I can think of no realm that would benefit more from electronic publishing than academia. For that reason, I was delighted to read Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s comments the other day (also picked up by TeleRead), as this supports a few long-term projects of mine: trying to get scholarly papers and books in electronic form to facilitate research.
As it turns out, this wasn’t an isolated post but part of ElectraPress, a “collaborative, open-access scholarly project intended to facilitate the reimagining of academic discourse in digital environments.” The electronic resources projects I’ve seen have tended to be university-internal. People are doing their own thing to suit their own needs, and there’s little in the way of working together even within a discipline. This is why ElectraPress, which aims to be a center for collaboration across the humanities, is a breath of fresh air.
While the idea has been out there since 2004, the on-line project seems to be in its infancy, and at the moment is still somewhat light on content. So far there’s a blog, a forum, and a wiki, with a growing bibliography for electronic publishing. Contributions are highly encouraged.
This is exactly what the academic community needs: a place where people committed to developing electronic publishing for academia can meet, discuss their ideas and projects, and work together. I really hope ElectraPress gains the public support necessary to accomplish its goals.
