All-Digital Publisher Fails

Rice University Press switched in 2006 to all-digital publishing through Connexions.  While that reduced costs, not enough, and RUP has just been shut down.  Doesn’t bode well for the economic model of all-digital publishing.

Rice University Press is being shut down next month, ending an experiment in an all-digital model of scholarly publishing. While university officials said that they needed to make a difficult economic decision to end the operation, they acted against the recommendations of an outside review team that had urged Rice to bolster its support for the publishing operations.

Some supporters, in fact, are in discussions about raising private support to continue the press as a scholarly publishing outfit that might not be attached to any single university.

Many supporters of academic publishing had high hopes for the Rice project, which was launched in 2006 with the goal of merging the quality and rigor of scholarly peer review with the convenience and low cost of digital publishing. The demise of the project led to immediate speculation about whether the Rice experience suggested difficulties for the economic model or if other factors may have been decisive.

via News: Abandoning an Experiment – Inside Higher Ed.

Two successful defenses, and off to the UK!

I am pleased to announce that Allison Elliott Tew and Brian Dorn both defended their dissertations successfully.  Dr. Elliott Tew actually walked out with no changes required and all forms signed, which very rarely happens around here.  Brian has some relatively minor updates, and will be Dr. Dorn within a few days.

Now I’m leaving the country.  In the last week, not only have two of my students completed their degrees, but I moved my son into his dorm room, so it’s been an intense week of changes.  To cap it off, I’m getting on a flight to Edinburgh tomorrow afternoon.  I am the invited keynote talk at the 11th Annual Higher Education Academy in Information and Computer Science Conference at Durham University (http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/events/11th-annual-conf/programme_day1.php).  I’m flying to Edinburgh, then catching a train to Glasgow to meet up with Andrew McGettrick (chair of the ACM Education Board). On Monday, I head to Durham (where I hope to meet up with Gerry McAlister, chair of the academy, and Sally Fincher).  On Thursday, I head back to Edinburgh for a day-off (Friday), then head home next Saturday.

I expect to be blogging little over the next week.  The work time I find needs to be spent on Data Structures book slides and several NSF reports that are (nearly over) due. See you in September!