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fr On 4 September 2018, “cOAlition S”, an assembly of major European research funding organisations, supported by the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), has signed an agreement to demand full and immediate Open Access to scientific publications funded by them as of 2020. The agreement that is known as “Plan S” will further accelerate the transition to open access in scientific publishing.
Dr. Laurence Pagacz, Publishing Director at Peter Lang Brussels, and Senior Commissioning Editor Thierry Waser share their views on the implications for academic book publishers in Alternatives Economiques. The full article (in French) is available here: « Comment rendre les publications scientifiques accessibles à tous ? L’édition scientifique face à un nouveau paradigme »
Expanding its Open Access program, the Peter Lang publishing group launches a new peer reviewed Open Access book series: Images of Disability. Literature, Scenic, Visual, and Virtual Arts / Imágenes de la diversidad funcional. Literatura, artes escénicas, visuales y virtuales aims to shed light on cultural representations of disability and the ways in which disability has been portrayed in aesthetic texts over time. Edited by Prof. Susanne Hartwig (University of Passau, Germany) and Prof. Julio Enrique Checa Puerta (University Carlos III, Madrid, Spain), the series comprises edited volumes and monographs in Spanish, English and German. Each publication will be published online in Gold Open Access with a CC BY license and is available through the publishers’ website and the OAPEN library. More information.
For more information on the series, hear Prof. Hartwig speak about its conception and genesis in this video by Peter Lang Open and Latest Thinking: https://lt.org/publication/how-disability-portrayed-contemporary-culture
To submit a proposal for consideration, please contact Dr. Benjamin Kloss, Senior Commissioning Editor at Peter Lang: b.kloss@peterlang.com
Sir David Nairne. The Life of a Scottish Jacobite at the Court of the Exiled Stuarts by Edward Corp (Peter Lang, 2018) has been shortlisted for the Saltire Society Literary Awards in the “History Book of the Year” category. The prestigious awards celebrate and support literary and academic excellence across six distinct categories. Books nominated in the “History Book of the Year” category must be written by authors of Scottish descent or living in Scotland, or dealing with the work or life of a Scot, a Scottish question, event or situation. The winner of each book Award will receive a cash prize of £2,000 and go on to be considered for the top prize of £5,000, awarded to the Saltire Society Book of the Year. For more details about the Saltire Society Literary Awards and the 2018 shortlist, click here.
Peter Lang celebrates a milestone in its Open Access programm: With almost 1400 peer-reviewed academic books freely available on www.peterlang.com, the group becomes one of the major Open Access book publishers for the Humanities. The books in English, German and other languages cover all areas of HSS with a focus on Economics, Linguistics and Literature Studies. They are available free of charge under different Creative Commons licenses on Peter Lang’s own platform and will soon be released to the OAPEN library.
Jisc Collections has agreed the terms of a license to renew access to Peter Lang’s DRM-free eBook collection of more than 10,000 titles. Starting on January 1, 2019 and for the next three years, the monographs, conference proceedings and reference works are again available for purchase through the agreements JISC has negotiated for its members. The books that include nearly 4,000 English language titles are available as subject collections, mini collections, evidence-based selection collections or standalone titles across all disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The initial agreement is still in force until the end of 2018 and to celebrate its continuation, JISC grants an additional 5% discount for any orders placed before 14th December 2018. More information.
Peter Lang has closed an agreement with French media group Hachette Livre to increase the availability of Peter Lang books in Francophone markets. The agreement is scheduled to start in autumn 2018 and covers two main aspects: Through its print on demand service with Lightning Source France, Hachette will print and distribute all new titles released by Peter Lang’s Belgian publishing office P.I.E. Peter Lang SA. Through its Hachette Livre Distribution division, Hachette will distribute Peter Lang’s entire French Language front- and backlist from all five Peter Lang publishing offices in the Francophone countries. Through this agreement, Peter Lang expands significantly its global presence in Francophone markets and ensures optimum international distribution for its growing portfolio of French language titles.
Peter Lang collaborates with Knowledge Unlatched (KU) in a cross-publisher initiative to promote the availability of academic research in Romance Studies. Unter the terms of the agreement, Peter Lang and the publishers Iberoamericana Vervuert and Walter de Gruyter will release a total of 12 titles from their backlists in Open Access. Published in the years 2012-2017, the monographs, collected volumes or dissertations must be written in either French or Spanish and cover the areas of French or Spanish Linguistics or Literary Studies.
In the project’s second phase, starting in 2019, Peter Lang will publish five frontlist titles in Romance Studies per year in Gold Open Access, using the Knowledge Unlatched crowdfunding model to raise the publishing costs through libraries around the world. The titles will be selected by an independent editorial board and must fulfill the above-mentioned criteria. The agreement is scheduled to run for three years, from 2019-2021.
Peter Lang has closed an agreement with Rakuten OverDrive, Inc., a leading full-service digital distributor of eBooks, audiobooks, music, and streaming video. Under its terms, Peter Lang’s entire eBook collection is made available to OverDrive’s customer base of more than 30,000 libraries and schools in 40+ countries, including public, college and corporate libraries. By partnering with OverDrive and adding them to its list of eBook distributors, Peter Lang opens new channels for its growing eBook collection and helps authors reach new audiences worldwide.
“A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor. Lessons about Race, Class, and Gender in America” by Menah Pratt-Clarke and “Critical Multicultural Perspectives on Whiteness. Views from the Past and Present“, edited by Virginia Lea, Darren E. Lund and Paul R. Carrhave have been awarded the 2018 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award. The monograph and textbook, published by Peter Lang in 2018, are two of twelve titles that were selected by AESA members as recent scholarship deemed to be outstanding in its field.
Peter Lang is delighted to announce Dr. Rey Conquer, The Queen’s College, Oxford, as the winner of the 2018 Institute of German Studies / Peter Lang Early Career Researcher Prize in German Studies. The winning monograph “Reading Colour: Four German Poets” will be published in 2019 in Peter Lang’s Studies in Modern German and Austrian Literature series. The Early Career Researcher Prize in German Studies is a collaboration between the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham and Peter Lang. Proposals are invited each year from early career scholars in German Studies with connections to the UK and Ireland. Previous winners and runners-up include Dr. Lauren Selfe (“Representations of Muslim Woman in German Popular Culture, 1990-2016”, forthcoming in 2019), Dr. Peter Eckersley (“Power and Capacity in Urban Climate Governance. Germany and England compared“, published in 2018) and Dr. Jessica Wood (“Portraits of the Artist. Dionysian Creativity in Selected Works by Gabriele D’Annunzio and Thomas Mann“, published in 2017).