COPIM Conference: Experimental Books – Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing

Experimental Books – Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing 

Exploring Archival Data Performances, Re-using as Re-writing, and Computational Books 

An Online Conference in Three Parts 

Monday 20 February, Thursday 9 March, & Monday 13 March 2023

Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) 

Experimental Publishing and Reuse Work Package final conference 

Register here (free): https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.org/ (please note that places for the workshops are limited) 

This three-part conference — including talks, roundtables, and workshops — will discuss alternative publishing options for the humanities by showcasing some of the experiments that are currently taking place in the realm of academic book publishing. It aims to inspire authors, publishers, technology developers and others, to (continue to) speculate on new collaborative futures for open humanities research and publication. It also aims to discuss how these book experiments could sit within more standardised or established workflows for print and online book production, dissemination, and preservation. 

The conference will engage with questions including: 

• How will the form of the book need to adapt (or does it need to adapt?) to accommodate the research that humanities scholars will want to do in the future? 
• How can speculating on alternative book futures question the hegemonic fixtures in academic publishing? 

• How can we create new communities around our research by experimenting with the forms and relationalities of our books and publishing? 
• How can we promote the irreducible plurality of research through our academic publishing cultures?

For more information on the conference and the programme please visit the conference website https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.org 

The conference will be organised around three book typologies that we have explored and experimented with over the last 3.5 years in the context of the COPIM  project. These are Data Books, books where a database of resources forms the central element (i.e., not as an enhancement to a text-based book) around which the book is formed; Combinatorial Books, books based on the re-use (for example, through re-writing, adaptation, remix, or forking) of already existing books published under an open license; and Computational Books, books that include or incorporate code as part of their critical content or that execute or run code as part of their knowledge production or publication process.