November 3, 2017
Ann Snoeyenbos, International Sales Manager with Project MUSE, recently traveled abroad to discuss MUSE Open, the Mellon-funded initiative to distribute open access (OA) monographs on the Project MUSE platform, with audiences in both India and Germany. In India, Snoeyenbos gave a presentation at the CALIBER conference held at Anna University in Chennai. The conference theme was Re-Envisioning Role of Libraries: Transforming Scholarly Communication and Snoeyenbos was featured in a session titled MUSE Open: The Role of Aggregators in Open Access Publishing. Following her presentation she fielded questions about the cost to participate in MUSE Open and whether content from India would be accepted.
While in Germany, attending the Frankfurt Book Fair, Snoeyenbos presented a poster at CRL-sponsored event New Directions for Libraries, Scholars, and Partnerships: An International Symposium, where she again answered attendee questions about the launch of content from MUSE Open, slated for June 2018.
At the annual Charleston Conference, November 6-10, Elizabeth Windsor, Manager, Strategic Initiatives & Business Information, Project MUSE, will be participating in a roundtable discussion on how missions shape publishing and product strategies and how they are applied in new ways in response to changes in the digital and higher education spaces on Wednesday, November 8, 12:45-2:00pm. This will be an open session with representatives from Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, Oxford, and University of NC University Presses. Topics to be covered include:
- Sustainability of Open Access
- Use of Data and Analytics
- OER’s/Publishing Services
- The evolving role of print scholarly communication
Presentations will be followed by a moderated QA. Attendees can expect to learn how mission-driven university presses are making plans now to remain valuable to the publishing ecosystem far into the future.
Visit the MUSE open site to stay up-to-date on the latest developments with the initiative.
About MUSE Open
MUSE Open is an initiative to distribute open access (OA) monographs on the Project MUSE platform with a best-in-class, scholar-informed user experience. Supported by a grant of nearly $1 million from the Mellon Foundation, our goal is to deliver OA monographs that will be broadly shared, widely discoverable, and richly linked.
Through collaboration with our participating publishers, hundreds of books will be freely available on MUSE when we launch our newly redesigned platform in 2018. MUSE Open amplifies our commitment to the scholarly community with OA monographs that are visible, fully integrated in the research process, and potentially transformative, on our trusted and highly diversified platform.
For Users
- Over 300 monographs in a browser-native format at launch
- Free to read, download, print, and share with no restrictions
- Accessible content that can be used on any device, including adaptive devices
- An interface designed in partnership with scholars for scholars
For Libraries
- Support for discovery of OA monographs (MARC, KBART, metadata distribution and linking)
- Seamless integration of books and journals, gated and OA content on a new and improved MUSE website
- Promotion of accessibility standards for open access content
- Preserving OA content with support from LOCKSS and Portico
For Publishers
- Support for new types of OA monographs
- Development of workflows and tools to transform complex scholarly content cost-effectively
- Sophisticated user analytics to inform decision-making
- Creation of a sustainable hosting model for OA monographs
For the Scholarly Community
- Linking scholars and researchers with freely available content from the world’s most distinguished university presses and scholarly societies
- Promoting accessibility guidelines for content creators, to help research reach all readers
- Utilizing analytics to understand the impact of open scholarship
- Born from a non-profit, mission-based home with shared values and built on the Johns Hopkins University campus
