Oxford University Press (OUP) has put its faith into electronic publishing, with the announcement that from this month it will start publishing monographs onto its Oxford Scholarship Online platform, in tandem with traditional printing.

OUP will now release front list titles simultaneously with the publication of print editions as it adds the full range of academic disciplines to Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO). Among the subjects joining OSO are biology, business & management, classics, history, math, linguistics, literature, physics and psychology. OUP believes OSO can expect “at least 200 new titles each year”.

OUP has also completed a major overhaul of its online music reference services ­ Grove Music Online and Oxford Music Online. Laura Macy, editor in chief of Grove Dictionaries of Music, explained to Information World Review that OUP has formed a bibliographic partnership with the Repetoire International de Litterature Musicale (RILM), so that Grove users, as well as RILM subscribers, can move between each information resource. Macy added that the search engine has been updated, so for the first time users will be able to listen to music following deals with the Alexander Street Press classic music library of full recordings.

Sophie Goldsworthy, OUP academic division editorial director, said OSO is more than an eBook, which she believes are ‘limited’. Instead, OSO offers abstracts of books and book chapters written by the authors, which can be found and accessed through a standard Google search. This has driven up the usage of traditional monographs, which appear within OSO. “Scholars find the material online and then order the book,” she said. “OSO is almost an index for our users.”

John Campbell, online projects manager, added: “Like society journals, now that content is findable the usage is going up. The books that are most used on OSO are the print bestsellers.”