Rice University Press Reinvents Itself as Digital Academic Press

As money-strapped university presses shut down nationwide, Rice University is turning to technology to bring its press back to life as the first fully digital university press in the United States.

Using the open-source epublishing platform Connexions, Rice University Press is returning from a decade-long hiatus to explore models of peer-reviewed scholarship for the 21st century. The technology offers authors a way to use multimedia—audio files, live hyperlinks, or moving images—to craft dynamic scholarly arguments and to publish on-demand original works in fields of study that are increasingly constrained by print publishing.

“Our decision to revive Rice’s press as a digital enterprise is based on both economics and on new ways of thinking about scholarly publishing,” explains Chuck Henry, vice provost, university librarian, and publisher of Rice University Press during its start-up phase. “University presses are losing money at unprecedented rates, and technology offers us ways to decrease production costs and provide a nearly ubiquitous delivery system—the Internet. We avoid costs associated with backlogs, large inventories, and unsold physical volumes, and we greatly speed the editorial process. We don’t have precise figures for our start-up costs yet, but it’s safe to say the start-up costs and annual operating expenses will be one-tenth of what we’d expect to pay if we were using a traditional publishing model.”

The digital press will operate just as traditional presses do—up to a point. Manuscripts will be solicited, reviewed, edited, and resubmitted for final approval by an editorial board of prominent scholars. But rather than waiting months for a printer to make a bound book, Rice University Press’s digital files will be run through Connexions for automatic formatting, indexing, and population with high-resolution images, audio, video, and web links. “We don’t print anything,” Henry explains. “It will go online as a Rice University Press publication in a matter of days and be available for sale as a digital book.”

Users will be able to view the content online for free or purchase a copy of the book for download through the Rice University Press website. Alternatively, thanks to the Connexions partnership with on-demand printer QOOP Inc., users will be able to order printed books if they want, in every style from softbound black-and-white on inexpensive paper to leather-bound full-color hardbacks on high-gloss paper. “As with a traditional press, our publications will be peer-reviewed, professionally vetted, and very high quality,” Henry says. “But the choice to have a printed copy will be up to the customer.”

Authors published by Rice University Press will retain the copyrights for their works, in accordance with the Connexions licensing agreement with Creative Commons. Additionally, because Connexions is open source, authors will be able to update or amend their work, easily creating a revised edition of their book. In the coming months, Rice University Press will name its board of directors and appoint an editorial board in one or two academic disciplines that are especially constrained by the current print model.

One such field is art history, in which printing costs are exceptionally high. Over the years, many university presses have slashed the number of art history titles they print, severely limiting younger scholars’ prospects of publication, so it is a field that would benefit immediately, and therefore it will be the press’s initial area of major effort.

The press also will foster new models of scholarship. With the rise of digital environments, scholars are increasingly attempting to write book-length studies that use new media—images, video, audio, and Web links—as part of their arguments. Because of its digital nature, Rice University Press will easily accommodate these new forms of scholarship.

Another area of endeavor will be to provide more affordable publishing for scholarly societies and centers. Often, disciplinary societies and smaller centers, especially in the humanities, publish annual reports, reflections on their field of study, or original research resulting from grants. For smaller organizations, the printing costs of these publications are prohibitive. Rice University Press will partner with organizations to provide more affordable publishing.

A second partnering effort will be with large university presses. In the wake of rising production costs and overhead, many university presses have closed or reduced the number of titles they publish, especially in the humanities and social sciences. As a result, many peer-reviewed, high-quality books are waiting on backlog. Rice University Press will work with selected university publishers to inexpensively publish approved works. Two major university presses already have expressed interest in working with Rice to reduce backlogged titles. Rice University Press plans to join with these and other presses to produce such works as dual publications.