The Rockefeller University Press has announced an expanded program of free ebook release for scholars and public alike, although the titles concerned may not interest a broad general audience. Over 50 titles are being made available in multiple ebook formats  (PDF, ePub, Mobi) here, with companion hardbacks available for purchase.

However laudable the gesture, though, titles like Organellar Ion Channels and Transporters and Cytoskeletal Regulation of Membrane Function are not going to find many readers outside the research and academic community. However, a title like The Hostage Brain, which “illuminates for the lay audience – through clear prose and striking illustrations – what the brain is, how it functions, and how it is often subverted,” might be more interesting for the non-specialist. Ditto The Question of Animal Awareness, whose author seeks “to establish two-way communication with animals under study.”

The Rockefeller University, founded in 1901 as The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research by John D. Rockefeller himself, was the first U.S. biomedical institute, and is claimed to have “the highest number of Nobel Prizes in relation to personnel involved in research in the world.” Its journal publications are highly prestigious, so the volume works are likely of equal value – for the specialist at least.

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