The Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of University Presses have published a final report assessing the success of their five-year pilot project to encourage sustainable digital publication of and public access to scholarly books.
The associations launched the Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) project in 2018 to publish humanities and social science scholarship on the internet, where these peer-reviewed works can be fully integrated into the larger network of scholarly and scientific research. The project engaged a network of more than 60 university presses and ultimately produced more than 150 open-access scholarly works. The books cover a wide range of topics in many disciplines, including philosophy, history, political science, sociology, and gender and ethnic studies.
The pilot was designed to last five years, and the sponsoring associations committed to assessing its value to its target audience at the end of that period. The report analyzes whether the community of authors, institutions, libraries, and presses that participated in the pilot found it helpful. Author Nancy Maron of BlueSky to BluePrint surveyed and interviewed authors and TOME contacts at participating institutions to assess how each benefited from the pilot—from increased global readership to stronger relationships among libraries, research deans, and faculty.
TOME Stakeholder Value Assessment: Final Report
To cite
Maron, Nancy. TOME Stakeholder Value Assessment: Final Report. With input from Peter Potter and TOME Advisory Board. Washington, DC, and New York: Association of American Universities, Association of Research Libraries, and Association of University Presses, August 2023. https://doi.org/10.29242/report.tome2023.
