Academic Libraries As Scholarly Publishers
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Getting the Word Out Academic Libraries as Scholarly Publishers Edited by Maria Bonn and Mike Furlough Association of College and Research Libraries A division of the American Library Association Chicago, Illinois 2015 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri- can National Standard for Information Sciences–Permanence of Paper for Print- ed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Getting the word out : academic libraries as scholarly publishers / edited by Maria Bonn and Mike Furlough. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8389-8697-4 (paperback) -- ISBN 978-0-8389-8698-1 (pdf) -- ISBN 978-0-8389-8699-8 (ePub) -- ISBN 978-0-8389-8700-1 (Kindle) 1. Academic libraries--Publishing--United States. 2. Libraries and publish- ing--United States. 3. Libraries and electronic publishing--United States. 4. Library publications--United States. I. Bonn, Maria, editor. II. Furlough, Mike, editor. Z716.6.G48 2014 050.5’94--dc23 2014045104 Chapter 6, “Library-as-Publisher: Capacity Building for the Library Publishing Subfield,” by Katherine Skinner, Sarah Lippincott, Julie Speer, and Tyler Walters originally appeared in The Journal of Electronic Publishing, Volume 17, Issue 2: Education and Training for 21st Century Publishers, Spring 2014 (DOI: http:// dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0017.207). Used here with permission. Copyright ©2015 by The Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. All rights reserved except those which may be granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976. Printed in the United States of America. 19 18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1 In Memory of Julia C. Blixrud, 1954–2014 Passionate and tireless advocate for scholars and for libraries Table of Contents vii Foreword Dan Cohen and Kathleen Fitzpatrick xi Acknowledgments 1 Introduction. The Roots and Branches of Library Publishing Programs Maria Bonn and Mike Furlough Section 1: Why Libraries Publish 17 Chapter 1. Scholarly Publishing as an Economic Public Good Paul N. Courant and Elisabeth A. Jones 43 Chapter 2. We Scholars: How Libraries Could Help Us with Scholarly Publishing, if Only We’d Let Them J. Britt Holbrook Section 2: How Libraries Publish 57 Chapter 3. Toward New-Model Scholarly Publishing: Uniting the Skills of Publishers and Libraries Monica McCormick 83 Chapter 4. From Collaboration to Integration: University Presses and Libraries Charles Watkinson 113 Chapter 5. The Evolution of Publishing Agreements at the University of Michigan Library Kevin S. Hawkins 119 Chapter 6. Library-as-Publisher: Capacity Building for the Library Publishing Subfield Katherine Skinner, Sarah Lippincott, Julie Speer, and Tyler Walters v vi 141 Chapter 7. Nimble and Oriented towards Teaching and Learning: Publishing Services at Small Academic Libraries Lisa Spiro Section 3: What Libraries Publish 177 Chapter 8. Textbooks and Educational Resources in Library-Based Publishing Cyril Oberlander 193 Chapter 9. More than Consumers: Students as Content Creators Amy Buckland 203 Chapter 10. Archival APIs: Humanities Data Publishing and Academic Librarianship Matt Burton and Korey Jackson 221 Chapter 11. Peering Outward: Data Curation Services in Academic Libraries and Scientific Data Publishing Patricia Hswe 249 About the Authors 257 Index FOREWORD Foreword Dan Cohen and Kathleen Fitzpatrick Thinking about academic libraries as scholarly publishers re- quires both historical perspective and a sense of the future. It also requires a reconsideration of current scholarly publishers and their evolution. University presses, for instance, were invented as a means of getting the work of an institution’s faculty out to the world. They were created not as a means of establishing professionalized publishers on campus, but as a way to work around a publishing industry that found the academic market too small to bother with. University presses were literally the institution’s printing office, and they often sent the work they produced to other universities’ libraries for free in exchange for the work being produced at those universities. Over the course of the twentieth century, university presses, for a host of good reasons, became professional—and scholarly publishing benefited from that professionalism—but as a result, the press operation grew increasingly distant from the campus, its mission, and its needs. While university presses continue to produce a wide range of important and extremely high-quality work, their economic model (and in particular the declining levels of support most such presses receive from their institutions) has somewhat restricted their ability to conduct the research and development necessary to experiment both with new publishing models and with the kinds of content for which there simply isn’t much of a market. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0). Foreword vii viii FOREWORD This situation has opened up a potential space on campus for different kinds of publishers, working once again to support the work being done locally, focusing on using the best technological means of getting that work out to the world. That the technology of the Web provides entirely new and open ways to do such dissemination has only expanded and strengthened the possibilities. Despite facing budgetary difficulties of their own, academic libraries may be the ideal place for this new kind of publishing model to flourish. These libraries are still relatively stable, long-term institutions that are a core part of the university infrastructure and that are filled with people who have the requisite skills to move into the creation, as well as the storage and discovery, of published works. They have long supported the collection and preservation of the products of scholarly research, both through the development of their research collections and, more recently, through the establishment of institutional repositories. Libraries have the potential to become the crucial nexus for knowledge flows on campus, working both—as they have long done—to collect the knowledge produced around the world for study on their campus and—as they are increasingly doing—to disseminate the knowledge produced on campus around the world. And indeed, a host of new models for library-based publishing have emerged in the last few years, including intensifying relationships between the library and existing university presses, as well as the establishment of entirely new publishing enterprises within library structures. Libraries are also thinking more creatively about the wide range of services that they can provide, ranging from data and technical services to distribution and marketing. They are developing and leveraging networks of institutions and scholars. In short, libraries are coming to understand their latent strengths and to see how these strengths might be applied to publishing as well as preservation and access. These new library publishing enterprises are not just changing the nature of publishing, however; they are also, of necessity, changing the libraries they inhabit. Libraries are of course already undergoing many of the same kinds of changes that are taking place across the institution. The global reach of today’s networked scholars means that they are decreasingly using their home library as their first point of research and instead looking to online tools. For scholars, the importance of discovery Foreword ix and the problems related to abundance are very real, and libraries have an increasingly uncertain role in this workflow. By becoming publishing agents as well as storehouses for published works—that is, by working on both sides of the equation—libraries can insert themselves into the cycle of scholarly research more effectively. How might academic libraries get to this goal? Some practical knowledge, as well as some dreaming, is necessary. This volume brings together practitioners who have deeply considered, experimented with, and implemented a variety of models, ranging from new startups within the library, to the repurposing and expansion of existing modest enterprises, to the importation of university presses into the library (for some, a reunion). They also draw from views and innovations from across the landscape— from digital startups outside of academia, to new technologies that hold promise for publishing workflows and cost containment, to the products of new fields like digital humanities and others that are undergoing transformations and thus are looking for more expansive publishing platforms and opportunities. From those sources and experiences, the authors try to address some critical questions. For instance, organizationally, should publishing be a distinct unit within the library or connected to other units and services? How can a library handle complicated and sometimes contentious functions such as peer review, sales, and dissemination? There undoubtedly needs to be a psychological shift as well since publishing requires more outward- facing and discipline-specific skills. And from the modern researcher’s side, it requires a similar psychological change since it creates an utterly new relationship with an institution that, while beloved and critical to independent work, has not generally been seen as a gatekeeper or manager of the scholarly process beyond the first stage of research. We believe that a publishing landscape with a strong set of libraries involved is a healthier one.