Library as Publisher: Your Feedback Needed

Submitted by Beverly Goldberg on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 09:31

As part of the work of ALA’s Digital Content and Libraries Working Group of ALA (which is tackling our many ebook-related issues), we are seeking some focused feedback before the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim next month. If you are experimenting with the creation, publication, and preservation of digital content, we need to hear from you by June 1. Please read on for details, then respond to dcwg-input@ala.org.
Background
At this moment in our profession, an increasing number of libraries are engaged in content creation. This may represent an opportunity, or shift in our profession, moving us from the end of a publishing and distribution chain to somewhere closer to the source. The issue we’re investigating here is not generally library relations with existing publishers, but activities where the library takes a lead or key partnership role in getting the content into digital format and delivering it over the long term. That takes us into archiving and preservation. In addition to the processes of gathering, preparing, and posting such content, we are also grappling with the challenges of copyright, fair use, and licensing in the digital environment.
What we’re trying to find out
We’re NOT looking for a comprehensive list of every digitization effort in libraries. We ARE looking for experiments that can help ALA recommend policies, address issues, or promote information exchange about this emerging area.
What we want you to do
By June 1, 2012, email dcwg-input@ala.org:

• A brief description of your institution’s efforts to create digital content. For instance, this might include Open Access scholarship, the co-creation of ePub files featuring local authors, or the unique gathering of local history photographs and/or oral histories.
• Some key observations of important issues, roadblocks, and discoveries. For instance, what group of authors or publishers have you worked with directly? Which approaches do you believe to be important to your institution or our profession? At what point has your project moved from your own agency to a larger consortial environment, and why?
• Where do you think ALA could make a difference? Have your issues been legal (dealing with copyright, for instance), technical (defining file type standards), policy (guiding documents), political within your institution or region, and/or financial (you just need more money)? Or have you found new concerns worth noting?
• A contact email and phone if we have questions.

Our subgroup will then review the responses, meet to discuss them at the 2012 ALA Annual Conference, then select a few key studies and issues for further examination. It is our plan to share our findings and recommendations broadly, concluding our work by the 2013 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle.
Thank you for your assistance in this important investigation.
Jamie LaRue, chair
Digital Content Working Group #2
and director, Douglas County (Colo.) Libraries
jlarue@jlarue.com

Role of Libraries in Online Scholarly Communication

Mohamed Musthafa. K

Introducing the electronic publishing and briefly describes the growth and development of scholarly electronic publishing around the world. Further, defining the open access publishing, asserts that it is the best solution for libraries to overcome the ‘serial crisis’. Author argues that libraries are the most suitable place for co-ordinating and undertaking the scholarly publishing activities in the academic institutions like universities in an electronic environment. The paper present some examples of best practices of library based electronic publishing at various universities at different parts of the world.

Key words: E-Publishing, Scholarly Communication, Open Access Publishing, Academies

Library Based E-Publishing.

E-Publishing in Academia: Opportunities and Challenges for Library Professionals

 Mohamed Musthafa. K

& 

Dr. Naushad Ali. PM

Abstract

Electronic publishing is an opportunity for the libraries to undertake the responsibility of publishing the intellectual output of any academic institution. Library and information centers as the central point of intellectual activities in the academic environment and the librarians have experience of working with people from different subject areas in order to support their activities and to deliver services to them, and they also have professional skills associated with the management and dissemination of information, they are the most suitable professionals to play the role of publisher in the academic environment. This paper discusses the possibilities and opportunities of electronic publishing in this regard. At the same time there are challenges like publishing skills, technology skills, experience, copyright and preservation issues in electronic publishing.  This paper discusses some of the important issues which should be addressed when the librarians start to play the role of e-publisher.   A list of popular open sources e-publishing models which are downloadable at free of cost has also been given.

Keywords: e-Publishing, Libraries, Academia, e-Publishing models

MedKnow publications

A number of journals from India are published by the learned societies or their editors without the involvement of commercial publishers. MedKnow publications is a for-profit open access journal publisher providing services to more than 35 journals. Sahoo (2006) provide the features of MedKnow publications which maintains an independent website for each of its journals which provide full text of articles without any access restriction. The full text is available in HTML and PDF. The web site use open URL standard, making linking easier and Dublin Core Metadata. Websites provide interactive features such as ability to add comments on published articles, usage statistics and translation into eight foreign languages. Links are given to Pubmed and databases such as DSMZ and Species 2000. MedKnow has put in place an online manuscript submission and peer review system through which over 10,000 manuscripts have been processed by 2006. After becoming online the visibility and reach of the journals has increased greatly. The projected impact factor of JPGM has increased from 0.25 in the year 2000 to 0.99 in 2005 and a continuous growth has been seen in manuscript submission an article download also.   

Sahu, DK (2006). Journal publishing in the developing world: MedKnow publications as a model. INASP Newsletter, Spring, pp 7-8.

Open access to scientific publications

Bjork (2004) share the experience of last ten years in open access scholarly communication. Despite widespread agreement among academies that OA would be the optimal distribution mode for publicly financed research results; such channels still constitute only a marginal phenomenon in global scholarly communication system. There are many barriers which hindering a rapid proliferation of open access. The discussion is structured according to the main OA channels; peer reviewed journals for primary publishing, subject-specific and institutional repositories for secondary parallel publishing. It also discusses the types of barriers, which can be classified as consisting of the legal framework, the information technology infrastructure, business models, indexing services and standards, the academic reward system, marketing and critical mass.

Bjork, BC (2004). Open access to scientific publications- an analysis of the barriers to change?. Information Research, 9 (2). Retrieved on April 4, 2010 from http://inforamationr.net/ir/9-2/paper170.html.

Interactive open access publishing

Poschl (2010) argued that the advantages of open access, public peer review and interactive discussion can be efficiently and flexibly combined with the strengths of traditional publishing and peer review. Since 2001 the benefits and viability of this approach are clearly demonstrated by the highly successful interactive open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and a growing number of sister journals launched by the publisher Copernicus and the European Geosciences Union. These journals are practicing a two-stage process of publication and peer review combined with interactive public discussion, which effectively resolves the dilemma between rapid scientific exchange and through quality assurance. The same or similar concepts have recently also been adopted in other disciplines, including the life sciences and economics. The principles, key aspects and achievements of interactive open access publishing (top quality and impact, efficient self-regulation and low rejection rates, little waste and low cost) are outlined and discussed.

Poschl, U (2010). Interactive open access publishing and public peer review: The effectiveness of transparency and self-regulation in scientific quality assurance. INternation federation of Library Associations and Institutions 36 (1) pp 40-46. Retrieved on November 29, 2010 from http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/publications/ ifla-journals/fila-journals-36-1_2010.PDF. DOI: 10.1177/0340035209359573.

An often-cited reason authors make their articles openly accessible is to maximize the impact of their research. OA article is more likely to be used and cited than one published commercially. Research funding agencies and universities want to ensure that the research they fund and support in various ways has the greatest possible research impact (citation impact). In May 2005, 16 major Dutch universities cooperatively launched DAREnet, the digital Academic Repositories, making over 47,000 research papers available online. By the 2009, the repository holds in excess of 69,000 articles. In April 2006 European Commission recommended that research funding agencies should establish a European policy mandating published article arising from EC funded research to be available after a given time period in OA archives. Libraries and librarians are also among the most vocal and active OA advocates. Many library associations have either signed major OA declarations or created their own (Irivwieri, 2009).

Irivwieri, JW (2009). Research into open access science publishing. Library Hi-Tech News 3 (4), pp 16-18.