So last week was a busy week for all of us on the journals module.

First we had a visit to Wiley Blackwell where we had a workshop on society journals. We learnt about how societies choose publishers to take over their journal publishing and the process of bidding for a journal. We learnt about how to put a bid together, some of the key things to take into account and how to make good on the things you promise. There were a lot of things I hadn't thought about before like securing jobs, trying to make the transition as smooth as possible and the challenges that complacency and habit pose when trying to propose changes. It was also interesting to hear that a lot of problems come from the fact that decisions to change publishers are often made high up in the hierarchy and that the people who are actually involved in the day to day running of a journal are often not given much or any input in the decision even though it is them that will have to deal directly with the changes.

It was a really interesting session where we heard from everyone involved including editorial, marketing, finance and the often forgotten production. All this was in preparation for our second assignment where we have to write a specification from the point of view of the society and present a bid as a publisher. It sounded scary when I first heard about it but now I feel a lot more ready for it.

The other big event this week was the deadline for assignment one which was a 2000 word article on an issue in journals publishing. I chose to do mine on peer review and particularly the role private peer review companies like Rubriq could play in the system. While these companies have good intentions, I argue that they do not solve any of the problems in traditional peer review, such as issues around bias and quality, and that they may in fact add new problems. It was particularly interesting reading around the debate over whether paying reviewers is a good idea or not. On the one hand it's a nice gesture that acknowledges the work put in by the reviewers but on the other hand many of them are reviewing not for profit but through a sense of duty to the academic community and to further their own careers in which case formal recognition they can put on their CV and use in funding applications would be better than cash. I didn't know there was so much debate around peer review and I really enjoyed learning more about the debates in this area and the alternatives being offered.

So while everyone else on our course is getting excited about children's books and digital breakthroughs I am spending my time learning about peer review and journal bids and really enjoying it.

So for the last nine days Oxford has been (more) full of authors, journalists and avid literature fans for the literary festival. Not one to be left out, I got involved as a volunteer.

As a volunteer I was part of a team responsible for setting up the rooms, checking tickets, running the microphones around during the questions and tidying up at the end. Doesn't sound that exiting but came with the perk of being able to attend the talks you were stewarding for free and occasionally meeting an author (even if you don't recognise them and ask to see their ticket - embarrassing but we've all been there right). This was really good as it gave me a chance to go see talks that I might not have gone to and that I would have missed out on. And of course you get access to some of the beautiful colleges that are closed to the public.

So between the two days I worked I saw:

So this week saw the last of the lunchtime digital seminars put on by the university. I didn't get to attend as many as I wanted so I haven't been blogging about them regularly. So to catch up, here is what I had to say about the ones I did make it too.

Charley Darbyshire - Educake
Educake is an online homework resource for GCSE science students. Teachers can use the tests available as homework for their class and then can see the results and the students' progress online. Charley taught us about the difficulties of education publishing and keeping material up to date and appealing. This is especially hard with a digital subscription-based product as there has to be incentive for people to keep buying it. The product needs to be valuable enough to justify the investment you are asking of your customers. It is no longer the case that the customer-publisher relationship ends once the money is handed over, now the relationship is long term as you have to continually work to guarantee reinvestment.
So the main issues are pricing, justifying and defining value and maintaining good customer relationships, very different to a one off print purchase of a textbook.

Tom Scholes - Managing Director of Grove Street Media
Grove Street Media are a new media company that develop apps, websites and games. Tom taught us just how important good usability is and how extensive testing is just as important as the development in achieving this. You have to try things out to learn where they need improving. He also pointed out the problems that arise from customers not being entirely clear what they want. Many come and ask for expensive apps when a website would do just because they feel they should be. This is also the case with social media, everyone has heard of it and so everyone thinks they should be using it. But you have to match the format and the marketing to the product or you will miss your market. Tom then showed us some of his skills by building a basic game live in front of us that involved a giraffe and Kim Kardashian racing across the wild west.
So it's important to know exactly what you want, listen to developer's suggestions and test your product with real people.

So I've learnt a lot from these sessions about surviving in the real world of digital publishing. I've spent a lot of time in the classrooms learning the skills and building ebooks but I have absolutely no idea how to use these skills in the real world so it was great to hear from the people out there doing it now.

So last week was the last of the course organised publishing seminars and our guests were John Seaton and Martin Toseland who between them have over 35 years of publishing experience.

John Seaton as a freelance literary agent focused on the author side of publishing, stressing the importance of a good, long-lasting author editor relationship. Keep your authors happy or they will walk. He also talked about self-publishing and how important it is becoming now that agents themselves are often not accepting unsolicited manuscripts, instead heading to the net to find the next big thing. But it isn't all E L James as John told us a story of a friend who found her book sales suffer when she was picked up by a publisher. Low ebook prices got the blame as the publisher raised the price. It all comes down to someone really championing the book. Without someone, be they publisher or author, really supporting the book and shouting about it, it won't make it.

Martin Toseland has worked with backlist management at Faber and Canongate so he told us about how you manage a backlist and the importance of print on demand. Publishers can now keep books with small but steady sales in print whereas before they would be lost, along with what little income they bring in. This also stops obscure classics being lost and means they can be kept on reading lists around the country. One thing that is a problem sometimes though is a sudden increase in sales on a backlist title but no explanation as to why. Without knowing why the sales patterns have changed it's hard for publishers to react properly. And with backlist work there is a lot of risk and again it comes down to championing a title to keep it in print.

So the overall message was be enthusiastic and fight for the books you want to see in print be they your own writing or books you don't want to see go out of print (although this isn't the end anymore as POD means that works out of copyright can be brought back as backlist titles, even if it's by a different publisher).

So last Thursday the publishing department ran a Working in Publishing day where people from the industry, many who are alumni of the course, come in and we students were given a chance to ask them questions about getting jobs.

The day started with the usual housekeeping/welcome talk but then we got down to the job hunting skills. There were 4 workshops run in the morning of which you could attend two. I chose one on prospecting employers and then one on how to write a cover letter because I thought these would go pretty well together. It meant I missed out on interview techniques but a friend filled me in later. The workshops were helpful and gave me a few tips I hadn't thought of before as well as introducing me to publishing recruitment agencies. But basically it comes down to be proactive and get out there finding jobs and make sure you can spell. Pretty sound advice really.

After a quick lunchbreak we began the "speed dating" session where we each got 15 minute slots face to face with some of the professionals. It was chaos

Sadly Tuesday was my last official day at Jisc Collections, unless some money can be squeezed out of the budget to keep us on. But despite this sad occasion the day started like any other and there was still work to be done.

I started the day by having a chat to my supervisor about the recent Open Access in History event we both attended. I then spent a few minutes tidying up my blog post on the event for possible use on the Jisc website.

After I had finished that I moved on to helping my fellow intern with writing a reference guide for researchers in humanities and social sciences explaining Open Access and Creative Commons licenses. This is a project that began a few weeks ago and while I had helped with some of the initial research I hadn't been involved much because it wasn't really my cup of tea. My colleague had made so much progress and I was just needed to write a few bits round the edge, an introduction to the guide and an introduction to OA, because he had written so much explaining what the licenses are, how they work and why people should be thinking about using them. This guide is definitely needed as one thing that comes up time and time again in discussions of OA is that people just don't quite understand it. With this guide people will be able to find answers to some of the most common questions about CC licenses. It is by no means a comprehensive guide but it's a really good starting place and I'm glad I helped (even if it was only a little).

This took up most of the day but when I was no longer needed there were a few extra jobs for me. I helped find contact information for some publishers for planned interviews (something I'm going to get very familiar with while working on my dissertation) and then I proof read a report on ebook provisions in Scottish libraries. It was long but the report was interesting, especially as I had helped with some of the initial data collation.

So all in all a good last day. I got to see some of the projects I worked on come to fruition and I was still learning lots right until the end. It would be great if I could stay on but if not I have had a really good 6 weeks at Jisc Collections and I have learnt a lot. One thing I won't miss however is the commute to London every week.

On the 1st of March I attended a colloquium run by the Institute of Historical Research on the subject The Finch Report, open access and the historical community.

The event was split into three panels trying to give the society, publisher and intermediary views from the historical community. It was attended by a range of people from students and researchers to publishing company VPs and there was a lot of lively discussion. Suffice to say I felt a bit out of my depth.

The main issues that came out of the discussion were:

• In the humanities and social sciences green open access is preferable but it needs to be sustainable and the embargo periods need to be right (not too short)
• Humanities and social sciences are very different from STM subjects and so there can't be a one size fits all gold OA policy
• There are international concerns, mainly that the UK is going out on a limb by leading the way in OA and this could result in it becoming isolated in the global research environment
• There needs to be a diverse publishing environment and that publishing can't just be left to those big companies that can manage APCs as this may end in a monopoly that kills off smaller publications and publishers
• Licenses are still a thorny issue and people are still not sure what CC licenses cover

So as you can see there is still a lot of work to be done by governments, funding bodies and the academic community and publishers to make open access work for everyone. It all seems to boil down to the fact that people still don't understand OA completely. There needs to be more communication to rid people of their misconceptions about OA - and that's across the board including those making the policy and those doing the research.

One area that people seemed most confused about was monographs and where they fit in with recent research council mandates. In fact most people were barely thinking about monographs at all and they were definitely marginalised in this journal-heavy discussion. And why not when an academic can get the same REF score for writing two journal articles as they can for spending months, or even years, writing a monograph. But what these academics don't seem to understand is that if no one rallies for monographs we might lose them altogether.

But not to worry, monographs have a champion in the form of Jisc Collectios' OAPEN - UK scheme. This scheme sees a number of monographs from a range of subjects and publishers being made openly available online via the publisher website and Google Books. Caren Milloy from Jisc was there to make the case for monographs and to make sure they weren't left out of the discussion, and of course to plug the upcoming Jisc Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference in July.

So all in all a really good afternoon that raised a lot of issues, and I got a few business cards too.