http://disqus.com/by/RonaldSnijder/enMon, 18 May 2009 16:23:02 -0000http://freetail.tumblr.com/post/108437371#comment-9505257<p>While not so large as Bloomsbury, Amsterdam University Press (AUP - <a href="http://www.aup.nl" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.aup.nl">http://www.aup.nl</a>) has started an experiment with free online scholarly books.</p><p>Four hundred titles are selected and placed in one of four categories:<br>1. Available ‘as usual’: 10% visible in Google Book Search, not freely available via the AUP repository<br>2. Freely available via the AUP repository. Visible for 10% in Google Book Search<br>3. Visible for 100% in Google Book Search and freely available via the AUP repository.<br>4. Visible for 100% in Google Book Search, not available via the AUP repository.</p><p>Each set of 100 titles is as equal as possible. For a period of 6 months, the usage of the titles will be measured.<br>Starting point:</p><p>* Sales: paper version and online version<br>* Downloads at Google Book Search<br>* Citations</p><p>Per title and per set</p><p>Central question: what is the scientific impact and the commercial impact of these four ways of distributing? Increase of usage leads to a higher scientific impact; will it also lead to more sales?</p>RonaldSnijderMon, 18 May 2009 16:23:02 -0000