Leading by Example? ALA Division Publications, Open Access, and Sustainability

Nathan Hall is Assistant Director, Digital Imaging & Preservation Services, in the Newman Library at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; e-mail: [email protected]. Sara Arnold-Garza is Research & Instruction Librarian in the Albert S. Cook Library at Towson University; e-mail: sarnoldgarza@towson. edu. Regina Gong is Manager of Library Technical Services & Systems at Lansing Community College Library; e-mail: [email protected]. Yasmeen Shorish is Associate Professor, Data Services Coordinator at James Madison University; e-mail: [email protected]. All authors contributed equally to this article. © 2016 Nathan Hall, Sara Arnold-Garza, Regina Gong, and Yasmeen Shorish, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC. This investigation explores scholarly communication business models in American Library Association (ALA) division peer-reviewed academic journals. Previous studies reveal the numerous issues organizations and publishers face in the academic publishing environment. Through an analysis of documented procedures, policies, and finances of five ALA division journals, we compare business and access models. We conclude that some ALA divisions prioritize the costs associated with changing business models, including hard-to-estimate costs such as the labor of volunteers. For other divisions, the financial aspects are less important than maintaining core values, such as those defined in ALA’s Core Values in Librarianship.