Scholarly Communication

Making Open Access Work in the Social Sciences

Hob Brooks et al.

As open access gains a strong foothold in medical publishing, social science scholars increasingly are looking for outlets to make their own research open access. In STM, publication fees of the major open access journals start at $1,350, with payment often covered as part of grants received from pharmaceutical companies, government, and other organized entities. In contrast, limited grant funding in the social sciences doesn’t typically include publication support, so the question remains, “How can the open access model work for the social sciences?” This moderated panel discussion included representatives from libraries, university administration, and publishers to gain a full view of the current open access funding and publishing landscape and what might lie ahead. The conversation particularly focused on the librarian’s role in facilitating the open access funding and publishing processes and how the role of a social science librarian may change in an open access world.

Publishing Partnerships: Why, When, and How Collaboration Sometimes Trumps Competition, the User Perspective

Elizabeth Chisato Uyeki

RCL as a case study of the impact and consequences of a publishing partnership on academic library users and customers, e.g. impact on the purchasing decision, the product design and fit, the user experience, customer support, etc.

The Impact of Japan’s March 11th Earthquake and Tsunami on Libraries and the Conduct of Research and Publications in Japan

Mikiko Tanifuji

On March 11, 2011, a great earthquake struck northeastern Japan. For the libraries at the two campuses of the National Institute of Materials Science in Tsukuba, the biggest problems resulting from the earthquake were thousands of books being thrown off shelves and damage to electronically controlled bookshelves. Following weeks of aftershocks, the Japanese government instituted a program to reduce electricity usage and to slash all government spending. This affected all publicly-funded research institutes. Other negative consequences of the earthquake were that many overseas researchers and students returned to their own countries, and the remaining researchers were forced to spend a higher proportion of their working lives at their desks while waiting for experimental facilities to be repaired–in some cases for at least a year. The damage caused by the earthquake to physical infrastructure clearly shows how vital it is to digitize a library’s resources. Social networks such as Twitter proved to be very useful in keeping researchers informed about library services. I believe that in the future, it will be increasingly important for libraries to: (1) make their resources available on the Internet, (2) decentralize resources, and (3) establish interoperability with other libraries.

Supporting Effective Communication and Workflows in Social Science Research: Findings and Summary of a Group Discussion

Bernie Folan

At the end of 2010, at an event hosted by SAGE and facilitated by the Research Information Network, a group of academic librarians and doctoral researchers came together to discuss the provision of information services for researchers in the social sciences. The event was designed to both explore ways of improving the provision and consumption of information during the research process and to discuss how the value of the content that researchers and librarians choose and supply could be demonstrated. This article summarizes some of the key findings from the event and encourages further discussion with an aim to finding solutions.

We're All In This Together: Supporting the Dissemination of University Research Through Library Services

Michelle Armstrong

One of the primary functions of universities is the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge. Yet, most institutions only focus on supporting faculty in the initial discovery process, requiring researchers to fend for themselves when sharing their work. Institutional repositories (IRs) have a unique opportunity to expand traditional library services by supporting the dissemination of university research. Thinking beyond archiving graduate theses and faculty publications, librarians are developing new IR services which can assist faculty in a variety of ways. Managing researcher pages, consulting on copyright transfer agreements, exchanging publication information with other university stakeholders, even launching library-based publishing services are all ways repositories have begun reaching out to faculty. The effect of these new services is beginning to transform the scholarly communications cycle and the library's role in those processes.

Mixing Oil and Water: Recipes for Press-Library Collaboration

Patrick Alexander et al.

Recipes for success in press library collaborations can involve dangerous and foreign cultures, environments, and materials that often don't mix together easily or regularly. This session will look at those incompatibilities and examine how a few presses have tried to mix the oil and water of publisher and library. From the perspective of three university press directors, the panel will identify the ingredients in a successful partnership that may not be as obvious to onlookers as we think they are, and whose "mixing" requires more than simply the idea of collaboration.

What Can We Say With Certainty about Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century?

Michael P. Pelikan

Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success

Charles Watkinson et al.

In 2007, 65% of ARL members were reported to be either offering or developing publishing services (Hahn, 2008). A new survey, conducted by Purdue University, Georgia Tech, and University of Utah Libraries as part of an IMLS-funded research project, suggests that almost 80% of ARL members are now offering publishing services and that this is also an active area of interest in Oberlin Group (liberal arts college) and medium-sized institutions. It also provides a richer picture of an increasingly mature area of academic library service provision, well aligned with issues of emerging roles and new models of scholarly communication. This session reports on this important year-long research project surveying the state of "library publishing services" in 2011 and examines the challenges and opportunities library publishers face in the areas of technological infrastructure, skills and processes, and organization and sustainability. Attendees can expect to: learn about the opportunities of becoming involved in providing publishing services from within the library; get practical tips on growing existing programs from librarians active in this space; and receive some honest assessments of the challenges institutions involved in this area of new entrepreneurship have faced and how they have overcome them.