Lulu, a pioneer in the self-publishing market, has set its sights on a new segment: academics.
In an a release this week, Lulu announced the launch of, Glasstree, an online publishing platform dedicated to academic and scholarly authors and communities. Lulu officials say that Glasstree will provide a suite of online tools and services needed by academic authors, and will leverage technology, such as print-on-demand, to distribute their works more cost-effectively.
Lulu says its service is centered on addressing some “critical pain points” in the commercial academic publishing market, such as accelerating time to market, more transparent pricing, and reversing the revenue model to allow academics and scholars to realize 70% of the profit from sales of their work.
Among Glasstree's advertised services: support for open access, including the deposit of works in institutional repositories; Tools for bibliometric tracking, so academic authors can monitor Impact Factors, and other relevant measurements; More control over licensing options, through a partnership with Creative Commons; and access to traditional peer review.
“The existing academic publishing model is broken,” reads the pitch on Glasstree’s website. “By accelerating time to market and reversing an exploitative revenue model, Glasstree allows academics and their supporting institutions to actually profit from sales of their work.”
