Brown University

Brown University Library

Academic Library · United States

Brown University Digital Publications

https://library.brown.edu/create/digitalpublications/

Allison Levy, Director
Phone: 401-863-1503
Email: allison_levy@brown.edu

Program Overview

Mission/Objectives:
Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
  • Publishing activities began: 2015
  • Stage of publishing efforts: 2 - Early
  • Open access focus: One priority among many
  • Portion of Open Access publications: All
  • Publishing Languages: English

Program Organization

  • Organization of publishing services: Centralized library publishing unit/department
  • Advisory/editorial board: Yes
  • Total staffing in Full Time Equivalents (FTE): 4
  • Individual people: 4
  • Students: Graduate student(s), Undergraduate student(s)
  • Funding sources: Charitable contributions; Grants; Library operating budget

Publishing Activities

  • Expansive digital publications
  • Multimedia


Highlights

Top Publications:
  • Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary [published by University of Virginia Press, 2020] (multimodal monograph)
  • Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World [published by Stanford UP, 2022](multimodal monograph)
  • A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures [published by MIT Press, 2022] (multimodal monograph)
  • Brown University's Slavery and Justice Report with Commentary on Context and Impact [published by Brown University Digital Publications] (multimodal work)
Disciplinary Specialties:
  • Humanities
  • Humanistic social sciences

Partners

  • Internal partners:  Campus departments or programs, Individual faculty, Graduate students, Undergraduate students
  • Other publishing entities administered by your library: No
  • Other publishing entities within your library’s parent institution: No
  • Program’s openness to working with external partners: Open to working with any external partner
  • Types of publications should other publishers refer to your program: Longform scholarly work that requires digital content development expertise
  • Part of a consortium which provides support for publishing? (e.g. platform, funding): No

Technologies & Services

Media Formats:
  • audio
  • data
  • images
  • modeling
  • multimedia
  • text
  • video
  • visualizations
Software & Platforms:
  • locally developed software
  • Manifold
  • PubPub
  • Scalar
  • WordPress

Additional Services:
  • author advisory - other
  • author advisory - copyright
  • Developmental and/or substantive editing
  • DOI distribution
  • analytics
  • budget preparation
  • cataloging
  • contract/license preparation
  • copyediting
  • data visualization
  • dataset management
  • digitization
  • DOI assignment/allocation of identifiers
  • graphic design (print or web)
  • hosting of supplemental content
  • image services
  • ISBN registry
  • marketing
  • metadata
  • open URL support
  • outreach
  • training
Digital Preservation Strategy:
  • Digital preservation services under discussion

Additional Information

Last Year:
Most significant areas of expansion and growth include the addition of a full-time Assistant Editor and affiliate membership in AUPresses.
Future Plans:
Continued training programs for less-well-resourced authors and institutions; continued work with authors beyond the Brown campus (currently via the BUDP-MIT Press series On Seeing); continued exploration of best practices for accessibility and preservation and discoverability.
Highlighted Publication

A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures

This groundbreaking, born-digital book’s layered interface—readers enter Islam through a diverse set of doorways, each leading to different time periods across different parts of the world—allows for an exploration of and engagement with a rich set of visual material and multimedia evidence not possible in a printed volume. Shortlisted for the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s 2023 Nayef Al-Rodhan International Book Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy.

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