Giving Compass' Take:

• Rebecca Koenig explains how Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) works to make research more accessible and discoverable online. 

• How can funders work to scale up efforts like this one? 

• Read about why reports are only as impactful as their reach. 

If a dissertation rolls off the presses, and no one reads it, does it make a difference?

It’s a quandary no freshly minted PhD wants to ponder. Yet the longform research typical to disciplines like English, history and sociology can be difficult to share and find online.

So two years ago, the Association of American Universities, Association of Research Libraries and Association of University Presses designed a pilot project to more effectively disseminate humanities and social sciences research.

Called TOME, short for Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem, the effort raises money from universities to support the publication and digital distribution of open-access versions of the monographs that scholars write.

Or, as they’re sometimes called, “books.”

“Our goal is to make sure these books get integrated into the information network,” says Peter Potter, publishing director for the University Libraries at Virginia Tech and Association of Research Libraries visiting program officer for TOME. “If you do searches for topics, scientific articles will come up all the time—the metadata is much clearer. Books are not terribly discoverable.”

To help fix that problem, this month TOME unveiled a new website, OpenMonographs.org. It features resources for aspiring authors as well as administrators who may be interested in adding their universities to the group of 17 institutions that currently provide financial support for the project.

Read the full article about making research more accessible by Rebecca Koenig at EdSurge.