Open Access

Varieties of University Press Business Models V: Open Access

Guest post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.


Guest post by Beth M. Bouloukos, director of the Amherst College Press.

This post is part of a series on how university presses (and other scholarly nonprofit publishers) are organized and operated. If you’ve got a model you’d like to describe, we’d like to hear from you. 

Finding Joy in Open Access: Reflections from the Humanities Commons Team

A crosspost on Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications from Platypus: The blog of the Humanities Commons Team.


As we conclude our celebration of International Open Access Week, we asked our team to reflect on what joy in open access looks like for them.

A Bumpy Start to the Joys of Open Access: A Festive Perspective

A crosspost on Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications from Platypus: The blog of the Humanities Commons Team.


This post was originally published on Platypus: The blog of the Humanities Commons Team on October 26, 2022, to honor International Open Access Week. We thank Humanities Commons for sharing their posts with us.

Why Is My Book So Expensive? The Cost of a Scholarly Monograph

A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.


Authors often ask publishers, “Why is my book so expensive?” The short answer: it really isn’t that expensive. The long answer: your scholarly book might cost more than commercially published nonacademic books because academic presses are spreading the cost of producing a title across a smaller number of print units. Each unit therefore has to be priced higher to enable the press to recoup the cost of production.

[1:3] The Impact of COVID-19 on Scholarly Communications


Feeding the Elephant is pleased to introduce our [1:3] series. In this series, we pose 1 question to a librarian, a publisher, and a scholarthe 3 main stakeholders in the scholarly communications ecosystemto get each perspective on a particular issue. Here, we posed the question:

P2L4 Summit Follow-up: How Can Presses & Libraries Work Together to Advance Anti-Racism

A post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.


Note: This was the third panel of the P2L conference held July 22. A recap of the first two panels can be found here
Lisa Bayer, Director, University of Georgia Press, sent us this summary.

P2L Summit: University Presses and Libraries: Partners in Digital Transformation


P2L4, a conference sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), brought together a group of publishers and librarians via Zoom on July 22 to talk about scholarly publishing.

Racism and Protest Resource List

Dear subscribers,

In light of the ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Feeding the Elephant has compiled a list of resources (many freely accessible) from libraries, university presses, and scholars on the subjects of racism, racial justice, police brutality, and protest.