Dear e-mentor Readers,

I am pleased to present to you a consecutive issue of our bimonthly magazine, which I encourage you to read.

The academic community will certainly be interested in the initiative of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, which has undertaken steps towards the popularization of e-books addressed to students by means of the regulations included in project of the ordinance on specific subsidies to academic textbooks. The project establishes the possibility of the Ministry's financial contribution to the best first national textbooks editions, first Polish editions of foreign textbooks or reprints of distinguished academic textbooks. What is important, in case of the first editions, the funding could be granted for both, the paper and the electronic version. In case of reprints, in turn, the financial contribution would be received only by their electronic versions.

The publishers and their associations took a negative stance towards this proposition. Also the Students' Parliament of the Republic of Poland expresses their reservations. The question that ought to be asked is whether the concerns are reasonable.

Publishing academic textbooks is not a particularly profitable business venture. The number of copies is usually around few hundred. As a result, the Ministry's funding (total amount of 8,5 million zlotych per year) has a considerable influence on the profitability of such activity. In many cases, the publishers have to condition their activity on the rules established by the Ministry. And the Ministry, through new regulations, would like to enforce, firstly, providing the National Library of Poland with the PDF files with textbooks contents by those who receive the funds, and secondly, textbooks conversion into e-books and publishing them on internet platforms. Moreover, the Ministry would like to provide coverage of the costs of such conversion. It is not clear though, what the aim of including digital issues of all grant-aided academic textbooks in internet repositories or what the rules of publication access would be.

Vital is also the issue of PDF files handed down to the National Library of Poland and their consecutive use. Sharing those files by the Library with other public libraries in Poland - with the aim to provide the files to all those interested in them - could effectively discourage foreign authors, concerned about the copyrights protection, from publishing translations on our national market, which, in turn, would limit the access of Polish students to the best foreign economic textbooks (it regards, of course, those publication, in case of which the economic account of their publishing would necessitate applying for the Ministry's financial contribution).

Despite many fears of new regulations, it should be hoped that the direction of the proposed changes will be sustained. The changes are indispensable. The ordinance in force from 2006 assumes the financial contribution to paper textbooks while the innovative form, receiving bonus stakes, are... CD-ROMs, including those with static content.

Chief editor
Marcin Dąbrowski