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Ebook Collections Coming to Project MUSE Platform

MUSE, a collaborative project which currently publishes online over 450 journals from more than 100 not-for-profit scholarly presses, will partner with many of the same publishers to offer high quality, peer-reviewed academic books electronically. Project MUSE is managed by the Johns Hopkins University Press, which also operates Hopkins Fulfillment Services (HFS) as a distribution arm for many distinguished university presses. HFS client presses are also among the first group of publishers committed to participating in the new book initiative.

The e-books program, called Project MUSE Editions, has to date signed contracts with the following publishers to include in the new offering books from their upcoming scholarly monograph frontlists: Baylor University Press, Brookings Institution Press, ELT Press, Indiana University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Kent State University Press, Penn State University Press, Purdue University Press, and University of Illinois Press. Talks are ongoing with several other MUSE and HFS client publishers, with more participants expected to be announced before the end of this year.

Publishers participating in the program will select and set prices for the frontlist books they offer through MUSE e-book collections. The initiative is focused on scholarly monographs, and is not expected to include textbooks, reference books, trade titles, or other books outside the project scope. Project MUSE will reserve the right to reject books that do fit within its collection parameters.

Book content on MUSE will be offered via a purchase model, on a twice-yearly seasonal (Spring/Fall) basis. Libraries will “pre-purchase” access to a collection of the frontlist monograph titles included in the upcoming season’s publishing schedule from the participating publishers. Details on the books included in the collection will be available prior to the purchase. Books will be released electronically simultaneous with the print publication, and libraries that have purchased a collection including the title will have immediate access on the MUSE platform.

MUSE expects to offer its first e-book collection for the fall 2011 season, with between 250-500 frontlist monograph titles anticipated for inclusion in the collection. If there is a critical mass of titles in one or more academic disciplines, subject-based book collections may also be made available for the fall 2011 season. Beginning with spring 2012, MUSE expects to consistently offer both comprehensive and subject-based e-book collections for purchase.

Pricing for book collections on MUSE will be based upon the sum of the list prices of the included titles, as set by the books' publishers, with tiered discounting of the collection price modeled upon MUSE's Carnegie Classification-based tiered pricing for its journal collections. Consortium purchase programs will also be available.

Books on MUSE will be in PDF format, and will be searchable and retrievable to the chapter level. COUNTER-compliant usage statistics will be available to libraries purchasing book collections on MUSE. MARC records for the e-books will be provided to purchasing libraries at no charge. Users will be able to search across combined book and journal content in MUSE, or limit searches by content type.

Source: Project MUSE