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Manifold Digital Services Spotlight: Athabasca University Press

Travels with Terence, Part 2​

In honor of OA Week, we’re taking the chance to do a spotlight on our first Manifold Digital Services Pilot press—Athabasca University Press, Canada’s first open access scholarly press!

Terence traveled to Edmonton, Alberta, this week to work with AU Press, and, it would seem, to eat his fair share of Tim Horton’s.

AU Press publishes journals and monographs and makes its scholarship freely available to encourage broad readership. Megan Hall, acting director, is leading the Manifold integration. She remarks, “Over the last few years, we have heard from scholars interested in producing books enhanced with audio and video, primary research and archival documents, and social reading features. Manifold will allow us to experiment with all of these possibilities in addition to enabling us, as an open access press, to offer free books that are mobile-friendly and value-added.”

Over the course of two days of training, Terence and the Athabasca team were able to work through the major features of the platform and explore how Manifold can be leveraged not only from a production standpoint, but also from editorial and marketing perspectives. Terence said, “There’s something about face-to-face meetings that can’t be replicated on a web call. Being in the same room allows you to engage in a much more organic way, and because of that we were able to really tease out some new ideas that will only help make Manifold better. Traveling to Edmonton in person made all the difference.”

tweet from @au_press for #OAWeek18 including a link to their blog ow.ly/UYpS30moh5v and a photo of Manifold on a tablet atop a stack of press publications.

You can read more about the training on AU Press’s blog post “Manifold: Publishing and Beyond”! Learn more about AU Press and the amazing work they are doing on their website and on their Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.

The Alberta Legislature Building, just a few blocks from the AU Press offices.

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Travels with Terence Recap: Miles Travelled: 3,044 (~4899 km)

  • Doughnuts Eaten: 🤐
  • Goats Seen: 0
  • Funiculars Ridden: 1

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We're looking forward to seeing where Terence’s travels take him next!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out on the community Slack channel or tweet us at @manifoldscholar and follow along on Github for more details and to request features.