ANU E Press - About

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Hosted by the Division of Information at The Australian National University, ANU E Press was established in 2003 to explore and enable new modes of scholarly publishing. Taking advantage of new information and communication technologies to make available the intellectual output of the academic community of the ANU, the primary focus of ANU E Press is the production of electronic scholarly texts. However, all texts are also available for purchase through a Print on Demand (PoD) service.

ANU E Press produces fully peer-reviewed works and is listed by DEST on their Register of Acceptable Commercial Publishers, enabling ANU E Press authors to claim points under the Higher Education Research Data Collection scheme.

The decision to establish ANU E Press was based on:

a recognition of the urgent need to find an effective mechanism for disseminating high quality ANU scholarship that lacks a ready commercial market
a determination to eliminate barriers inherent in existing models of scholarly communication
an acceptance that the operational overheads of the conventional academic press are no longer affordable
a realisation that emergent electronic press technologies offer a feasible alternative to the conventional academic press in terms of cost and available infrastructure.

Function

Through active engagement and modification of current generation technologies, ANU E Press:

provides standardised publishing processes via a generic set of publishing workflows
provides content indexing in the form of subject headings and metadata, as well as hyperlinked term indexing through scripted generation
converts original format files to XML, in order to facilitate the production of electronic editions of previously published scholarly titles
publishes works in both electronic and print formats

Submission and Peer Review Process

Initial manuscript submissions to the ANU E Press office are referred to the coordinator of the College Editorial Committee that relates to the disciplinary area of the work. The Editorial Committee determines whether the proposal is of interest and, if so, requests a complete manuscript for evaluation via independent peer review. The process from peer-review to final copy-editing is the responsibility of the Editorial Board/Author, depending on the structure of the board. Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, ANU E Press commences the production cycle.

Format

Ebooks are available in a range of formats: Acrobat PDF, HTML for onscreen viewing and HTML for mobile devices. These formats, as well as Print-on-Demand (PoD) books, are generated from a single source file (XML).

Titles

ANU E Press titles range across the breadth of academic disciplines, and include monographs, journals and conference proceedings, as well as biographies and autobiographies of key scholarly figures. Over 46 titles will be produced in 2007. In 2008 we will see a similar increase in production as infrastructure and technological processes become further developed.

Access

ANU E Press eBooks are freely available in a range of formats (Acrobat PDF, HTML for onscreen viewing and HTML for mobile devices), and are accessible via the ANU E Press website: http://epress.anu.edu.au.

Statistics

Statistics gathered from ANU E Press web activities demonstrate a high level of download and online viewing of E Press titles, as well as witnessing continued dramatic growth:

In 2007, there were 1,252,735 total downloads of ANU E Press titles (PDF and HTML) and 5,418,426 total hits on the ANU E Press website.
In 2006, there were 745,288 total downloads of ANU E Press titles (PDF and HTML) and 3,286,746 total hits on the ANU E Press website.
In 2005, there were 381,740 total downloads of ANU E Press titles (PDF and HTML) and 1,459,630 total hits on the ANU E Press website.

Facilitating accessibility of ANU E Press titles in physical format (via Print on Demand service) is also assisted through the entry of titles into bibliographic data systems, such as the National Library of Australia Catalogue in Publication and Global Books in Print.

CONTACT ANU E PRESS

Book Order Enquiries
Telephone: (02) 6125 2981
Email: orders.epress@anu.edu.au

Other Enquiries
Telephone: (02) 6125 4536
Email: anuepress@anu.edu.au