“…’publication’ occurs when a document is ‘made public’ with the intention that it be read by others”.
Over the past 10 years, the number of libraries operating as publishers has been on the increase. In 2007 the ARL commissioned a survey of its membership, finding that 44% of the 80 respondents were engaged in delivering ‘publisher services’ and 21% were currently planning developments.
However, there are many different ways in which libraries act as publishers, for example, they may not all publish the same formats – many publish journals, monographs and conference proceedings, but few carry out all of these tasks. It may not be an exclusively library lead initiative either. Many libraries work in conjunction with the University Press, for example, at the University of Pittsburgh where the University Library System (ULS) maintains control of the university’s e-journal publishing, while the University Press focuses on monograph print publications. There is also collaboration between the two services with regard to monograph publishing, for example ULS has made digital copies of press monographs available through its Digital Editions programme. At Purdue, the Institutional Repository is an integral part of the Press, rather than a separate entity.
But what is a ‘publisher service’? This is an important question for those looking to establish the library as publisher as there are a number of models. It could be as simple as assigning an ISBN to a report or monograph, it could be defined as leading the whole publishing process. A clear set of policies and procedures is needed to define the exact remit of the library publisher – a phrase disliked by many as this implies a second division of publishing after ‘real’ publishers. Perhaps ‘library as scholarly publisher’
In relation to the disciplines that drive the demand for library publishing, the 2007 ARL survey found that most partnerships centred on the humanities, with other examples from the social sciences, health sciences and education. This is not unique to the United States, the University of Huddersfield Press, for example, has solely published humanities monographs and humanities, health studies and education journals. However, there is also growing interest from the sciences and in developing student research publications.
More recently, in 2012 three US libraries, each having a particular experience in the publishing arena, have collaborated to explore library publisher models.
- Purdue University publish open access journals (although this is actually a collaboration between Purdue University Libraries and Purdue University Press)
- Georgia Institute of Technology publish conference proceedings
- University of Utah publish monographs.
The survey found that there were a number of library publishing programmes in existence, publishing journals, conference proceedings, technical reports and monographs.
In the United States 54 libraries are now involved in the two-year Library Publishing Coalition project, although 7 years after the original ARL survey the Educopia Institute, the coordinators of the Library Publishing Coalition described library based publishing as an ‘emergent field’ that ‘doesn’t quite know what it is yet.’ Of course this is good news for those that are only just entering into the arena, indeed the 2012 survey found that most of those libraries that took part in journal publishing were less than three years old
In the UK, the campus wide publishing JISC funding strand was helping to set up a number of initiates such as HOAP at Huddersfield and SAS journals at the School of Advanced studies.
The Library Publishing Coalition has some critics, John P. Wilkin, associate university librarian for publishing and technology at the University of Michigan (an AAUP member), believes that ‘facilitating conversations isn’t enough’
There is certainly merit in library publishers joining together for sustainability reasons (see below), and there are a number of groups such as the Library Publishing Coalition, Association of American University Presses (AAUP), however, Bryn Geffert from Amherst was undecided as to whether his press would join the AAUP as it objects to the Federal Reserve Public Access Act which mandates the public access to research in the United States and supported the legal action taken against Georgia State University over alleged copyright infringement. This stance is certainly very much opposed to the strategy behind many of the new University Presses, who advocate open access.
There is a clear interest and expectation from some parts of the academic community that the library should be involved in journal publishing, but the question is to what degree? In the case of both journals and monograph publishing there is a niche that libraries can fill by publishing well regarded titles that lack the support to be taken on by larger publishers as they would not provide a sufficient revenue streams to support a more costly publishing model. Looking at examples from the UK and US, there is clearly value in these niche research titles as long as the business model is supported by the University.
In the editorial in Serials Review, Perry breaks library publishing services up into three smaller steps, describing the library as journal publisher as ‘not necessarily an all or nothing endeavour’. This analogy can be extended to monograph and conference paper publishing in the library. Perry’s three steps are described in 4.2 Hosting, 4.3 Library expertise and 4.4 publishing.
4.1. The new university presses
4.2 Hosting
4.3 Librarian expertise
4.4 Publishing
4.5 Challenges
4.6 Sustainability
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