In May 2024, we announced a new project to study the costs and benefits of emerging models in the monographs publishing landscape. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the study looks to analyze the market fit of various models within the academic e-book sector to understand how these models are functioning for libraries and authors.

As part of this project we are interviewing publishers and content aggregators as well as librarians. In our initial conversations with the first group, we asked a series of questions:

  • How does the business model that you utilize help you, or the presses involved, compete for authors?
  • How does this model help you compete for a share of library dollars?
  • How does this model fit with the mission or values of your broader organization?

Several interviewees noted that readership of their digital content grew exponentially during the pandemic, and this is driving their current initiatives to broaden access to their publications. The broadened access many publishers and aggregators granted in the early stages of the pandemic provided insights into how much potential readership was being missed. This has fueled initiatives to reach new readers and to expand geographically. For some interviewees, this has resulted in new open access models for the production of monographs, while for others it has resulted in seeking new avenues for the distribution of digital monographs.

Despite optimism for the growth of monograph readership, we remain in an exceptionally challenging financial climate, particularly for the humanities and social sciences. As research libraries budgets decrease or flatline, the primary market for scholarly monographs has limited potential for growth. Coupled with the rapid growth of streaming platforms, it is clear interviewees are watching how they might regain revenue lost through decreasing print sales with new platforms of engagement, including through audiobooks.

A number of interviewees also discussed the importance of encouraging an increasingly wide range of authors to publish monographs in a variety of languages and formats. They also described how emerging open access initiatives, including Fund to Mission, Path to Open, University Press Library Open, and Opening the Future, seek to protect and foster these works.[1]

In the next phase of this project, currently underway, we are conducting interviews with acquisitions and subject librarians from institutions of different sizes, both public and private. In these interviews, we’re now focusing on the ways in which libraries acquire e-monographs and how the monographic market would ideally shift to better meet their needs. As we ask parallel questions to those listed above from the libraries’ point of view, including how publisher and aggregator models best fit with the mission or values of their academic organization, we are eager to learn how these ideas may align.

We look forward to the publication of a full report from this research project this coming spring.

[1]  Path to Open is coordinated by JSTOR. JSTOR and Ithaka S+R are both part of the nonprofit organization ITHAKA.