Guest Post by Sinead Kelleher, GradDip in Library and Information Studies, Graduating in the Summer of 2021
Shifts in the scholarly
communication landscape such as; an increased pressure on academics to publish,
changes in legislation in open access and copyright law and technological
advancements have challenged traditional publishing models. These changes
within the scholarly communication landscape have allowed academic librarians
an opportunity to develop the importance of their role within scholarly
communication. The academic librarian
traditionally collected and provided sources of information for researchers;
they are now in a position to offer a more active role in scholarly communication.
The Association of
College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have shown their dedication in the
support of strengthening the role of the library in scholarly communication by
developing a toolkit to assist librarians in this role. This toolkit points out
the ways that academic librarians can leverage their skills and expertise to
become more active members within the scholarly communication community. The
methods mooted include; supporting the move towards open access; assisting in
evaluation of subscription and open access journals; educating authors on
copyright issues and publication contracts; educating authors on the use of
responsible metrics, and also the hosting of publishing platforms and the
development and management of university repositories (ACRL -Library guides,
Scholarly communication toolkit, 2020). Advocacy for open access and indeed the
role of the academic library’s involvement with this is reflective of the
library’s interest in the fair dissemination of scholarly work.
Open Access and the role
of Librarians
The emergence and
development of open access has been one of the most transformative aspects of
scholarly communication in recent years. Although computer scientists have been
self-archiving since the seventies, the first free scientific self-archiving
server was arXiv.org which was founded in 1991. The emergence of
the idea of publishing academic papers online for a minimal cost came at a
welcome time in scholarly communications. At this time the number of print journals
were being produced at a high rate, and the journal prices were also increasing
steadily. The journal prices were steadily outstripping the budgets of academic
libraries. This led to a decrease in access to academic journals, which
concerned librarians, this became known as the “Serials Crisis”. This term was
coined to describe a period of financial crisis in print-based journals.
Librarians in a move to promote fair and equal access to scholarly journals
highlighted their concerns and become important advocates and members of a
community to drive forward the open access movement (Wikipedia – History of
Open Access, 2021).
One of the early
initiatives of Librarians was to establish the Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in 1997. The establishment of SPARC has
been a key proponent in the Open Access movement. SPARC is an international
alliance of research and academic librarians which works to promote the fair
and equal sharing of research and educational material, it actively promotes
open access for scholarly material through working with authors, publishers,
libraries and policymakers (Sparc Open – Who we are). The open access mandate
supported by the academic library has risen extensively with support from
government policies and universities. This has been consolidated by Plan S, in
which all scholarly publications funded by public or private grants must be
published in open access (Dalton, 2021).
Open access has grown at a
competitive rate with now about fifty percent of journals being available
through open access, and the academic library’s intertwined role with open
access and scholarly publications continues to evolve in this journey. As part
of the open access journey the library’s role has shifted to that of a
meditator role in negotiating Transformative Agreements with publishers.
Transformative Agreements
and Other Open Access Models
In the move towards open access,
academic libraries became involved with procuring agreements, shifting the cost
of open access publishing away from the traditional subscription models. Many
interested parties supported the move towards libraries negotiating these deals
(Schimmer et al., 2015), which became known as Transformative Agreements. These
agreements are designed to shift the old subscription journal models to full
open access in terms of publication models. They can be described as a stepping
stone towards full open access. The agreements vary between publishers and
libraries but are based on two models, the “read and publish” deal and the
“publish and read” deals. The “read and publish” deals are similar to the
subscription model in that libraries pay for journal access and some or all
open access publishing is included in the agreement. The “publish and read”
deals are different as the library pays for publisher costs and reading access
is included as part of the agreement. These agreements are complex and
expensive and are illustrative of the library’s commitment to assisting
researcher’s in publishing their work. The library in University College Dublin
(UCD) secured its biggest deal with the publisher, Elsevier, last year in which
an allowance of 230 articles to be published free of charge was granted as part
of the deal (Dalton, 2021). The fact that the full allowance was used is
indicative of the fact that cost is one of the main barriers for researchers
when choosing whether to publish open access (Dalton, 2021).
Although these transformative
agreements are a positive step towards open access and are indicative of the
library’s commitment to open access, the shift in cost burden to research
libraries is unsustainable and libraries are looking to other models to support
this.
Other open access models supported by
libraries include the Open Library of Humanities. This is an organisation
established by librarians and supported by publishers and other interested
members. They publish open access articles across the humanities without
charging the author (Open Library of Humanities – About, 2021). This model is
based on the business model that if libraries continue to subscribe to the
publishers the publishers will continue to open up subscriptions to all
members. Once again, this library initiative illustrates their commitment in
supporting researchers in publishing open access and the democratisation of
sharing knowledge.
Although libraries as an integral
member of the scholarly communication community are continuously striving to
provide open access routes for journal articles more opportunities and
attention is needed to support the open access publication of scholarly books. Liber Europe provides some suggestions in how
libraries have and can support open access books through the following means;
supporting the acquisition of open access books within the collection
development, encouraging the hosting of open access books within the
institutional repository and encouraging rerouting of funding towards the
publishing of open access books (Liber Europe – Open Access books in Academic
libraries how can we adapt workflows: & cost management to an open
scholarly landscape, 2021). These suggestions provide a pathway for libraries
to work towards diversifying the attention of driving open access in different
forms of scholarly material. Although librarians are continuously advocating
and forging the road for open access, researchers have gained access to
scholarly material behind paywalls through other means including pirate
websites, such as Sci- Hub.
SCI-Hub, Librarians and
the responsible use of metrics
Sci-Hub was founded as a result of
the “Serials Crisis” and the financial burden for researchers with certain
journal articles behind subscription paywalls. Although Sci-Hub has been
supported by many as a way to tackle this crisis in scholarly communication,
Harrison et al. (2018) highlights some barriers it
presents to the fair dissemination of scholarly communication. Criticisms of
Sci-hub include that the journal articles that they create access to, which are
behind paywalls, are those which are connected to what is seen as “prestige
publishers”. In this sense Sci– Hub is promoting the fact that these papers are
used as a benchmark for other papers in their field. This “prestige promotion”
is against the ethics of DORA, a research output which is trying to correct the
balance of the over use of journal metrics. Harrison et al. (2018) also
discusses Sci -Hub’s blatant disregard for copyright, which exists to protect
author’s rights, and in this sense Sci-Hub can be seen as counterproductive in
the fair dissemination of scholarly communication.
As previously mentioned, bibliometrics has become a prominent feature in scholarly communication. Librarians have played a role in guiding researchers in how to use different bibliometric tools. This is done through one-to-one help, workshops and guides on library websites. They have also developed guides on how to make sure the researcher’s work is identifiable, guides on how to promote their research work and track the impact factor of their research. Although the use of metrics as an evaluative tool has become prominent within the scholarly communication world, librarians have also been involved in promoting best practice and the responsible use of metrics in the evaluation of scholarly research. Academic libraries have been involved in drawing up guidelines to support the responsible use of metrics within their universities. In many universities such as UCD, links to resources on the responsible use of metrics are included within their library guides (UCD – libguides/bibliometrics/dora, 2021). Librarians have felt strongly about the responsible use of metrics and Cox (2020/2021) has suggested how the “The open scholarship movement, for instance, provides an opportunity for libraries to contribute towards addressing issues raised around systems for research assessment and academic reward”, in this sense it is possible to see once again how libraries are committed to the fair dissemination of Scholarly communication. Another space in which the academic library supports the fair dissemination and preservation of scholarly communication is through the university institutional repository (IR). This offers researchers the opportunity to publish their material on an open access platform.
Institutional Repository
The institutional repository is a
service which is managed by the library within the university, it is a digital
archive which collects, stores and disseminates the scholarly communication of
the university. Institutional Repositories are another means by which libraries
and documentation services have been able to make a contribution to the growth
of scholarly communication made freely available through digital content (ARL,
2009). Researchers can publish their
work here without paying the APC fee, charged by traditional publishers, when
publishing their work open access. Thus, alleviating the financial burden for
researchers. The depositary also assigns a personal identifier which allows the
piece of work to be easily identifiable.
Palmer et al. (2008) has shown how
libraries are positioned well to support and manage IRs due to their knowledge
management expertise and their existing infrastructure. Academic librarians
already retain a position of trust with researchers, staff and students and
have used this position to encourage use of the institutional repository. There
has been a long-held belief that librarians are great believers in standards,
and while building digital repositories, they have followed the standards for
scanning, metadata creation, harvesting and web services, among others
(Arlitsch et al. 2014). Libraries have
evolved with the challenge of managing institutional repositories, becoming
leaders in copyright legislation, metadata creation and authority control
(Walters, 2007). Moving beyond the institutional repository the academic
library has also adopted the role of publisher in the scholarly communication
ecosystem offering another alternative to the traditional publisher.
Library as publisher
Library publishing, although it is
not a new phenomenon, has grown significantly from its early modest days of
printing catalogues of their own collection (Holzman et al., 2015). The growth
of interest in library publishing began in the 1990s with a number of library
symposia held in the States between the ARL and AAUP, discussions and
programmes of library publishing grew from this. Amongst these publishing
programmes are a number of collaborative groups, including Project Muse,
HighWire Press, University of Michigan, Project Euclid, York Digital Journals
Project to name but a few.
Project Muse is an early example of a
non-profit collaborative project between libraries and publishers. Both Project
Muse and Highwire offer its digital content services to many publishers
including university presses (Holzman et al., 2015). Highwire press founded in
Stanford University Library in 1995 created an electronic platform for its
academic community to publish on. Initially publishing scientific society
journals, it grew dramatically and by 2015 it had published more than seven
million journals. Positioned within the University library, Highwire press
although not run by library staff is supported by the librarians in Stanford
University and has been hugely successful (Holzman et al., 2015). Although
Highwire has since been acquired by MPS Ltd, in 2020 its humble origins as a
start-up within Stanford University Library is testament to the librarian’s
position in the scholarly communication ecosystem.
Another good exemplar of library
publishing is the University of Michigan and Michigan library publishing
programme. In the 1990s they began developing a publishing programme which then
became the Office of Scholarly Publishing (Holzman et al., 2015), it has
changed names a number of times since but their collaborative partnership is
still evident in their mission statement, “Michigan Publishing combines
the strengths of a highly-regarded university press with the innovative,
service-oriented approach of a university library renowned as a leader in
digital initiatives and technologies” (Michigan
Publishing – Our Mission, 2021).
In 2013 the Library Publishing
Coalition (LPC) was founded, it comprised of sixty-one academic libraries and
the Educopia Institute, the vision of the LPC supports “A scholarly publishing
landscape that is open, inclusive and sustainable” (Library Publishing Coalition – About Us, 2021).
In 2015, they published the first “Library Publishing Directory” which showed
an increase in growth in library publishing, with 124 case studies of library
publishing programs in the United States and Canada.
Through a support network from
academics on campus, university presses and the LPC, library publishers have
begun to develop their skill sets and knowledge of publishing platforms to play
a more prominent role in scholarly publishing.
What is evident from the above examples of library publishing is the
breadth and scope of different library publishing programmes is extensive.
Although the aforementioned examples
of library publishing are based in the United States and Canada, the interest
in library publishing is global. In Ireland the Library Publishing Group (LPG)
is a subgroup of the Library Association of Ireland. They are involved in
raising awareness of the library publishing movement, as well as mentoring new
library publishers (Library Association of Ireland – Library Publishing Group,
2021). Other examples of the growth in library publishing in Ireland are within
Dublin Business School (DBS). DBS began work on an early model of library
publishing in 2014, in which undergraduates, postgraduates and staff from the
Arts faculty published an open access journal in partnership with the library,
this led to the founding of the Studies in Arts and Humanities Journal (SAH).
The launch of the SAH journal has led to further publishing initiatives, which
include the launch of the DBS Business review in 2017, and the development of
an open access journal-publishing press in DBS (Buggle et al., n.d.).
Other examples of interest in library
publishing in DBS is in the education of future librarians in this area, Dublin
Business School has now included a module of library publishing in their MSc in
Information and Library Management. Student testimonials responded favourably
to this new aspect of the programme, citing that they felt that this aspect to
their studies was “cutting edge and relevant to the theme of the changing role
of the librarians and how libraries can play a stronger role in publishing”
(Buggle et al., 2020). As future librarians these testimonials bode well for
the library’s role in scholarly publishing. Other publishing platforms which
libraries are now becoming involved in supporting are Open Educational
Resources (OER) platforms.
Open Educational
Resources
The library in NUIG Galway is the
first library in Ireland to use this platform. They have identified this area
as another platform to promote open scholarship (NUIG- Preserving the Past,
Enabling the Future, Library Strategy, 2021). The library provides a set of
tools and platforms to give access to staff and students to create open access
educational resources online. It has also created a space for students and
staff who use these platforms to collaborate with NUI Galway Open Press to
produce web books, under open access (NUIG – Library Guides, Open Education
Resources (OER), 2021). NUI Galway Open Press is supported by Pressbooks which
can be published with a DOI and can be shared publicly via the Pressbooks
Global Directory (NUIG – Library Guides, Open Education Resources (OER), 2021).
This scholarly communication platform
that the NUIG library is supporting is an interesting programme which can
provide rapid dissemination of information, reducing the cost barrier for
students. However, there are concerns around copyright which is something that
needs to be taken into account when using this platform.
The Future of Scholarly
Communication and the library
In reflecting on the changes within
scholarly communication, it is evident that the academic library has played a
significant role in these developments. However, there are uncertainties and
challenges in the future of scholarly communication and indeed the role the
library will play within it. Although there are a number of publishing models
currently involved in the dissemination of scholarly communication, we have
seen that the scholarly communication ecosystem is in constant transformation
and the recent Covid 19 pandemic will also have an influence on this.
The fast spread of the pandemic
created a need for the rapid dissemination of scholarly communication in relation
to health recommendations and vaccine developments. This resulted in a move
towards unprecedented open globally collaborative efforts in sharing scientific
information. In the post pandemic climate, it could be anticipated that there
would be a further societal demand for openness and transparency in scholarly
communication. Models which the academic library/librarians have advocated for
and supported. There will also be economic challenges in the post pandemic
environment including cuts in library budgets further creating a need for the
removal of high publishing cost models and the continuity of the library’s
advocacy journey towards open access scholarly communication. Through the
library’s role as advocate for open access and responsible use of metrics the
library has evolved into a position of a trusted advocate for the
democratisation of the dissemination of the scholarly communication, and as a
trusted member of the scholarly communication ecosystem it will continue to
play an important role.
References:
Association of College and Research
Libraries (ACRL) – Library guides, Scholarly communication toolkit. (2020).
Retrieved from https://acrl.libguides.com/scholcomm/toolkit
Association of Research
Libraries (ARL) (2009). The research library’s role in digital repository
services: final report of the ARL digital repositories taskforce. https://www.arl.org/resources/the-research-librarys-role-in-digital-repository-services-final-report-of-the-arl-digital-repository-issues-task-force/
Arlitsch, K., O’Brien,
P.S. (2014), Invisible IRs addressing the low indexing ratios of IRs in Google
Scholar. Library Hi Tech, 30, 60-81. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378831211213210
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