Library Publishing Coalition—A Milestone in Evolution of Scholarly Publishing

Use the link to access the full text article opening as follows: "For the past year, representatives of some of the most influential university libraries in the country have been meeting and exploring the potential for library/press partnerships for scholarly publishing in the future. In the next 2 years, representatives of more than 50 academic libraries will consider their roles in the future of access to scholarly literature. Called the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC), the group is being led by Educopia Institute, an Atlanta-based consultancy that has experience working on other library digital efforts. This is not a small issue for academic libraries or university presses. In her dissertation on the subject of open access publishing, British Columbia Electronic Library Network’s Heather Morrison tells NewsBreaks that, 'the primary current economic support for scholarly publishing comes from academic libraries (about 73%) and that transitioning this support to open access will be key to making this transition happen. The high profits of some of the larger publishers should be enough to illustrate that this is doable—publishers like Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer earn more than 30% in profits. However, with some efficiencies it should be possible to create a much more affordable system.' Morrison noted, 'By my calculations, a scholar-led open access publishing system could cost a very great deal less than what libraries currently pay for subscriptions—up to 96% less based on the calculations quoted by Edgar & Willinsky. I don’t think that this amount takes into account the library publishing services per se, and it may be advisable to try to direct more money to the journals per se to avoid burnout, but the huge difference in costs suggests that there is quite a bit of leeway.' Björn Brembs, professor of neurogenetics at Germany’s Universität Regensburg, notes that, 'libraries need not make any profit. If libraries manage to keep the same costs as publishers, at least the subscription segment, currently dominated by large publishers with profit margins well beyond 30%, stands to run in excess of 30% more cheaply. In the case of our university library, e.g., which is already running four open access journals, this would mean annual savings of at least 700,000 EUR.' ..."