Publishing from the Library: New Roles for Libraries in Scholarly Communications

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Publishing from the LibraryNew Roles for
Libraries inScholarly Communications

• David Ruddy
• Cornell University Library
• September, 2004

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Why consider publishing?

• Escalating costs of scholarly communications,
  esp. in the sciences
• serials crisis
• Increasing concentration and control of scholarly
  literature in commercial hands
• A sense that the traditional publishing paradigm
  for scholarly literature is no longer working

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Conventional publishing

• Strengths
• Developing content
• Marketing content
• Generating revenues/profits
• Protecting intellectual property

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Conventional publishers in the e-publishing
environment?

• Advantages
• Disadvantages

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Advantages

• Understand the need for cost recovery and
  financial sustainability
• Can exploit existing content production processes
  and workflows
• Could add significant value to online content

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Disadvantages

• Understand readers as consumers rather than users
• Have not historically addressed issues of
  archiving and preservation
• Exercise monopolistic control over the
  availability of content

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The case for libraries ase-publishers
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Libraries

• Are central to the information space of a
  university
• Understand the culture of scholarship
• Focus on service models to support content usage
• Have curatorial expertise to manage and control
  large, diverse collections
• Have an established concern and mandate to
  provide lifecycle stewardship

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Is it really a new role?

• The Library has long served a distribution and
  archiving function for current reports, news, and
  data in electronic format
• USDA Economics and Statistics System
• Geospatial Information Repository (CUGIR)
• Legal Information Institute
• Almost exclusively public-domain or otherwise
  freely available information

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Recent e-publishing at Cornell

• Project Euclid
• Proprietary serial literature
• arXiv.org
• Open access, scientific pre-print server

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EuclidHistory

• Mathematics and statistics serial literature
  online
• Cornells response to the serials crisis
• Grant awarded by the Mellon Foundation in 2000
  for initial development
• Launched in 2003 as a fee-based service
• Will take approximately 3-4 years to reach a
  cost neutral position

http//ProjectEuclid.org
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EuclidMission

• Promote affordable scholarly communication by
  providing a not-for-profit alternative to
  commercial publishers
• Support independent and society publishers as
  they transition from paper to electronic
• Build a service designed by librarians to meet
  the needs of end users

http//ProjectEuclid.org
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EuclidProfile

• 37 journal titles available as of October 2004
• A publisher-driven business model
• User-centered functionality, with features
  designed to add value to math literature
• Global sales through a network of agents

http//ProjectEuclid.org
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arXiv.org

• An author-submitted pre-print server now
  containing 288K articles
• 2 million visitors per week 65 non-US
• Developed with government support at Los Alamos
  National Laboratory in 1991
• Now supported by Cornell University Library
• Operates outside of traditional publishing
  procedures
• Vitally important to global scholarly
  communications in several scientific disciplines

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Challenges that libraries must address as
publishers

• Infrastructure
• Collaboration
• Sustainability
• Credibility

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Developing infrastructure

• Publishing requires work in areas that libraries
  have little institutional experience
• Content development and design
• Peer-review
• Marketing and promotion
• Order fulfillment
• May require user support services in highly
  specialized or technical areas

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Strategic collaboration

• Success will likely depend on the development of
  strategic alliances with scholarly societies,
  university presses, and other university groups
  that have a contributing role to play in
  e-publishing

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Sustainability

• Financial
• Can we cover our costs?
• Can we create and maintain cost-effective
  processes and workflows?
• Technological
• Scalable technologies
• Sustainable developmental strategies
• Digital archiving and preservation

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Credibility

• Can libraries demonstrate positive benefits from
  their active role in e-publishing?
• Can libraries compete with commercial publishers,
  and with each other?
• Can libraries build infrastructure, collaborative
  relationships, and sustainable programs in
  e-publishing?