Academic and Professional Publishing, edited by Robert Campbell, Ed Pentz, and Ian Borthwick.

Academic and Professional Publishing. Edited by Robert Campbell, Ed Pentz, and Ian Borthwick. Oxford: Chandos, 2012. 496 pages. ISBN 9781843346692.

 

The academic publishing industry has seen rapid change and technological development in the past two decades. Academic and Professional Publishing is a highly informative analysis of the state of this industry. Its twenty chapters were authored by experienced professionals and leaders in the publishing industry and address all aspects of publishing for the academic and professional community. According to its editor, it is written primarily for “publishing professionals and interested stakeholders," but will also be of interest to academic librarians and others interested in what is commonly referred to as scholarly communication.

Topics addressed include trends in journal publishing, the rise of open access, the peer review process, the "scholarly ecosystem," and developments in digital publishing. More practical concerns such as journal and monograph publishing business models, editorial and production workflow, and standards important to the publishing business (ISBN, ISNI, ORCID and others) are addressed. Also discussed are citation analysis and bibliometrics, the user experience, pricing models, the role of libraries, ethics, copyright, and career opportunities.

I found this book to be an interesting and valuable collection on all aspects of academic and professional publishing.

 

A longer review of this book has been published in Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 25:3 (2013): 252:253.