What’s Your Tier? Introducing Library Partnership (LP) Certification for Journal Publishers | Nov 16, 2021

"As libraries consider how to support the global transition to open, choices and priorities can be overwhelming. Annie Johnson described the difficult place librarians inhabit, including shrinking collections budgets and greater needs to provide paywalled content and support open publishing efforts. In addition to financial concerns, libraries also need to make “informed, strategic decisions about which initiatives to support (and which not to support) [while acknowledging that] each agreement takes so much time to evaluate.” In this situation, so aptly described by Johnson, assessing publishers’ practices is a useful approach. As two librarians involved in scholarly communication, who have either taken on a new role leading collections strategy (Robin) or been increasingly working with librarians in acquisitions and collections strategy (Rachel), we want to improve clarity in discussions about openness and publisher practices among our library colleagues, and what those things mean in relationship to our professional responsibilities and values. Our proposed Library Partnership (LP) certification system for journal publishers updates an earlier provisional system called Publishers Acting as Partners with Public Institutions of Higher Education and Land-grant Universities (PAPPI) and its associated scorecard. As with PAPPI, in LP certification, a publisher’s actions are quantified based on points earned for practices that align with the values of libraries and many institutions of higher education. The more points a publisher earns, the higher their overall score. LP certification is similar to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) architectural certification. Where LEED certification assesses a building project’s practices in “credit categories” such as water efficiency or indoor environmental air quality, LP certification assesses a publisher’s practices in four categories: Access, Rights, Community, and Discoverability. The overall score a publisher earns places them in one of four tiers...."

Caldwell, R., & Sinn, R. N. (2021). What’s Your Tier? Introducing Library Partnership (LP) Certification for Journal Publishers. Commonplace, 1(3). https://doi.org/10.21428/6ffd8432.e1326549