Open Science for Arts, Design and Music/Publishers/MētisPresses

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MētisPresses is an independent publishing house based in Geneva. Founded in 2003, it specialised in academic books in the fields of humanities and social sciences.

• Conversation with MētisPresses (Léa Roché, 24.01.2024), interview by Iolanda Pensa and Chiara Barbieri, Project Open Science for arts design and music, SUPSI, 2024, CC BY 4.0.

Description

MētisPresses was funded in 2003 and its catalogue includes in particular books on art history, literary criticism, architecture and urbanism. It addresses both an informed and non-specialist audience, that is students, academics but also the general public. With a team of 5, MētisPresses is a small publisher that does all editorial work internally, e-books included. They publish between 13 and 15 book, and 5 to 7 e-books a year.

SNSF Open Access policy

The SNSF decision to ask publisher to release digital content immediately in OA for free was meat with some concern by MētisPresses. After internal discussions the publisher decided to adopt the Gold Road to OA. Together with the digital OA version, books are also printed on paper. Thus when working with the SNSF, MētisPresses produces two objects: the printed book and the OA e-book. The latter complements the former by featuring the same content and enriched documents.

Enriched E-Books

MētisPresses is been publishing e-books since 2018. This digital turn was the direct consequence of the SNSF policy that requested publisher receiving publication funding to provide digital versions. At the beginning od this new editorial practice, they were allowed an embargo period of 2 years after which all e-books were to be released in OA.

The workflow begins with the printed version of the book. Once this is designed, attention is turned towards the e-book. Using the same layout as the printed version, the e-book is enriched with interactive content. Editing a book takes around a year, followed by 3 months of layout and a month and a half for the digital conversion. Once the book is printed and released on the marked, it is also published online at the same time

MētisPresses's e-books are not simple digital translations of printed versions (not simple PDFs). The are meant to offer both the author and the reader something more. The printed version always includes information about the e-book. There is clear dialogue system between the two versions that guide the reader. A special symbol (small lens) on the printed book indicates every time the reader can access extra special content on the free digital publication available online on the publisher website.

The book Transformation Silencieuse: Étude architecturale du bâti alpin provide a good example of MētisPresses approach to enriched books. In this case, the e-book offers the reader and interactive map where one select one of the 75 case studies and access extra research data (e.g. additional images and plans) that are not included in the printed version of the book.

With MētisPresses, authors have the chance to enrich the e-book with research data that can not be included in the printed book. The research data themselves, i.e. the interactive content included in the e-book, are selected, organised and designed to facilitate their access and reuse. This process asks researchers/authors to change their approach to publishing their research output and think about it in a different, more complex, way. From a publisher perspective it is necessary to deal with authors who have a clear idea of the kind of research data they have and how they want to share them given the possibilities of digital publications.

EPUB 3

The first e-books published by MētisPresses were designed using Aquafadas. Since 2020 they changed programme as the former was too expensive and did not satisfy the publisher's expectations when dealing with enriched e-books. After research and trials, they adopted InDesign as the programme enables a plugin for digital publishing resulting in EPUB 3. The choice of EPUB 3 instead of EPUB 2 is due to the need to keep the same layout for the printed and e-book version.

If requested (for example by the institutions) MētisPresses also uses enlarged PDF formats that, by contrast to EPUB, can be included by librarians in the institutional catalogue. However, enlarged PDFs are considered technically less efficient than EPUB 3 as they offer fewer options and cannot manage multiple layers of information as well as EPUB 3 formats. Thus the choice about the format - i.e. whether to choose enlarged PDFs or EPUB 3 formats – depends on the kind of content that enriches the digital publication.

The publisher is aware of the problematics and limitations of EPUB 3 formats. The main issue with EPUB 3, especially if considered in the context of OA, is that it is not a open source format readable on any computer. MētisPresses recommends the open source software Thorium Reader as it does not affect the layout of the digital publication, thus it interferes neither with the content not the design and experience of the object.

Visibility

The choice of EPUB 3 formats, while providing both authors and readers with the opportunity to share, access and reuse extra interactive content, makes the publication less visible and thus less findable on institutional repositories and OA directories such as oapen since those often do not sustain the complexity of EPUB formats.

This technical issues raises a contradiction in the SNSF OA policy. The SNSF, in fact, on the one hand accepts and funds enriched books, but one the other it also asks for a (poorer) PDF version of the digital publication to be archived in its system.

Furthermore, MētisPresses ensures storage on the website, but puts the authors directly in charge of distributing the digital book (both EPUB 3 and PDF versions) within institutional platforms. The reason for delegating the author is mere workload distribution since the publisher does not have enough resources to deal with the distribution of the e-book in-house. Collaborating with universities libraries to improve distribution could be a a solution to ensure better visibility to the OA publications.

Multimedia and alternative forms of publications

MētisPresses' adoption EPUB 3 as their format for digital publications depends also on their decision to provide readers with an experience that is close to reading a printed book. The possibility of using open formats such as html websites as an alternative is usually avoided. By contrast to EPUB 3, websites need coding, that is a different skill set and different approach to the publishing practice.

The book Sur les bancs du paysage: Enjeux didactiques, démarches et outils is an example of MētisPresses' experimental approach to digital publications. In this case the printed and digital version of the publication do not correspond. The latter is still designed with InDesign but it shares similarities with a website at the level of interactive and visual experience.

What is missing and could make a difference in the digital and OA turn of academic publishing is, according to MētisPresses, an open software mean to be used by publishers instead of coders (i.e. appropriate for their knowledge and skill set) that can allow them to design OA digital publication without the compatibility issues that they are at the moment encountering with, for example, EPUB 3 formats.

Digital turn and the publishing industry

According to MētisPresses OA and, more in general, digital publishing has been challenging the very definition of a publisher's job leading it towards the field of computer sciences and information technologies. This trespassing of professional boundaries is however not supported with the needed training and skill sets. One of the challenges of the digital and OA turn for publishers is the constant need to keep up with innovations and advances. According to MētisPresses, technology watch is an essential aspect of the contemporary publishing industry. Most of it is self-initiated and self-training is the result of a trial and error process. Every new project pushes the team of MētisPresses to find new tools and solutions. Most recently they have started using Ajar Productions as this pug in allowed they to add scrolling frames to their E-Books.

Sharing knowledge

To compensate the general lack of knowledge in the publishing sector around digital publishing and OA and thus contribute to information and experience exchange, MētisPresses is in the process of discussing with the association Livre Suisse possibilities of knowledge sharing. They argue for the need of specialist training and are keen on contributing with their own experience and have, in return, the opportunity to learn from others. To this end, they also suggest a close collaboration between university institutions and publishers.