Via the Stoa Consortium.
ETC Press has just launched as an “academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint.” The project is affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and is in partnership with Lulu.com. When authors submit their work to ETC they retain ownership of it but they also must submit it under either an Attribution-NoDerivativeWorks-NonCommercial or an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. genres. This is interesting; we’ve been thinking and talking about the use of print-on-demand publishers like Lulu.com as a printer/distributor for a small academic press that needs its publishing venture to be relatively risk-free.
The Stoa ends with this note:
Often books that are distributed by sites such as Lulu are assumed to be vanity publications, non-refereed and therefore of a low academic standard, not accepted for review by learnèd journals, regarded with suspicion when seen on resumés by hiring committees, etc. Will this change as respectable publications start to use this service? Is it changing already? Does the assignment of an ISBN make a difference?
My answer- well, it just takes some people longer to realize trends. You know how it is, some people are slow and behind the curve.
Tim Bulkeley and I among others have been urging biblical scholars to take this approach for years now. Perhaps they will one day. Well behind the curve. Tim, isn’t it good to be at the head of the line for a change?
I can see the heads of various nay-saying bloggers splitting open right about now. I think I’ll sit back and enjoy it (with something of a regrettably mocking smirk on my face and a shadow of disdain for their earlier contempt expressed at the notion of the concept). Or, in other words, ‘I told ya so!’
I must be “slow and behind the curve”. “Attribution-NoDerivativeWorks-NonCommercial or an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. genres” just leaves me baffled.
By: MikaelBjarturMoolsenTheBaptist on July 10, 2008
at 4:57 pm
Thanks for pointing this out, Jim. SBL has become pretty good at experimenting with some of this, and so (at last) the glacial speed with which academic biblical studies is adopting such new opportunities in publishing may be speeding up!
MikaelBjarturMoolsenTheBaptist it is quite simple:
Attribution means a user must acknowledge the originator of the work.
NoDerivativeWorks means you cannot take bits from the work and use them to make new works (this is sometimes desirable, though often allowing others to use more freely can be really useful).
ShareAlike means users cannot put greater restrictions on a work (or its derivatives) than the originator did.
These are ways of stating upfront how the originator is willing to limit the rights they would otherwise have through copyright, and so make it easier for others to use their work.
By: asiabible on July 12, 2008
at 7:59 pm