Library-led Publishing will Supplant Commercially Published Scholarly Communication

May 1, 2015
Snow Marlonsson
LIBR 230 Section 10
Financial incentive drives our best and worst developments. Like turn of the century corporate
America, commercial publishers gave themselves specious bonuses, inflated consumer prices
and forced smaller publishers out of business; all while delivering less value (McMahon, 2015).
A 2007 comparison of average subscription prices of electronic journals published by
commercial and university publishers found that commercial publishers charge 2.8 times the
average university press rate (Moghaddam, 2007 p.166). For at least a decade, rapidly rising
serials costs have progressively handicapped academic library budgets (Budd, 2012). For
example, commercially published serials prices rose 300% between 1985 and 2006
(Moghaddam, 2007, p.169). Profit driven publishing steered academic library budgets off a fiscal
cliff. The breaking point has arrived (Greco, Estelami, Jones & Wharton, 2006). Instead of
continuously settling for less value, combining into ever greater consortia or negotiating more
vigorously, librarians are switching lanes, redefining roles and reallocating talent: They are
publishing (Kim Wu, & McCullough, 2015 p.77). What was for decades the worst financial crisis
for libraries is turning into libraries best opportunity for sustainability. This paper argues that not
only are academic libraries going to outperform commercial publishers, momentum indicates
they may do it much sooner than some expect.
What is the context for claiming the inevitability of drastic institution-wide change?
Library publishing, as a digital access point to previously published scholarship, is not new. Its
rise began as university sponsored mechanisms for storing faculty works and transitioned to

institutional scholarship aids (Riddle, 2015 p.59). Then increasing availability of publishing
software made library publishing more attractive at a time when industry sentiment about the
rising cost of serials unanimously pointed to reform. Cathy Davidson summarizes industry
sentiment: We are at a turning point where many of us want to find systemic and strategic
solutions [to the crisis in scholarly communications] and move beyond hand-wringing, fingerpointing, and blame-pinning (Greco, Estelami, Jones & Wharton, 2006). Greco, Estelami, Jones
and Wharton establish industry wide agreement for Davidson's comments in their 2006 analysis:
The state of scholarly journal publishing: 1981-2000. Major players include university
presidents, deans, librarians and human resource professionals as well as scholars such as
Stephen Boyd, Andrew Herkvic, Brad DeLong, Tony Henthorne, Tina Loras, Michael LaTour,
James McPherson, Andrew Odlyzko, Norris Pope, Kate Torrey and Lynne Withey, in addition to
professional associations such as the American Council on Learned Societies, the American
Library Association, the Association of Modern Language, the Association of College and
Research Libraries and the Association for Scholarly Publishing (Greco, Estelami, Jones &
Wharton, 2006 and others) do not contest the existence of a serials crisis. While agreement as to
the severity of rising serials prices is unanimous, solutions are open to scrutiny.
The most popular coping strategy has been to form negotiating alliances with other consumers.
Universities have banded together to negotiate lower prices from commercial publishers. This
has been partially successful. It offset part of the inflationary effect of powerful publishers, but
they soon figured out other ways to increase their profit margins. Publishers could drop titles
without changing the contracts. They could threaten access to back titles if libraries did not
renew under the publisher's terms (Budd, 2012). In addition to hidden consequences, unwieldy
alliances could be difficult or impossible to adapt to each members' changing information needs.

This inflexibility and the persistent nature of the serials problem led library budgeting teams to
explore more options.
Another solution to rising prices has been increased diversification. University librarians can
purchase access to a general aggregator and work with faculty to choose cheaper, print versions
of obscure and niche journals. They can work with departments to fund department-specific
databases with separate funds. This significantly cuts the number of users using the product
which translates to lower cost. Like alliances, this strategy has alleviated some pressure but is no
longer viable as a sole solution, because the cost of the one or two large, multidisciplinary
aggregators has continued to rise beyond the rate of inflation (Budd, 2012) and consequently,
nearly beyond many universities' reach. Further, niche journals that are not well-aligned with
large publishers are perishing (2012), so even when librarians and faculty decide to diversify
with print materials, their options sometimes disappear as they are adopting them.
The serials crisis could be alleviated by a sudden change in demand. If universities banded
together in refusal to pay for dropped titles and bundled extras (cable television-style), refused to
renew when prices increased drastically, dropped the publisher when threatened with the loss of
back titles and price gouging they could wield more control (Budd, 2012). This scenario is
unlikely, as commercial publishers do provide a truly useful product. Eliminating the large
commercial aggregators without a comparable product in place would place the scholarship of
the abstaining university in question (Budd, 2012). Therefore, the next solution is to provide a
competing product; library-led, open-access publishing.
Why is library-led publishing the most-likely solution to the serials crisis?
First, the value of library-led publishing holds whether the cost of serials exceeds inflation or
not. According to Kelly Riddle's article, Creating policies for library publishing in an
institutional repository, library publishing has already played an important role archiving faculty

work, publishing theses and dissertations, managing work flow for such works, publishing
research data and archiving/ digitizing parts of the collection (2015). The natural next step for
libraries is to expand to include scholarly journals and monographs (Kennison & Norberg, 2014).
Because many libraries already hold information dissemination as their core mission, publishing
information is not separate, but a long over due tool for achieving existing missions (Simser,
Stockham & Turtle, 2015). The addition of these two types of publications and other academic
publishing such as research findings, takes advantage of existing skill-sets, relationships and
infrastructure (Scardilli, 2015). Library-led publishing is a natural fit for library staff who already
perform related duties: Vetting, curating, disseminating and connecting. Librarians have the
software knowledge, user statistics, information retrieval, cataloging and archiving experience
related to publishing (Scardilli).
Library-led publishing, as a solution to the serials crisis, happens to match the digitization
trajectory. As libraries digitize collections, they also increase library-created content.
Jingfeng (2010) argues that scholars are tired of long publishing cycles and prefer the shorter
process of electronic journal publishing (p.622). In addition to being the faster, more convenient
next step in the development cycle of the information industry, library-led publishing frees
libraries from some cases of inflated pricing. Some models emphasize a transition from paying
commercial publishers to paying researchers. The prospect of transferring capitol from the
messenger to the source will have several positive effects on the future of scholarly research.
Utah State University, for example, created a use-on-demand repository of faculty work that pays
royalties (Clement, 2011 p.523). Rebecca Kennison and Lisa Norberg (2014) argue that
combining all educational institutions into membership of one open access repository, and
charging an annual per user fee, would net enough profit to pay researchers. Further, they posit
that researchers could enjoy open-ended grants that extend the time frame beyond the initial

work and pave the way for unlimited updating (Kennison & Norberg, p.224-225). This would
turn the research industry upside down. Moghaddam's research finds that such a full reversal to
the financial structure of publishing is not necessary for library-led publishing to come out
ahead. Commercial publishers cannot lower their prices of electronic journals more than 30%
because first copy costs, e.g. soliciting, preparing and reviewing manuscripts, are high, while
paper printing costs, packaging and postage are relatively low (2007 p.167). This means that if
commercial publishers did reduce their electronic publishing costs by 30% and reduced their
26% profits (2002) (p.169) by 20%, they would still be far from the price-point available from
non-profit university-sponsored presses that were surveyed: Based on Moghaddam's finding that
commercial presses charge 2.8 times more than university presses. Some budgets for library-led
publishing were as low as $3,000 (Simser, Stockham, & Turtle, 2015 p.70). Combine low costs
with the inherent subsidization of university library infrastructure such as IT, and one finds that
the economics of electronic publishing favor library-led publishing.
Beyond convenience and financial incentives, library-led publishing (LLP) offers development
opportunities that will propel its growth past that of commercial publishers. Librarians get to
exercise creativity and dynamic project management. LLP can provide opportunities for faculty
who want to start niche journals. Graduate students can practice authoring and publishing their
research in an accessible environment of familiar mentors (Scardilli, 2015). Student outcomes
improve when their work is held accountable to publishing standards. Faculty/ librarian
relationships grow tighter. Faculty can enjoy being involved with the blind peer review of
colleagues' work; moving the tenure and promotion process of peers and themselves forward.
All of which is to say that with so many stakeholders benefiting from library-led publishing, and
no major threats on the horizon, I must assume the trend will continue.

How will academic libraries transition to publaries1?

The most direct path to publishing is to absorb existing university presses. This trend, largely
driven by university budgeting offices declaring the presses a margin, or fringe entity,
accelerated during the 2008 recession. In 2007, six presses had reporting lines to libraries, but by
2010, 16 presses reported to libraries (Clement, 2011 p.520). University presses bring with them
marketing expertise, editorial/ faculty relationships, trade and regional publication experience as
well as scholarly monograph experience. Sometimes they can transfer university subsidies to the
library. Libraries benefit from the opportunity to reengage with faculty and participate in
scholarship.
Whether a library begins publishing by absorbing a press or starting organically; plan for
success. In their 2015 case study of Kansas State University's library press inauguration, Simser,
Stockham, and Turtle, found that having a business plan, especially after operating for five years
without one, drastically improves operations (2015). The business plan is a map that includes
policies. Stakeholders need to understand how the electronic press will develop, what
expectations are reasonable, and how their roles will change. The policies should not just shape
and govern publishing, but assuage faculty and association concerns about rigor. Generally,
sample guidelines are separated into three areas: Content, access and preservation (Riddle,
2015). The content policies should govern relevance and quality. Riddle asserts that policies
should establish a spectrum of inclusiveness (2015) that describes how criteria should adjust to
accommodate different types of content. For example, the process of peer review reserved for a
monograph should not also apply to a blog post or conference summary (Watkinson, 2014).
Decide whether editors must be faculty members, how university-aligned the content must be,
and how to measure the level of manuscripts' scholarship. Access policies should reflect the end
1 Please note, John Unsworth coined the terms publarian and liblisher around 2004 to describe individuals with
skills in library and publishing.

goal of the university. While open access seems like the right choice for most applications, it can
discourage some contributors. Having clear policies in place will help the library maintain its
long term goals.
Use existing human resources, IT infrastructure and journal publishing platforms. Industry
leading journal management software include: Bepress, Hyperjournal, Digital Commons, DPubs,
OJS and others (Kim Wu, & McCullough, 2015 p.77). Choosing a flexible platform that can
accommodate work flows and provide journal templates that transfer editorial responsibility
from the librarian to the editorial board saves time and streamlines the process. Further, some
platforms offer free basic journal management software. The business model of free platforms
rely on sales of extras such as images and image editing services. Then identify staff with
relevant skills sets. Locate specific faculty members who could edit and or review an academic
journal in his field (Kim Wu, & McCullough, 2015 p.77).
Finally, follow examples. Information professionals with titles like Library Officer for Scholarly
Communication, Associate University Librarian for Publishing and Head of Scholarly
Communication Publishing, have written about their experiences transitioning from a library to a
pubrary (Watkinson, 2014). Policy guidelines are freely available online (Riddle, 2015) and
support literature is prolific. United Nations University and Temple, Oregon State, Kansas State
and Purdue Universities, for example, have published articles describing their own transition
process as first hand accounts (Clement, 2011). The articles provide ready-access to the solutions
librarians need to avoid mistakes.
What are the barriers to successful library publishing?
Scholarly communication takes time. 17.4% of surveyed researchers responded that they had not
contributed to a digital publication because they did not have time (Nicholas, Rowlands,
Watkinson, Brown & Jamali, 2012). Academic librarians (AL) are similarly time-starved.

Without the proper financial reallocation and institutional support expanding AL job descriptions
could significantly disrupt current operations. Some researchers suggest that publishing can lead
to the neglect of libraries' original missions (Riddle, 2015) especially since case studies such as
Gottingen's State University's reports that colleagues underestimate the amount of time required
to learn publishing skills (Scardilli, 2015). Smaller libraries and those without a university press
to absorb may not have enough staff with transferable skills: They must grow organically. This
often means adding staff with requisite expertise and developing new skills within the existing
team; all of which exacerbates time-related problems.
According to Charles Watkinson, current University of Michigan Director of the University of
Michigan Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing, and former Director of
Purdue University Press (Watkinson, 2014), three primary problems hinder library publishing:
Articulating the value of publishing to the library staff, building efficiency and protecting the
brand (Watkinson). The library staff sees itself as a better funded, more stable and more central
institution than university presses. This can lead to contention between the library staff, who
believe they are adding value, but the press is not. I think the larger problem with this example, is
that some of Watkinsons' staff are not seeing themselves as one entity, but still, as two. It might
be effective to focus on the library's increased functionality instead of a merger. John Unsworth
attributes this professional dissonance to possible underlying values of librarians who are
generally thought to be called to serve versus publishers who are more aligned with weighing
profit and loss (2014 p.71) Similarly, Clement (2011) reported significant difficulty navigating
conflict of interest concerns in his article about transitioning university presses to libraries.
Jingfeng found that lack of perceived prestige prevented participation with open access platforms
(2010 p. 622). Negative and indifferent attitudes are not confined to library staff. A 2012
international survey of 1,685 researchers collected by Nicholas, Rowlands, Watkinson, Brown

and Jamali report that 14% did not trust the publishers' policies and 7% did not contribute to
electronic journals because of their belief that they are second rate (2012).
Building policies, processes, editorial boards and templates requires patience and a long-view to
the strategic goal. Pubrarians should prepare for low initial efficiency by breaking tasks into
smaller sections that can be finished before the launch. Also, allocate ample time for platform
research, as time spent locating the best software for managing publications will save time
exponentially when the project goes live. Watkinsons' final troubleshooting tip is to protect the
brand by employing separate logos and university affiliated ISBN markers to indicate the
difference between the scholarly rigor of formal versus less formal publications (2014). To this,
Simser, Stockham, and Turtle would suggest strengthening infrastructure and hiring change
management professionals (2015).
Discussion
Library led publishing seems like a new idea designed to alleviate budgetary pressures but, in
fact it has been developing despite budgetary concerns for over forty years. Librarians saw value
in controlling information long before the 2008 recession damaged university budgets; long
before trends of corporate greed penetrated the commercial publishing industry and before those
publishers started to use aggressive tactics to maintain renewals. This long-term, stand-alone
viability of library publishing is exactly why it is going to overtake commercial output of
academic materials such as scholarly journals and monographs. The trajectory does not begin
with today's serials crisis, cloud computing, complex platforms or the increased use of the
internet in the 1990s. It did not begin with the rise of library networks and digitization projects in
the 1970s and 1980s. The trajectory toward library publishing dominance began with the original
institutional missions: to share information, and the best way to ensure that information is shared,
is to take ownership of the creation, dissemination and archiving processes. Statistics that

support this conclusion are substantial. Jingfeng's research titled: A longitudinal study of scholars
attitudes and behaviors toward open-access journal publishing, found that from 1995 to 2006
open-access publishing increased from a handful to 4,220 journals (2010). During the same timeframe, unawareness of at least one open access journal published in one's discipline changed
from 50% to under 15% (Jingfeng, 2010 pp 619-620).
This paper has established that library-led publishing is part of the natural progression of the
information industry because of its existing human resources, infrastructure, stable campus
position and relevant frame of reference. It is a logical step that is picking up momentum as the
tools to implementation become cheap and effective. The 2012 survey of researchers' use of
digital publications by Nicholas, Rowlands, Watkinson, Brown & Jamali (2012) that was
previously used to present negative attitudes about digital publishing, also finds that when the
survey results are controlled for age, the younger respondents accept the digital landscape more
readily than older respondents: these findings suggest that younger researchers are taking
institutional repositories (and the mandates that underpin them) very seriously (2012 p.199).
The importance of this paper and of noting the generational differences expressed by the
Nicholas et.al. survey, is that some major players are still referring to library-led publishing as if
it were new. Because this paper required a large synthesis of research, I came to recognize the
tone of denial in articles commissioned by publishers. The style of bias was distinct and warrants
a separate treatment: However, commercial publishers are not the only change deniers. Older
journal users, deans and provosts may not understand the extent to which scholarly
communication is changing, and, if these less informed actors are in control of university
budgets, librarians must be able to tactfully articulate the importance of library-led publishing.
While the number of barriers to success is large, they seem to stem mostly from fear of change.
Scholars cited concerns about time and staff attitude as the most problematic factors, but any

institution must manage fearful attitudes and time as part of its leadership duties (Budd, 2012).
Therefore, initiatives for library-led publishing should incorporate strategies for change
management. Conversations with staff should highlight their expanded roles and increased
opportunities. Staff should be coached to see content creation as part of their mission to secure,
archive and disseminate information. The inevitable barriers to change should be interpreted as
bumps in an otherwise clear path toward academic publishing and the eventual overtaking of
commercial publishing output in the academic publishing sector.

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