e-Publishing in the humanities and social sciences

This British Academy workshop, convened by Professor Adam Kuper on 7th April 2006, addressed the structure of scholarly publishing, emphasising, in John Thompson's keynote, the role of different types of content; intellectual property and the economics of publishing; and libraries, archives and database resources. Common themes, identified in the concluding discussion, included IT's radical and relocating effects, its 'can do' takeup by researchers but also technical demands on IT professionals; the challenge of long-term archiving for everyone; and the need for simple approaches to resource interfaces that are easy to learn to use and to adapt over time, and that promote resource connectivity.