Publishing Services a Major Growth Area for Academic Libraries, Suggests New Research Report

"Publishing services provided by libraries are expanding and professionalizing, suggests a new report released for comment today by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, on behalf of a team of researchers from the libraries of Purdue University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Utah. The report is the result of a year-long study of library publishing services made possible by a collaborative planning grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), with additional support from Berkeley Electronic Press and Microsoft Research. It is available at http://wp.sparc.arl.org/lps....Key findings of the project include: [1] Approximately half (55%) of all respondents to the survey indicated having or developing library publishing services....[2] About three-quarters of the programs publish between one and six journals, the majority of which are only distributed electronically and are less than three-years old....[3] The vast majority of library publishing programs (almost 90%) were launched in order to contribute to change in the scholarly publishing system, supplemented by a variety of other mission-related motivations....[6] The perceived relevance of publishing services to the library’s mission, and the integration of such services into the library’s budget, helps explain the relative lack of emphasis on sustainability planning. Few institutions (15%) have a documented sustainability plan for their publishing services, and only a fifth have evaluated the value or effectiveness of their publishing services. [7] The most prevalent journal publishing platforms reported were Open Journal Systems (57%), DSpace (36%), and Berkeley Electronic Press’s Digital Commons (25%)...."