This is a presentation about Polimetrica and Open Publishing.

1. Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica
nico@polimetrica.eu
http://www.polimetrica.com
November 10, 2008
Bocconi University

2. A bit of context
January 2004. Polimetrica’s birthday
Goal. Create an international scientific publisher in Italy
Some keywords. High quality contents, low prices,
accessible knowledge, good service, research oriented
Idealistic view of knowledge. Knowledge makes every man
free to design and build his own future in a conscious way
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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3. Some preliminary questions
Content. How to publish good quality books?
Price. How to earn money keeping low prices?
Distribution. How to sell scientific books in the Italian and
international market?
Production. How to manage the book production cycle?
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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4. Business milestones
Team. Find good editors, who find good authors, who
write good books / Create a good editorial office
Format. Sell printed books
Royalties. 10% on sales to editors, 10% on sales to authors
Small prices. 15/20 euro each book
Production. Digital printing, a few hundred books stock
Distribution channels. E-commerce, academic import/export
booksellers, selected scientific bookshops
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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5. 2004. First year
Published books. 8 titles, 6 written by Italian-based
authors, 2 written by international authors
Sales. A few hundreds
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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6. Difficulties
Time investment. Writing good books requires time,
necessity for long term plans to support production
International commercialization. Shipping costs from
Italy to Extra UE countries double the book price
Distribution channels. No access from an Italian publisher
to international channels like Amazon. No convenience in
using the local channels, that ask for a 60% royalty on the
book cover price.
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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7. Scenario changes 1/3
Web 2.0. Blogs, wikis, electronic journals, social
networks and other interactive tools become more and
more popular
Print on demand. Thanks to service like Lulu.com people
can print their books without paying the production costs
Open access. Open access to scientific literature starts
becoming a value in a few part of the academic communities
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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8. Scenario changes 2/3
Open copyright licenses. “Copyleft” licenses become
more structured, popular and usable
Distribution channels. Services like Amazon become
accessible also to non US publishers
A new player in the game. Companies start sharing and
publishing their knowledge for marketing purposes
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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9. Scenario changes 3/3
Mobile hardware. Mobile devices, subnotebooks,
netbooks, ebook readers come into the market
Internet connections. Internet connections become
cheaper, quicker and requested by the “middle class”
Media contents. Thanks to media portable devices, file
compression formats, internet connections and services,
there is an increase in the media contents production and
sharing
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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10. Some trends
Everyone becomes an author. SMS, email, blog and other
interactive communication tools become widely used
Printed contents, monologue vs Electronic contents, dialogue
Knowledge as a common good. Online information is
perceived and expected to be freely accessible and usable
Closed knowledge products vs Open knowledge products
Toward a global, interactive, open knowledge society?
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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11. 2005. Brave new year
First open access books. We published our first open
access books, electronic edition free and printed edition
available in the market
International dimension. 12 new books published, 6
international products
More investment in R&D. We start up a laboratory devoted
to the study of new media technologies and new business
models in the publishing field
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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12. 2006/08. Consolidation
More books. 80 books published
More open access books. 43 open access books published
More collaborators. 200 people involved in the project:
management team, editorial office, printers, editors, authors
More distribution channels. Amazon, Google Books, Arxiv, E-
LIS and other
More experimental projects. The language of science, Publishing
studies
Open access becomes a key value
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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13. Open access model 1/2
Double edition. Each book is published in two editions:
electronic edition and printed edition
Electronic edition. Electronic edition is free, open access
and some cases open source; it can be downloaded from
our and partner’s website, it is also available in Google
Books and other channels
Printed edition. Printed edition is distributed via Amazon,
our website, e-commerce channels, import/export
booksellers, international academic bookstores
Both editions have an identification code: ISBN and, in case, ISSN
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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14. Open access model 2/2
Partner. Universities are partners of Polimetrica; they fund part of the
open access publications, share the risks and also the profits
Open access license. Every book is published under the terms of an agreement
between Polimetrica and the university. In this agreement there is a clause about
the open access policy:
“The electronic edition of this book is not sold and is made available in free access.
Every contribution is published according to the terms of “Polimetrica License B”.
“Polimetrica License B” gives anyone the possibility to distribute the contents of the work,
provided that the authors of the work and the publisher are always recognised and
mentioned. It does not allow use of the contents of the work for commercial purposes or
for profit. Polimetrica Publisher has the exclusive right to publish and to sell the contents
of the work in paper and electronic format and by any other means of publication.
Additional rights on the contents of the work are the author’s property”
From product publishing to service publishing
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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15. Problems
Academic culture. The great part of academic
researchers still doesn’t act for publishing and doesn’t
share their research results in an open access way
Funding policy. In the ordinary European and Italian
funding policy there is not a mandatory rule about the
distribution of money for publishing research results in an
open access way.
Self publishing. Many academic departments self-publish
their research results, without the support of a publisher
At present OA publishing is still a niche
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
15

16. Many thanks
Giandomenico Sica
POLIMETRICA
Corso Milano 26
20052 Monza Milano
Phone: +39.039.2301829
Skype: nicosica
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicosica
Next stop
Open publishing at work
Giandomenico Sica - nico@polimetrica.eu
November 10, 2008 - Bocconi University
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