Scholarly Publishing--A Breakthrough

Rice University has announced that it is reconstituting Rice University Press, which was disbanded in 1996. The big news is that it will publish all of its books exclusively online. Readers will be able to access the books for free and to download them for a modest charge. The Press will be like traditional scholarly publishers in that its "editors will solicit manuscripts and peer reviw panels will vet submissions." In addition to scholarly monographs that might not otherwise be published, Rice will also publish print-on-demand textbooks at a very reasonable price. A story about the new venture appears in today's edition of Inside Higher Education. This is a big step forward for the open-access movement.