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Grant Proposal: Language Science Press: A Publication Model for Open-Access Books in Linguistics

Author: Stefan Müller and Martin Haspelmath

Subject Areas: Open Access, Linguistics, Book

2013. Grant proposal to the DFG program Wissenschaftliche Monographien und monographische Serien im Open Access (MU 2822/8-1, HA 1677/9-1)

The purpose of the project is to establish a publishing unit called Language Science Press for publishing linguistic monographs in several series. We want to build and maintain a community and community infrastructure that can be used for platinum open-access publications. Such a platform is seen as desideratum by the linguistic community as is evidenced by the large number of prominent linguistis who support our initiative and want to collaborate with us on implementing such a platform and create a high-impact brand. The platform that we want to develop will run several linguistic series at minimal costs. In addition to reviewing that is done by the research community anyway we also try to distribute the work of typesetting and proofreading and solve the problem that these costly and time-consuming parts of the production process pose.

While most of the software that is needed to produce linguistic monographs is available, some crucial parts are still missing. There is workflow software for producing books, for instance Open Monograph Press (OMP), which will be used in the project. LaTeX packages for typesetting exist. However, the problem of converting LaTeX documents into e-books and XML is not solved. We plan to establish a standard set of LaTeX macros that can be transformed into XML and the e-book formats. Furthermore we want to extend the OMP software by versioning and open review aspects.

The process of setting up Language Science Press will be accompanied and monitored by a business economist who will work on the documentation of the costs and ensure the development of a sustainable business model.