Stories and statistics from library-led publishing

Library-led publishing is one of the new approaches to journal publishing and open access that has grown tremendously in the last few years. A 2010 MLIS-funded survey found that 55% of respondents—from U.S. academic libraries of all different types and sizes—were already implementing or developing a publishing program. Library-led publishing has garnered such momentum because, by offering lowor nocost publishing to university scholars, it addresses needs that traditional publishing has not been able to meet. This article presents a series of small case studies to illustrate different journals that have benefited from the library-publishing model: a journal that struggled to find an affordable publisher in its emerging field; a small society journal that could no longer afford to support itself in print; society publications that go beyond the traditional journal format; a student journal with a revolving editorial board. Over the past several years, an ever-growing number of journals have found a home with a new type of ‘publisher’: the academic library. Libraries are taking on a new role as the hub of university-based publishing services, and a new model termed ‘libraryled publishing’ is making a significant impact in the publishing ecosystem. In this model, academic libraries host and publish online peer-reviewed journals on behalf of faculty and student editors on campus. The university or library itself provides the infrastructure for library-led publishing—it is seen as part of the library’s mission to support research and visibility for its scholars. As a result, library-led publishing is a lowor no-cost model for journals. Library-published journals are nearly always open access, and they maintain that model without charging author fees. In 2010, an IMLS-funded survey3 in the United States found that 55% of respondents—from U.S. academic libraries of all different types and sizes—were already implementing or developing a library-led publishing program. There are already over a thousand journals published under this model in the United States, and that number is growing fast. With such momentum behind library-led publishing, interesting questions arise: how many journals are these libraries publishing, and how are they measuring their success? What types of journals are published by libraries, and how does this microcosm compare to the overall journal ecosystem? As a new field, library-led publishing has only recently begun to ask itself these questions. The Digital Commons platform (from bepress<, based in Berkeley, CA) is the leading hosted publishing service for library-led publishing in North America. As a result, we are fortunate to have access to data from the hundreds of journals we host. We recently analyzed this data and published Library-led Publishing with bepress Digital Preprint – Final version appears in Learned Publishing 2015, http://www.alpsp.org/. 2 Commons: Data and Benchmarks Report2 to provide aggregate statistics about the trends in library-led publishing. Libraries published nearly 700 journals using Digital Commons in 2013, and that number is now almost 900<. Other library-led publishing programs use in-house open source software (generally Open Journal Systems from the Public Knowledge Project) or general web publishing tools such as WordPress. The Digital Commons data is a piece of a larger picture, but we believe these statistics and stories are indicative of the success of all library-led publishing programs. So what does the library-led publishing landscape look like? For one thing, it primarily comprises open access journals: out of nearly 700 journals using Digital Commons in 2013, 94% were open access, and none relied on article-processing fees. The library has been more than willing to support these journals with software, hosting, infrastructure, and often more hands-on editorial services. The investment has proven worthwhile: libraries have been able to expand their publishing programs even while other library budgets are shrinking. By the end of 2013, the majority of library-led publishing programs published two to four journals, and fifteen of them published ten or more journals. As of October 2014, the number of libraries publishing more than ten journals had grown to 23. Many libraries have expanded their publishing programs to the full spectrum of scholarly publishing: monographs6, textbooks<, digital humanities<, conference proceedings9, and technical reports. And what about the journals themselves? Library-published journals using Digital Commons are publishing an average of seventeen articles per year, which shows that library-led publishing is not only popular; it produces healthy and thriving journals. Judging from the data published in our report2, library-published journals are often faculty-edited journals in niche or emerging fields, or small society journals that can no longer afford to support themselves in print. Many of them are student-edited journals with a revolving editorial board, or innovative publications that go beyond the traditional journal format. Some are subscription-based, some are fully open access, some have been published by societies in print for years, and others are born digital. They are nearly all peer-reviewed, and use the built-in submission management and blind peer review tools included in the Digital Commons platform. The majority of these journals publish online-only, and use the platform’s built-in production capabilities to publish into formatted PDFs; some journals hire staff or students for extra design and layout work, and some continue to produce a print (or print-on-demand) version. Going beyond the statistics to further illustrate the role of library-led publishing in the journal publishing ecosystem, this article tells the stories of a few specific journals that have found a home in a library-led publishing program. These stories illustrate the reasons that specific journals chose to publish through their library, the paths they took, and the benefits they found. As the statistics and stories together make clear, library-led publishing is one of the most successful new forces in journal publishing because it fills significant gaps left by traditional publishing, because it gives new life to the academic library, and because it allows faculty and student editors to accomplish things they could not otherwise accomplish. Preprint – Final version appears in Learned Publishing 2015, http://www.alpsp.org/.