 24 hours, I've received 79 suggestions from 16 people.
Here's the contest again if you didn't see it:
English speakers need a verb that means "to provide OA to". It should be as succinct as "sell" for use in sentences such as, "We sell the print edition but ____ the digital edition."
I use "to provide OA to" for lack of anything obviously better. But I don't like it. It's long, dry, and awkward. Making a digital work OA is a fairly elemental act, and the verb for that act shouldn't take four words. I'm hoping that someone out there can do better.
We could say "open up" or "make OA". These are shorter than four words, but they're still phrases and I'm hoping that creative people can find or invent a single word. We could say simply "open", but that would be ambiguous, since we already say "open the journal" and "open the book" with another meaning in mind. "Give away" (or "giveaway") is also ambiguous, since we sometimes give away priced, printed literature. "Disclose" is a nice fit etymologically but has similar ambiguities. "Liberate" is a little ambiguous, a little precious, and suggests an overcoming of resistance which is by no means intrinsic to OA.
We could revive and hijack a rare word like "derestrict" or "debouche" (the way gamers revived and hijacked "avatar"), but could we find one that is less dry and technical-sounding? We could coin a familiar-sounding new term like "openize" or "accessibilitate", but could we find one that is less nauseating? We could coin an utterly new word like "fazz" or "jirp", but could we find one that actually suggests the intended meaning?
There's no prize in this contest except glory. I'll summarize the results in the next issue, and may also post them to the SPARC Open Access Forum for further discussion.
If the submissions aren't any better than "open", "debouche", "accessibilitate", and "fazz", then I won't pick a favorite or a winner, but I'll still share the results. If there's an array of plausible contenders, one of them may catch fire with some of you and start to spread, becoming more acceptable as it goes. But you can already sense some of my personal criteria: Would the word be ambiguous (bad), pretentious (bad), sound like insider jargon (bad), or make OA itself sound technical and difficult (bad)? Would it be short (good), sweet (good), and more or less self-explanatory (good)?
If other languages already have elegant solutions to this problem, I'd love to hear about them.
Send me your ideas (peter dot suber at gmail dot com). I'll assume that I may name and quote you unless you tell me otherwise.
