Archives des mots-clés : library publishing

Creating a Library Publishing Program for Scholarly Books: Your Options Are Limited

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Author : Kevin Scott Hawkins

Publishing programs in academic libraries vary in their scope, offerings, and business models. Despite the many forms that these programs take, I have argued in the past that various factors constrain the design of a start-up publishing operation.

In this commentary, I discuss in greater depth the key questions to be addressed before establishing a library publishing program for scholarly books, arguing that the viable options are in fact quite limited.

URL : Creating a Library Publishing Program for Scholarly Books: Your Options Are Limited

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2262

Access to academic libraries: an indicator of openness?

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Authors  : Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang, Lucy Montgomery, Cameron Neylon, Katie Wilson

Introduction

Open access to digital research output is increasing, but academic library policies can place restrictions on public access to libraries. This paper reports on a preliminary study to investigate the correlation between academic library access policies and institutional positions of openness to knowledge.

Method

This primarily qualitative study used document and data analysis to examine the content of library access/use policies of 12 academic institutions in eight countries. The outcomes were statistically correlated with institutional open access publication policies and practices.

Analysis

We used an automated search tool together with manual searching to retrieve web-based library access policies, then categorised and counted the levels and conditions of public access. We compared scores for institutional library access features, open access features and percentages of open access publications.

Results

Academic library policies may suggest open public access but multi-layered user categories, privileges and fees charged can inhibit access, with disparities in openness emerging between library policies and institutional open access policies.

Conclusion. As open access publishing options and mandates expand, physical entry and access to print and electronic resources in academic libraries is contracting. This conflicts with global library and information commitments to open access to knowledge.

DOI : https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:21881/

Developing a Business Plan for a Library Publishing Program

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Authors : Kate McCready, Emma Molls

Over the last twenty years, library publishing has emerged in higher education as a new class of publisher. Conceived as a response to commercial publishing practices that have strained library budgets and prevented scholars from openly licensing and sharing their works, library publishing is both a local service program and a broader movement to disrupt the current scholarly publishing arena.

It is growing both in numbers of publishers and numbers of works produced. The commercial publishing framework which determines the viability of monetizing a product is not necessarily applicable for library publishers who exist as a common good to address the needs of their academic communities.

Like any business venture, however, library publishers must develop a clear service model and business plan in order to create shared expectations for funding streams, quality markers, as well as technical and staff capacity.

As the field is maturing from experimental projects to full programs, library publishers are formalizing their offerings and limitations.

The anatomy of a library publishing business plan is presented and includes the principles of the program, scope of services, and staffing requirements. Other aspects include production policies, financial structures, and measures of success.

URL : Developing a Business Plan for a Library Publishing Program

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6040042

Sustainable open access for scholarly journals in 6 years – the incubator model at Utrecht University Library Open Access Journals

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Authors : Jeroen Sondervan, Fleur Stigter

Key points

  • Humanities and the social science journals need flexible funding models.
  • Pragmatism and collaboration are key to transforming traditional publishing initiatives.
  • The Uopen Journals model sets a 6‐year development target for developing sustainable journals.
  • Actively involved editors are key to a journal’s success.

Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism

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Author : Dave S. Ghamandi

This commentary examines political and economic aspects of open access (OA) and scholarly journal publishing. Through a discourse of critique, neoliberalism is analyzed as an ideology causing many problems in the scholarly journal publishing industry, including the serials crisis.

Two major efforts in the open access movement that promote an increase in OA funded by article-processing charges (APC)—the Open Access 2020 (OA2020) and Pay It Forward (PIF) initiatives—are critiqued as neoliberal frameworks that would perpetuate existing systems of domination and exploitation.

In a discourse of possibility, ways of building a post-neoliberal system of journal publishing using new tactics and strategies, merging theory and praxis, and grounding in solidarity and cooperation are presented.

This includes organizing journal publishing democratically using cooperatives, which could decommodify knowledge and provide greater open access.

The article concludes with a vision for a New Fair Deal, which would revolutionize the system of scholarly journal publishing by transitioning journals to library publishing cooperatives.

URL : Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2223

Digital Publishing: A Home for Faculty in the Library — Exercises in Innovation from Harvard Law School

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Authors : Claire DeMarco, Kyle Courtney

This article highlights specific examples of desire by faculty at Harvard Law School to push legal scholarship beyond the constraints of traditional commercial publishing. Harvard Law School Library, like any other academic library, is navigating the expansion of scholarly formats to the digital realm, as well as the demand by faculty to support new, and evolving, approaches to scholarship.

Analysis of these examples will focus on the unique role that the library has in stimulating, supporting, and sustaining, faculty publishing efforts, in addition to the challenges presented by the new, and potentially uncomfortable, proposition of library as a digital publisher.

URL : http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:34864118

What’s in a Name? Exploring identity in the field of library journal publishing

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Authors : Jacqueline Whyte Appleby, Jeanette Hatherill, Andrea Kosavic, Karen Meijer-Kline

INTRODUCTION

This paper explores the variability in self-identifying practices of academic libraries engaged in journal publishing and hosting activities. We were interested in how libraries characterized their efforts in this area and looked at whether there is an unspoken threshold for differentiation with respect to publishing-support naming conventions.

METHODS

Using the Library Publishing Directory, in-depth interviews, and a more widely circulated follow-up survey, the research team examined service offerings, divisions of responsibility, funding, terminology, and semantic associations within publishing, both as an active practice and as an advertised service.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

We aimed to tease out whether there was any sort of tipping point, or inferred rules, around when an institution chose to call the activity either publishing or hosting. We found no particular service, set of services, funding structure, or division of labor that obviously influenced the use of a particular term.

Rather than noting a divide between publishing and hosting, participants spoke of both a spectrum and a tiering of work and support, though all emphasized that these models did not describe the quality of the work produced.

This paper also discusses how use of the term library publishing creates additional ambiguity in naming practices, and considers some implications for library staff newly immersed in scholarly publishing work.

URL : What’s in a Name? Exploring identity in the field of library journal publishing

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2209