Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce the publication of Animal Experience, a 25th book in its open access Living Books About Life series. ANIMAL EXPERIENCE, edited by Leon Niemoczynski and Stephanie Theodorou (both at Immaculata University, US) http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common "brain-mind." This book explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. Through a comprehensive selection of essays and videos from both science and philosophy, the editors re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. They also address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and upon our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. *** LIVING BOOKS ABOUT LIFE http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org Living Books About Life (http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org) was launched by Open Humanities Press (OHP) (http://openhumanitiespress.org) in October 2011. Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and edited by Gary Hall, Joanna Zylinska and Clare Birchall, Living Books About Life is a series of curated, open access books about life -- with life understood both philosophically and biologically -- which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. Produced by a globally-distributed network of writers and editors, the books in the series repackage existing open access science research by clustering it around selected topics whose unifying theme is life: e.g., air, agriculture, bioethics, cosmetic surgery, electronic waste, energy, neurology and pharmacology. Peter Suber, Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge, said: ‘This book series would not be possible without open access. On the author side, it takes splendid advantage of the freedom to reuse and repurpose open-access research articles. On the other side, it passes on that freedom to readers. In between, the editors made intelligent selections and wrote original introductions, enhancing each article by placing it in the new context of an ambitious, integrated understanding of life, drawing equally from the sciences and humanities’. By initially creating twenty one ‘living books about life’ in just seven months, the series represents an exciting new model for publishing, in a sustainable, low-cost, low-tech manner, many more such books in the future. These books can be freely shared with other academic and non-academic institutions and individuals. New books have been added to the series since 2011. Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, commented: ‘This remarkable series transforms the humble Reader into a living form, while breaking down the conceptual barrier between the humanities and the sciences in a time when scholars and activists of all kinds have taken the understanding of life to be central. Brilliant in its simplicity and concept, this series is a leap towards an exciting new future’. One of the most important aspects of the Living Books About Life series is the impact it has had on the attitudes of the researchers taking part, changing their views on open access and raising awareness of issues around publishers’ licensing and copyright agreements. Many have become open access advocates themselves, keen to disseminate this model among their own scholarly and student communities. As Professor Erica Fudge of the University of Strathclyde and co-editor of the living book on Veterinary Science, put it, ‘I am now evangelical about making work publicly available, and am really encouraging colleagues to put things out there’. These ‘books about life’ are themselves ‘living’, in the sense they are open to ongoing collaborative processes of writing, editing, updating, remixing and commenting by readers. As well as repackaging open access science research -- together with interactive maps and audio-visual material -- into a series of books, Living Books About Life is thus involved in rethinking ‘the book’ itself as a living, collaborative endeavour in the age of open science, open education, open data, and e-book readers such as Kindle and the iPad. Tara McPherson, editor of VECTORS, Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, said: ‘It is no hyperbole to say that this series will help us reimagine everything we think we know about academic publishing. It points to a future that is interdisciplinary, open access, and expansive.’ Funded by JISC, Living Books About Life is a collaboration between Open Humanities Press and three academic institutions, Coventry University, Goldsmiths, University of London, and the University of Kent. Books: * Animal Experience, edited by Leon Niemoczynski and Stephanie Theodorou (both at Immaculata University) * Astrobiology and the Search for Life on Mars, edited by Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths, University of London) * Bioethics™: Life, Politics, Economics, edited by Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths, University of London) * Biosemiotics: Nature, Culture, Science, Semiosis, edited by Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan University) * Cognition and Decision in Non-Human Biological Organisms, edited by Steven Shaviro (Wayne State University) * Cosmetic Surgery: Medicine, Culture, Beauty, edited by Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University) * Creative Evolution: Natural Selection and the Urge to Remix, edited by Mark Amerika (University of Colorado at Boulder) * Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me: Open Science and its Discontents, edited by Gary Hall (Coventry University) * Energy Connections: Living Forces in Creative Inter/Intra-Action, edited by Manuela Rossini (td-net for Transdisciplinary Research, Switzerland) * Extinction, edited by Claire Colebrook (Penn State University) * Human Genomics: From Hypothetical Genes to Biodigital Materialisations, edited by Kate O’Riordan (Sussex University) * Life in Code: and Software: Mediated Life in a Complex Computational Ecology, edited by David M. Berry (Swansea University) * Medianatures: The Materiality of Information Technology and Electronic Waste, edited by Jussi Parikka (Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton) * Nerves of Perception: Motor and Sensory Experience in Neuroscience, edited by Anna Munster (University of New South Wales) * Neurofutures, edited by Timothy Lenoir (Duke University) * Partial Life, edited by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (SymbioticA, University of Western Australia) * Pharmacology, edited by Dave Boothroyd (University of Kent) * Symbiosis, edited by Janneke Adema and Pete Woodbridge (Coventry University) * Another Technoscience is Possible: Agricultural Lessons for the Posthumanities, edited by Gabriela Mendez Cota (Goldsmiths, University of London) * The In/visible, edited by Clare Birchall (University of Kent) * The Life of Air: Dwelling, Communicating, Manipulating, edited by Monika Bakke (University of Poznan) * The Mediations of Consciousness, edited by Alberto López Cuenca (Universidad de las Américas, Puebla) * Ubiquitous Surveillance, edited by David Parry (University of Texas at Dallas) * The Unborn Human, edited by Deborah Lupton (University of Sydney) * Veterinary Science: Animals, Humans and Health, edited by Erica Fudge (Strathclyde University) and Clare Palmer (Texas A&M University) W: http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org Open Humanities Press is a non-profit, international Open Access publishing collective specializing in critical and cultural theory. OHP was formed by academics to overcome the current crisis in scholarly publishing that threatens intellectual freedom and academic rigor worldwide. OHP journals are academically certified by OHP’s independent board of international scholars. All OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published under open access licenses, and freely and immediately available online at http://openhumanitiespress.org. -- Professor Joanna Zylinska Department of Media and Communications Goldsmiths, University of London http://www.joannazylinska.net Curator of Photomediations Machine http://www.photomediationsmachine.net