A decade of change: running a university E-Press

Abstract

In 2003, The Australian National University established the ANU E Press,an innovative publishing solution that was managed by the library. The vision was of a world-class academic publisher taking advantage of new emerging information and communication technologies, which was a major development for the university. It was a response to pressures within the existing model of scholarly communication. In particular, the establishment of the press derived from a recognition of the urgent need to find an effective mechanism for disseminating ANU scholarship that was of high quality but lacked a ready commercial market; a determination to lower or eliminate barriers to access inherent in traditional academic publishing; an acceptance that within the university the operational overheads of the conventional academic press were no longer affordable; and a realisation that emergent electronic press technologies offered a feasible alternative to the conventional academic press in terms of cost and available infrastructure (Kanellopoulos, 2007).