0.25 Removable type  (Page 7/8)

The analog “commons” as depicted in Toulmin’s work was a bounded space. For all the complexity that Toulmin introduced, concepts evolved in ways that were intuitively organized and generally rational. The digital commons we apprehend today is often a contested zone where bounded and unbounded impulses compete: intellectual property laws, copyright, and the commodification of information can struggle with open access, file sharing, social networks, and a much more freeform, non-hierarchical, even chaotic participation in the creation and distribution of knowledge. The unbounded features of the new digital knowledge commons have resulted in the reconceptualization of academic libraries and, by extension, of the modern university.

The shape of things to come

In addition to the complexities that the disparate lexicons and methods of extracting meaning within analog and digital environments entail, three other circumstances impede resolution of the ongoing crisis in scholarly publishing. One is the absence of a working model to induce migration to a digital publication platform, and a business plan that forecasts sustainability for that model. The second is the lack of incentives to allow adjustments for staff layoffs or reassignments; and the third is the general failure of higher education to address the disruptive challenges and potentially liberating opportunities posed by the digital revolution. This last section will ground the argument in more concrete terms.

A working model

I believe that the Rice University Press/NINES collaboration offers one such model: it is a coherent response to scholarship and teaching set in a burgeoning digital library, is flexible to allow for new questions and methodological approaches to research in the targeted fields of study, and can produce new modes of expression within its publication/product line that reflect these new approaches. As an open-source solution, it is susceptible to broadly based contributions and enhancements to its tools and underlying software, and is agnostic to disciplinary focus. An impeccable peer review process is readily available—indeed built into this model—to guarantee rigor of assessment and trusted reviews.

The business model can be addressed on two levels. There is the “local” calculation specific to the Rice University Press that focuses on the return of investment through sales and other revenue streams, such as grants and gifts. We have found that since re-opening the press, every publication continues to sell each month; extrapolating that the press will publish titles with greater frequency indefinitely, cost recovery can be calculated. The low overhead of the press is also a factor in its longer-term sustainability. New modes of publication as revenue are difficult to calculate; the expected sale of the Literature by Design chapbooks for students is expected to bring in considerable income while significantly enhancing interest in Victorian Studies, yet that remains to be proven. A relatively small gift that would establish an endowment would help sustain the press in perpetuity, but such a gift is speculative.