Open Book Publishers Blog (Page 12)

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Latin Love

I chose to focus on Amores(Book I) because Ovid’s text seems particularly suitable for students at that crucial stage when they have learned the basics of Latin and are just starting on real Latin authors. In some ways it is easiest to make the transition by means of

Human Rights: Fit For the 21st Century?

Global Citizenship Commission

Human Rights: Fit For the 21st Century?

We’re thrilled to announce that our latest title The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 21st Century: A Living Document in a Changing World [https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0091] was launched on April 18th at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The report was presented

Sharing Knowledge Just Got More Personal

Sharing Knowledge Just Got More Personal

[http://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/59/1]OBP is delighted to announce the launch of OBP Customised [http://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/59/1], a new line of customised editions that lets readers create their own books! We are the first Open Access publisher in the UK to offer such

What is Metaethics?

Catherine Wilson

What is Metaethics?

Metaethics [https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0087] is the study of moral thought and moral language. Rather than addressing questions about what practices are right and wrong, and what our obligations to other people or future generations are – questions of so-called ‘normative’ ethics – metaethics asks what morality actually is.

Writing the Life of Schlegel

August Wilhelm Schlegel

Writing the Life of Schlegel

My approach to this biography [https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0069] of Schlegel came from an unexpected quarter. I had already written a biography of Ludwig Tieck, Schlegel’s old friend, (1985) and had completed a study of Shakespeare’s reception in Germany (2003), but had not contemplated any

It's the economy, stupid. (Or is it?)

It's the economy, stupid. (Or is it?)

Everyone thinks they know that poor communities harbour more social problems than rich ones. Well, almost everyone; in academic as well as popular literature, you can also find uplifting accounts of how poverty and adversity foster a spirit of mutual aid: “we may not have much, but whatever we’ve

Deadbeat Donors

Beyond Price: Essays on Birth and Death

Deadbeat Donors

I was thrilled about the birth of my new grandson; yet as I held him, just a week after his birth, I wondered how he should feel about that event, or how I should feel on his behalf. I silently congratulated him on his good fortune: “How lucky you are

Introducing Some Data to the Open Access Debate: OBP’s Business Model (Part One)

Introducing Some Data to the Open Access Debate: OBP’s Business Model (Part One)

There is quite a lot of discussion about how to finance the costs of publishing monographs in Open Access. While lots of alternative business models have been identified, actual hard data on the publishing costs and revenue associated with academic books are conspicuously absent from the debate (for fairly obvious

Introducing Data to the Open Access Debate: OBP's Business Model (Part Two)

Introducing Data to the Open Access Debate: OBP's Business Model (Part Two)

In the first part of this post I identified some of the problems I perceive with the legacy publishing model for academic books, articulated the primary objectives of OBP, and noted that at OBP we have the same number of sales per book and two orders of magnitude more readers

Introducing Data to the Open Access Debate: OBP’s Business Model (Part Three)

Introducing Data to the Open Access Debate: OBP’s Business Model (Part Three)

Here are our cost and revenue figures. As also reported at the OASPA conference, they are for the 12-month period from 1 September 2014 to 31 August 2015. Being based in the UK, our accounts are actually denominated in British pounds, but to ease international comparison I have reported everything

My Life — Dreaming Aloud

Black Inked Pearl

My Life — Dreaming Aloud

Brilliant Open Book! It means that for the first time in — wow am I that old (but not quite demented yet) — in over forty years, people in Africa have a real chance to read Oral Literature in Africa [http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/97/oral-literature-in-africa] (if they want to: many

A Second Great Age of Revolution: Emerson and the World

Jean McClure Mudge

A Second Great Age of Revolution: Emerson and the World

What does Emerson’s revolutionary message have to say to the world now? The famous uprisings that set the stage for Emerson in the first Age of Revolution were the American and French Revolutions. Bloodied and often brutalized in these wars, citizens yet emerged with an established political framework and

Why forests matter for the Sustainable Development Goals on zero hunger

Why forests matter for the Sustainable Development Goals on zero hunger

As the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit [https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/summit] convenes in New York this weekend to adopt the post-2015 development agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals [http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/], the contribution of forests and tree-based systems to the “Zero Hunger Challenge [http://www.

From Stage to Page: Studying the Performance of Music

A Musicology of Performance

From Stage to Page: Studying the Performance of Music

Why study the performance of music? Is it not the composer who creates “the music” that listeners of Western classical music enjoy hearing? Does the performer matter? What can an instrumentalist, conductor or singer contribute to “the music” left behind by the composer and immortalised in the notated score? Well,

Camera Memoria: Some Thoughts Initiated by Lionel Gossman’s Thomas Annan of Glasgow

Documentary Photography

Camera Memoria: Some Thoughts Initiated by Lionel Gossman’s Thomas Annan of Glasgow

Thomas Annan is a fascinating study, both in the particular case of Lionel Gossman’s fine monograph on this photographer [http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/339/thomas-annan-of-glasgow--pioneer-of-the-documentary-photograph] (I nearly wrote ‘artist’) and in the general sense of an individual experimenting with a dynamic new technology. The tensions in this first

All That Is Gold (OA) Does Not Glitter

All That Is Gold (OA) Does Not Glitter

Earlier this month the VSNU (Association of Universities in the Netherlands) announced a boycott of Elsevier – the largest academic publisher in the world – in protest at its stranglehold on the academic community. The alternative, they argue, is Gold Open Access. The Netherlands’ commitment to OA is not without precedent: witness

Pro Bono: Open Access Cicero

Pro Bono: Open Access Cicero

OBP is delighted to announce that a new web version of one of our Classics Textbooks is now available online. Cicero: On Pompey’s Command (De Imperio), 27–49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, Commentary, and Translation, ed. by Ingo Gildenhard, Louise Hodgson, et al., was published by Open

Polar Bears, Pollution and Palm Oil: Some Conservation Progress

Polar Bears, Pollution and Palm Oil: Some Conservation Progress

What Works in Conservation by William J. Sutherland, Lynn V. Dicks, Nancy Ockendon and Rebecca K. Smith, we decided to share some recent interesting developments in conservation from around the world. The Arctic On July 2nd, the US government announced its plans to promote polar bear conservation, through collaboration with

Drachmatic Events: Noam Chomsky on Greece

Drachmatic Events: Noam Chomsky on Greece

The on-going debt crisis in Greece has prompted some controversial remarks from the internationally renowned scholar and Open Book author Noam Chomsky. Since 2010, Greece has been implementing austerity measures (i.e. reduced government spending) as part of its bailout deal with the joint powers of the IMF, the European

Interdisciplinary Diderot

Caroline Warman

Interdisciplinary Diderot

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a mathematician, a major art critic, an innovative novelist, a playwright, and, of course, the editor of the Encyclopédie, which contained articles on most subjects under the sun: science, medicine, the arts, horse-breeding, ship-building… It is a fascinating, not to say enlightening, exercise to approach the

In Honour of Professor Robert Rennie

In Honour of Professor Robert Rennie

In 2014, Robert Rennie retired from the post he had held since 1994 as Professor of Conveyancing at the University of Glasgow. This brought an end to part – but only part – of a remarkable career encompassing both academia and legal practice. Robert qualified as a solicitor in 1969, having previously

How I Came Home

Documentary Photography

How I Came Home

For most of my professional career I was a teacher of French literature and much of my published work has been in that field. But I have always been a wanderer and, since my retirement in 1999, perhaps a rather reckless one. Sometimes I look back to see if I

In a Pilgrim's Footsteps

20th-Century Literature

In a Pilgrim's Footsteps

In September 2011, I found myself standing on a rock on the shore of Lake Peipsi, the huge stretch of water that lies between Estonia and St Petersburg, peering out across the haze in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Russian shore. Behind me stretched a row of

Spelling the Answer

Spelling the Answer

I wrote the Dictionary of the British English Spelling System [https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0053] because (1) most children learning to read and spell need to be taught the most effective method of identifying and understanding unfamiliar written words and of writing down words they don’t yet

Knowledge is for sharing

Academic Publishing

Knowledge is for sharing

Open Access: the future of academic publishing Researchers, authors and funding bodies are realising that the high price of access to academic books and journals means that only a select few can read their work. Open Access (that is, making texts free to read and reuse) helps spread research results