CNI Executive Roundtable Report: Institutional Strategies and Platforms for Scholarly Publishing

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-02-06

Summary:

"Use the link to access the full text report opening as follows: "Traditionally, to the extent that higher educational institutions had institutional strategies for scholarly publishing, they were almost universally limited to support of a university press, perhaps supplemented by some uncoordinated department or school level technical report or working paper series. Faculty, of course, were and are involved in a very wide range of scholarly publishing and communication activities, but our interest in this roundtable was in institutional level efforts – how and where within institutions were strategies being determined, how were they being funded, and how were they being implemented. Scholarly publishing in the digital world involves a potentially much broader range of materials than those historically handled by university presses, and permits a much more nuanced and varying set of scholarly communication activities than those offered by the presses (for example, the dissemination of material without formal peer review, but possibly with facilities for post-publication comment). These activities involve both new units of the institution, especially libraries, taking on new roles and forming new collaborations with both individual faculty members and departments or schools, and the use of new platforms to provide a means for economical and innovative modes of publication and distribution. While many institutions are working independently, we are also seeing the launch of a number of multi-institutional collaborative efforts to develop and use common technology platforms and/or dissemination channels. Anvil Academic is one interesting development here; another is the Library Publishing Coalition. In addition, commercial players such as Apple, Amazon and YouTube (Google) are providing new avenues both for direct self-publishing by faculty members (in many formats: audio casts, e-books, videos), or for institutional dissemination of faculty scholarship. In the latter case, there are relationships that may need management at the institutional level. University presses as a system have been in crisis for a number of years, though a few large (often quasi-commercial) university presses continue to thrive. The market for scholarly monographs in the humanities has shrunk, creating financial problems at many presses. University subsidies for presses have been cut back in many institutions. Some university presses were slow to embrace new technologies, while others, who wished to move forward, found they did not have existing staff with requisite skills or the budget to purchase needed equipment or software. In what seems to be a steadily growing number of institutions, the press has been moved under the administration of the library. Many justifications have been given for this by one institution or another, including: greater combined expertise in managing scholarly publication within the new structure; hopes for cost control and improved technology access by allowing the press to share library technology infrastructure and expertise; the desire to link the press more tightly to the academic priorities and values of the host institution. One result of this is that we are seeing some institutions now trying to explicitly coordinate the work of the university press (now newly and more closely aligned with the institution and its faculty) with other activities carried out by library units or other groups. Some libraries, often at the request of faculty who were editors of journals or who authored content in new formats, began to take on publishing roles independent of any press that might exist at the institution. Libraries are also playing a greater role in publishing special collections and critical editions. A discussion on this dynamic and evolving landscape took place at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Executive Roundtable in Washington, DC on the morning of December 10, 2012. Representatives from 13 higher education institutions described their experiences, concerns, strategies, and future plans..."

Link:

http://www.cni.org/executive-roundtable-reports/institutional-strategies-platforms-scholarly-publishing/

From feeds:

[IOI] Open Infrastructure Tracking Project » Items tagged with oa.cni in Open Access Tracking Project (OATP)
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.universities oa.books oa.librarians oa.publishing oa.libarary_publishing coalition oa.youtube oa.universities oa.publishing oa.publishers oa.new oa.libraries oa.librarians oa.libarary_publishing oa.infrastructure oa.hei oa.colleges oa.cni oa.business_models oa.books oa.apple oa.anvil_academic oa.amazon coalition oa.reports oa.libraries

Date tagged:

02/06/2013, 16:54

Date published:

02/06/2013, 11:54