Library publishing services: Developments at research libraries in the US and Canada

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Library publishing services Developments at
research libraries in the US and Canada
Karla Hahn ARL Office of Scholarly
Communication SCONUL Autumn Conference
December 16, 2008
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About ARL

• Membership
• 123 Research Libraries
• United States and Canada
• ARL member libraries make up a large portion of
  the academic and research library marketplace,
  spending more than 1 billion every year on
  library materials.
• Affiliate organizations
• Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
  Coalition (SPARC)

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ARLs Research Library Publishing Study

• ARL Member Survey
• Fall 2007
• Response rate of 65
• Follow-up interviews with program managers
• Semi-structured interviews
• 10 publishing program managers

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Research Libraries Offering Publishing Services
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Types of Materials Libraries are Publishing
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Library-published journals frequently are

• Electronic only
• Peer reviewed
• Open Access
• Previously published by another mechanism
• Humanities titles

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The Basic Service Suite

• Hosting and application management
• Advice and consultation
• Workflow management

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Other Publishing-related Services
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Partnerships other than university presses
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Library publishing services

• Service - based approach. Does not rely on
  content control
• Synergize with other investments libraries are
  making
• Leverage many opportunities for partnership
• Focus on necessary services for publishing
• Build on open source infrastructure

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State of service development
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The publishing landscape

• New opportunities
• Growing gaps in traditional systems

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Growing gaps in the traditional system

• Challenges of moving into electronic publishing
• Difficulty of moving out of print publishing
• Revenue-based publication models cannot meet the
  needs of many small fields
• Subscription models are working less and less
  well for smaller publishers over time.

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Opportunities from the university perspective

• University publishing has been decentralized
• Investments are generally local
• Little expertise is built
• Little synergy with other activities

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UC PubS

• Joint venture of the California Digital Library
  and the University of California Press
• Integrated service suite for campus publishers,
  editors, and authors

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Services include

• Article hosting and archiving
• Journal publishing
• Seminar series
• Monograph printing and distribution
• Marketing
• Copy editing

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Synergies Project

• Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant
• Integrate work of 21 partners
• Decentralized national platform local services
• Many formats, initial focus journals
• Multiple stakeholders and histories

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Sharing the work

• Montreal
• Lead institution
• Provides National Portal
• Responsible for Erudit repository
• Simon Frasier University
• Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Development

• Calgary
• Preservation
• New Brunswick
• Search
• Erudit / PKP integration
• Toronto
• Scholars Portal
• Single instance / many

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Creating opportunities for university publishing

• Libraries have done a great deal with very modest
  investments
• Campus entities are turning to libraries for
  publishing services
• Libraries are open to partnerships and creative
  in constructing them

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The question is no longer whether libraries
should offer publishing services, but what kinds
of services libraries will offer.