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Witan Publishing offers epublishing service for medieval scholars

Witan Publishing, a new service to the medieval academic community, was launched yesterday. It aims to provide e-publishing of peer-reviewed scholarship in the field of medieval studies.

Witan’s goal is not merely to be another academic publisher, but is instead something much more ambitious: to change the way scholarly research is produced, distributed, and received. This new service will benefit scholars the most, freeing their work from the old market restrictions, distributing scholarship more widely, and putting texts within the budgets of even struggling graduate students.

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According to Dr. Richard Scott Nokes, Academic Editor for Witan, “If you look at what other academic publishers are doing in the e-publishing market, they are either putting poorly-scanned and unreadable work online, or they are selling more current scholarship at a very high price. Witan Publishing will offer high-quality peer reviewed professional work and extremely reasonable prices.”

“It is important for academics to embrace the new and ever-growing world of e-publishing,” says Nina McNamara, Technical Editor for Witan. “E-books already outsell paperback and hardcover books on major online retailers, like Amazon.com. Soon, students will replace their hardcover textbooks with e-books all together.”

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The existing academic publishing world typically ignores the burgeoning electronic frontier of e-books. Seizing this opportunity, Witan Publishing produces electronic texts of the highest quality, viewable on nearly every platform available to consumers today.

Nokes, who is professor of medieval literature at Troy University, explains they are interested in publishing, “any medieval scholarship, any size. We’re particularly interested in stuff that doesn’t fit into the normal size (that no-man’s-land between 50-250 pages). But we’re interested in housing journals, doing Festschrifts, conference proceedings, etc. All that stuff that’s hard to publish for financial reasons.”

The publisher notes that the many current academic publishers offer little discount with their electronic versions. Witan aims to keep prices low, which will lead to increased the circulation of our author’s work and maximizing its impact of their scholarship on the field.

Click here to go to the Witan Publishing website

Source: Unlocked Wordhoard

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