Open Science for Arts, Design and Music/Guidelines/Publishers

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The project Open Science for Arts, Design and Music contributes to open access and alternative forms of publications by negotiating with institutional, national and international publishers in the fields of arts, design and music

National Publishers

National Publishers Swiss publishers collaborating with the academia must comply with the rules dictated by the Swiss National Fund and thus make publicly funded works immediately available for free in Open Access. To meet this requirement, most publishers in Switzerland publish two editions of the same work: a paper and a digital version. What is included in these two versions may vary depending on the publishers' attitudes towards open access and their willingness to experiment with alternative forms of publications. Enriched digital publication: the digital edition is approached as an opportunity to explore alternative forms of publishing and add extra multimedia content not available in the printed version. Print and digital are the same Impoverished digital publication: the open access digital publication lacks some of the content that is only available in the printed edition. This is the case with digital versions featuring low resolution images or no images at all due to copyright issues. Case studies Publishers play a key role in the successful implementation of the Swiss national Open Access strategy. To ensure their support, the OS-ADM team has selected three national publishers specialising in Arts, Design and Music whose editorial OA policy is be explored as case study. Edizioni Casagrade MētisPresses Triest Verlag The first stage of the case study analysis consisted in a structured conversation. Publishers were invited to share their perspectives on OA and provide examples of their OA strategy. The conversations touched the following topics: Current OA policy Successful or challenging case studies of Open Access publications CC licences Impact of national strategy Reasons for releasing books in OA Collaboration with academia Business models The present and near future of publishing regarding Open Access OA literacy OA visibility and impact Different Open Access roads (e.g. green, gold and platinum OA) Dealing with Open Access and images, video, art, design and music? Experiences with alternative forms of digital publications, multimedia publications or experimental formats The recordings of the conversations are released under CC BY 4.0 OS-ADM in conversation with Edizioni Casagrande (Fabio Casagrande, 23.01.2024) OS-ADM in conversation with MētisPresses (Léa Roché, 24.01.2024) OS-ADM in conversation with Triest Verlag (Andrea Wiegelmann, 25.01.2024) Edizioni Casagrande Born out of a bookshop founded in 1924, today Edizioni Casagrande is the most important publishing house in Italian-speaking Switzerland. In addition to its literary, prose and poetry series, Edizioni Casagrande publishes also non-fiction books with a focus on (local) history, culture, sociology and art. Particular attention is also paid to the cultural and linguistic history of the Alpine regions, with the publication of the journal Archivio Storico Ticinese. Since 2015, following the collaboration with the Museo d'Arte della Svizzera Italiana, the production of art and photography books has been intensified. In Switzerland, promotion and distribution in bookshops is handled directly by the publishing house or the bookshop of the same name. Since 2000, Edizioni Casagrande's books are promoted in Italy by Emme Promozione and distributed by Messaggerie Libri Spa. Digital publications Edizioni Casagrande produces digital publications of research in the humanities in cooperation with the Swiss National Science Foundation. These are mainly dissertations, conference proceedings, monographs. So far, Edizioni Casagrande has published around 40 digital books. The formats for the digital publications can be PDFs or ePUB. These are either in open access and available on libreo and OAPEN or for sale on the platform edigita. Open Access Edizioni Casagrande's move to open access was dictated by the policies of the SNSF. Initially they approached OA with some apprehension since they were accustomed to covering production costs with book sales. While recognising its importance in the academic field, the publisher expresses doubts towards OA with regards to copyright and bibliodiversity. Almost all OA publications have also been published in hard copy, thus maintaining a double version (digital and paper) of the same book. The OA version of the publications have been released under CC BY-NC-ND licenses and authors' maintain the copyright of their works. The visibility of the OA publications is measured with Crossref. The choice of OA is not always dictated only by the need to adhere to the requests of SNSF for publications in the field of academic research. Sometimes, the choice of whether to distribute a book in OA or not is the result of a decision made by the publisher together with the authors to promote the dissemination of the work to a wide and diverse audience. The case of the monograph Navigando fiumi paraguaiani. Mosè Bertoni esploratore e cartografo dell'Alto Paranà is an interesting example that illustrates the rational for choosing or not OA. The bilingual (Italian/Spanish) book is a monograph dedicated to the Ticinese emigrant to Paraguay Mosè Bertoni. Sales, according to the editor, would never be of significant profit, thus decisions regarding OA were not made on commercial grounds. In an attempt to to reach a readership that would be otherwise difficult to reach with the paper version, namely the South American public, the authors Danilo Baratti and Patrizia Candolfi and the publisher had to decide whether to release the digital version in OA or not. They opted for the latter (two PDFs, one in Italian and one in Spanish) in the belief that the availability of digital books on international commercial platforms (e.g. Amazon) makes them easier to find than on OA platforms. the decision raises some doubts as to the actual findability of OA, especially when it comes to reaching a general public outside academia. Swiss OA policy Edizioni Casagrande's publishing strategy complies with the OA policy advocated in Switzerland concerning publications resulting from publicly funded research. The publisher is contrary to an extension of OA policies outside academic research. They are particularly opposed to a bill for 2025/2028, according to which Swiss publishers will have to release all their publications in OA to the national library. Along with other Swiss publishers, Edizioni Casagrande argues in defence of bibliodiversity and the copyrights of the authors and the publishing houses themselves. Objection to OA concerns publications that are not publicly financed but supported by sales. OA and paper versions The OA books published by Edizioni Casagrande are also available in print, giving the reader the choice of downloading the publication for free or buying the printed version. Funding for the print version are found outside SNSF, which only finances the digital version in OA. The publisher's early experiences of OA revealed a superiority of the print version over the digital version in OA. According to the statistics of print sales and digital visibility, the former sold more than the latter was downloaded for free online, even thought on the publisher's website it is clearly stated that the publication is available for free of charge. The publisher explains this situation by attributing it to a preference of the average reader to read on paper rather than on the screen, especially when dealing with text heavy publications as it is the case with Edizioni Casagrande's books. Multimedia content Edizioni Casagrande publishes multimedia content that enriches its printed books. Nelly Valsangiacomo's book Dietro al microfono. Intellettuali italiani alla Radio svizzera (1930-1980) is an example of a paper publication enriched by multimedia content available online. Thanks to an agreement with RSI (Radio Svizzera Italiana), readers can listen to the voices of the interviewees on a dedicated webpage on the RSI website: www.rsi.ch/dietroalmicrofono. Or at least they could since the webpage is no longer available, thus raising the issue of the long-term sustainability of this type of content. To overcome problems related to digital longevity, the publisher suggests using a new type of permanent identifier, namely the ISBN-A. The ISBN-A is an additional service of the ISBN code applicable to any published product. It is a persistent link that is activated on the Internet via the DOI system technology. The ISBN-A allows multimedia content to be placed on an external platform (e.g. on extendedbook) and be permanently linked to the book's ISBN code. Images and third parties' material The handling of copyrighted material (e.g. images) is not an easy issue for publishers. Already present in print media, the difficulty increases when dealing with multimedia formats and OA. Edizioni Casagrande attributes its difficulty in using open cc licences to the presence of images as by law they cannot sublicense the copyright of third-party material. Future business models The publisher's reflections on new business models concern aspects related to language and printing technologies. According to the Edizioni Casagrande, language has a considerable impact on editorial choices related to the digital. Indeed, the digital market changes depending on the language: in the case of the Italian language it stops at 5-7%, while in English the percentage of the digital book rises to 17-19%. New digital printing techniques have considerably lowered the production costs of paper books. Print on demand has further lowered production, storage and distribution costs. This change influences editorial choices, giving the possibility of producing a more refined first edition, followed by a second print-on-demand edition of lower quality at a lower selling price. Regarding OA, the publisher expects an evolution in the multimedia sector with the use of enriched books. MētisPresses MētisPresses is an independent publishing house based in Geneva. Founded in 2023, it specialised in academic books in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Their catalogue include also book on art history, literary criticism, architecture and urbanism. They address both an informed and non-specialist audience, that is students, academics but also the general public. With a team of 5, MētisPresses is a small publisher that does all editorial work internally, e-books included. They publish between 13 and 15 book, and 5 to 7 e-books a year. SNSF OA policy The SNSF decision to ask publisher to release digital content immediately in OA for free was meat with some concern by MētisPresses. After internal discussions the publisher decided to adopt the Gold Road to OA. Together with the digital OA version, books are also printed on paper. Thus when working with the SNSF, MētisPresses produces two objects: the printed book and the OA e-book. The latter complements the former by featuring the same content and enriched documents. Enriched E-Books MētisPresses is been publishing e-books since 2018. This digital turn was the direct consequence of the SNSF policy that requested publisher receiving publication funding to provide digital versions. At the beginning od this new editorial practice, they were allowed an embargo period of 2 years after which all e-books were to be released in OA. The workflow begins with the printed version of the book. Once this is designed, attention is turned towards the e-book. Using the same layout as the printed version, the e-book is enriched with interactive content. Editing a book takes around a year, followed by 3 months of layout and a month and a half for the digital conversion. Once the book is printed and released on the marked, it is also published online at the same time MētisPresses's e-books are not simple digital translations of printed versions (not simple PDFs). The are meant to offer both the author and the reader something more. The printed version always includes information about the e-book. There is clear dialogue system between the two versions that guide the reader. A special symbol (small lens) on the printed book indicates every time the reader can access extra special content on the free digital publication available online on the publisher website. The book Transformation Silencieuse: Étude architecturale du bâti alpin provide a good example of MētisPresses approach to enriched books. In this case, the e-book offers the reader and interactive map where one select one of the 75 case studies and access extra research data (e.g. additional images and plans) that are not included in the printed version of the book. With MētisPresses, authors have the chance to enrich the e-book with research data that can not be included in the printed book. The research data themselves, i.e. the interactive content included in the e-book, are selected, organised and designed to facilitate their access and reuse. This process asks researchers/authors to change their approach to publishing their research output and think about it in a different, more complex, way. From a publisher perspective it is necessary to deal with authors who have a clear idea of the kind of research data they have and how they want to share them given the possibilities of digital publications. EPUB 3 The first e-books published by MētisPresses were designed using Aquafadas. Since 2020 they changed programme as the former was too expensive and did not satisfy the publisher's expectations when dealing with enriched e-books. After research and trials, they adopted InDesign as the programme enables a plugin for digital publishing resulting in EPUB 3. The choice of EPUB 3 instead of EPUB 2 is due to the need to keep the same layout for the printed and e-book version. If requested (for example by the institutions) MētisPresses also uses enlarged PDF formats that, by contrast to EPUB, can be included by librarians in the institutional catalogue. However, enlarged PDFs are considered technically less efficient than EPUB 3 as they offer fewer options and cannot manage multiple layers of information as well as EPUB 3 formats. Thus the choice about the format - i.e. whether to choose enlarged PDFs or EPUB 3 formats – depends on the kind of content that enriches the digital publication. The publisher is aware of the problematics and limitations of EPUB 3 formats. The main issue with EPUB 3, especially if considered in the context of OA, is that it is not a open source format readable on any computer. MētisPresses recommends the open source software Thorium Reader as it does not affect the layout of the digital publication, thus it interferes neither with the content not the design and experience of the object. Visibility The choice of EPUB 3 formats, while providing both authors and readers with the opportunity to share, access and reuse extra interactive content, makes the publication less visible and thus less findable on institutional repositories and OA directories such as oapen since those often do not sustain the complexity of EPUB formats. This technical issues raises a contradiction in the SNSF OA policy. The SNSF, in fact, on the one hand accepts and funds enriched books, but one the other it also asks for a (poorer) PDF version of the digital publication to be archived in its system. Furthermore, MētisPresses ensures storage on the website, but puts the authors directly in charge of distributing the digital book (both EPUB 3 and PDF versions) within institutional platforms. The reason for delegating the author is mere workload distribution since the publisher does not have enough resources to deal with the distribution of the e-book in-house. Collaborating with universities libraries to improve distribution could be a a solution to ensure better visibility to the OA publications. Multimedia and alternative forms of publications MētisPresses' adoption EPUB 3 as their format for digital publications depends also on their decision to provide readers with an experience that is close to reading a printed book. The possibility of using open formats such as html websites as an alternative is usually avoided. By contrast to EPUB 3, websites need coding, that is a different skill set and different approach to the publishing practice. The book Sur les bancs du paysage: Enjeux didactiques, démarches et outils is an example of MētisPresses' experimental approach to digital publications. In this case the printed and digital version of the publication do not correspond. The latter is still designed with InDesign but it shares similarities with a website at the level of interactive and visual experience. What is missing and could make a difference in the digital and OA turn of academic publishing is, according to MētisPresses, an open software mean to be used by publishers instead of coders (i.e. appropriate for their knowledge and skill set) that can allow them to design OA digital publication without the compatibility issues that they are at the moment encountering with, for example, EPUB 3 formats. Digital turn and the publishing industry According to MētisPresses OA and, more in general, digital publishing has been challenging the very definition of a publisher's job leading it towards the field of computer sciences and information technologies. This trespassing of professional boundaries is however not supported with the needed training and skill sets. One of the challenges of the digital and OA turn for publishers is the constant need to keep up with innovations and advances. According to MētisPresses, technology watch is an essential aspect of the contemporary publishing industry. Most of it is self-initiated and self-training is the result of a trial and error process. Every new project pushes the team of MētisPresses to find new tools and solutions. Most recently they have started using Ajar Productions as this pug in allowed they to add scrolling frames to their E-Books. Sharing knowledge To compensate the general lack of knowledge in the publishing sector around digital publishing and OA and thus contribute to information and experience exchange, MētisPresses is in the process of discussing with the association Livre Suisse possibilities of knowledge sharing. They argue for the need of specialist training and are keen on contributing with their own experience and have, in return, the opportunity to learn from others. To this end, they also suggest a close collaboration between university institutions and publishers. Triest Verlag Triest Verlag für Architektur, Design und Typografie is a Swiss specialist book publisher based in Zurich and founded in 2015 by Kerstin Forster and Andrea Wiegelmann with the focus on architecture, design and typography. Triest Verlag publishes 6 to 8 book per year, with a print run of 1500 on average. The publisher's return is about 50% of the net price. In some cases, they are deeply involved in the making of a book and take on the role of co-editors and co-authors. This type of editorial projects, in which the publishers is directly engaged also at the state of research and production of content, can take up to six years in the making. Other projects, instead, come out of cooperations with universities. In these cases, the publishers is not involved in the research or creation of content. Triest Verlag is known for its beautifully designed and crafted books. For each project they work with freelance graphic designers. They opt for local or short-distance (Switzerland or Germany) printers in order to enable graphic designers to work closely and in person with the printing house. The decision is also made out of ecological reasons so as to reduce C02 emission and comes with higher printing costs. The downsides of OA Triest Verlag's attitude towards OA is rather reluctant. They see the digital world in conflict with their own approach towards books and publishing as they struggle to find a satisfactory and feasible solution to the digital translation of their printed books. OA's lack of materiality The publisher's main issue against OA is its lack of physicality and two-dimensional quality. Each publication is the result of a close collaboration with the graphic designers. Each aspect – layout, font, paper – is thus carefully chosen in order to provide the reader with the best physical experience of the printed book. All the efforts put into the printed object with regards to reader's physical experience of the book are vain once the publication is digitalised. OA and copyright Copyright management difficulties are another aspect that does not convince Triest Verlag of the feasibility of OA. Right owners can deny authorisation for the publication in OA of images that are instead included in the printed version of the book. Images in digital version are then pixellated. As such, not only the physical and the digital versions do not correspond, but the latter also becomes pointless since the meaning and the added value of the publication depends on the close dialogue between text and images. Copyright management for the OA versions is also problematically expensive. Right owners would allow Triest Verlag to publish the images also in OA only if the publisher were to pay a fee per download and this is unfeasible for the publisher since they do not cover the costs through sales. Copyright clearance in OA is also more expensive that the printed version because since the size of the images is not fixed, publishers are charged the prise for full page. In the case of the printed book, instead, the publisher finds that copyright management is easier because details such as image size or print run are known in advance. A further issue related to copyright and OA that Triest Verlag struggles with is the concern about unwanted and unauthorised re-use of third-parties content once released in OA and downloaded. (Un)sustainability of OA Overall, Triest Verlag sees OA as hardly feasible within its current business model as this does not support the waiver of the publisher's return on investment through sales that is implied by OA. The publisher is sceptical about the actual cost-effectiveness of OA for users since the digital format requires technology and equipment with a non-trivial cost. They also point out an ethical problem related to the ecological impact of digital. Finally, they are also conscious and express their concerns about the longevity of digital formats. OA, AI and data mining Triest Verlag is also concerned about data mining and the use of content by AI. In particular, the publisher objected to possible commercial use of material without compensating the authors for this. OA as 'impoverished' version Despite its critical stance, Triest Verlag is currently in the process of publishing its first book in OA: archithese reader: Critical Positions in Search of Postmodernity, 1971–1976. OA was requested by the editors in order to comply with the SNSF requests. The book is a survey on the Swiss architectural magazine Archithese that include also the facsimile reprint and English translation of about twenty-five articles. Copyright of texts and images was a challenging aspect of this publication. Copyright issues got even more complicated with the digital OA version. In some cases, the right holder allowed only the reprint of the extrapolated text but not the reproduction of the original article in the OA version of the book. Some rights holders were willing to allow OA but only upon payment for each download of the book. The publisher considers this option to be unfeasible because it cannot return the costs since the publication is available online free of charge. Overall, this experience gave Triest Verlag further evidence that copyright management with regards to OA is very time-consuming and therefore a difficult workload to manage that they consider not sustainable within the publisher's current business model. For Triest Verlag, at the moment, the compromise solution is turning the OA digital version of their books into an impoverished version of the actual printed publications which are instead more complex and thus enriched. In the case of Archithese, the OA version has the same layout as the printed book but, due to the above mentioned issues with the copyright clearance of images, the images are pixellated. Thus the OA version only enables readers to access the text. However, the impoverished digital version is not always a viable option because in some cases the lack of images renders the text useless due to the lack of visual information complementing the verbal content. OA and the Academia Triest Verlag collaborates on a regular bases with the academia. The “Visual Archives” series, for example, is co-edited together with ECAL / Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO). Books from this series focus on unexplored legacies of designers, companies and brands. They feature documents and visual material from archives that are accompanied and contextualised by critical essays. As a result of the SNSF OA policy, from 2024 the series, as well as all publications that are resulting from publicly funded research project, must be published in a digital OA format. Triest Verlag sees its collaboration with Academia as viable as long as the SNSF will accept 'impoverishes' digital versions, that is versions where some of the material included in the printed book (e.g. images) will not the visible, as compliant with its OA strategy. However, the eventual request for the printed and digital versions to be identical without any extra funding supporting the publishers might regrettably be a dealbreaker for Triest Verlag. Publishers and the SNSF Since 2017 Triest Verlag has been a member of SWIPS – Swiss Independent Publishers. OA is a topic of debate within the organisation as this is a challenge that all small publishers have to face and find a solution for. SWIPS is active in defending the cause of small independent publishers to the SNSF, explaining the challenges they face in complying with the funding body's OA requirements.

Institutional Publications
Institutional Publications SUPSI Artichoke Iride

International Journals
International Journals Teatri delle Diversità AIS/Design Journal: Storia e Ricerche