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Should libraries publish?

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Abby Flanigan, Field Experience Intern

This August, I started a field experience in Digital Scholarship Services as part of my second year working towards a master’s degree at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at UNC-CH. Field experiences offer the opportunity to get hands on work experience in an area of interest, and to structure your internship in a way that meets your specific learning objectives. When Liz, head of Digital Scholarship Services, suggested that I might work on Project Vox, a website publishing research and pedagogical materials on early modern women philosophers, with the aim to “recover the lost voices of women who have been lost in the standard narratives of the history of philosophy,” I was excited because it would give me an opportunity to explore my fledgling interest in scholarly communication and digital publishing.

My charge on the Project Vox team is to define how we solicit, review, and disseminate material on the site, so that scholars have a better understanding of how to submit content, the editorial team has a clear workflow for reviewing and publishing materials, and the editorial process is transparent and thorough enough that the site maintains its reputation for scholarly rigor.  Towards this goal, one of my first actions was to register the site for an International Standard Serial Number, so that it can be accurately cited by scholars, researchers, and librarians. Registering for an ISSN is deceptively simple — all you have to do is fill out a one-page application online with the Library of Congress. As I was filling out Project Vox’s application, though, an important question surfaced: who is the publisher? Is it Duke University? The Project Vox Collective? The Philosophy Department at Duke University? Yes, the site is hosted on library servers, but will it stay there? How much of the editorial responsibility lies with library staff?

Many people, if they are peripherally related to the library in any way, may have heard of the serials pricing crisis, in which journal subscription rates rose exponentially faster than the Consumer Price Index, effectively draining library budgets during an already economically difficult time. Many researchers and librarians feel the injustice of this is that the research they are paying so extravagantly for is being produced at their own institutions.  So, faculty members are producing research, publishing it in prestigious journals, and we are purchasing expensive subscriptions to make it available to our campuses. You can see why there has been a push for libraries to start publishing academic content themselves.

Here, it’s easy to dismiss the usefulness of commercial publishers entirely. We can build websites, so why not publish academic research online and leave the expensive journals out of it altogether? Check out this list from the Scholarly Kitchen (a great blog to follow if you’re interested in scholarly communications), which details the many activities a publisher must undertake. The list is long; everything from managing the peer review process to marketing a journal is needed to make a publication successful, and libraries often do not have the time or resources to take on these tasks. There are also implications for the tenure and promotion process. Many faculty members are reluctant to publish in open access journals or websites, since they do not carry the same prestige as traditional academic journals. How, then, do we encourage open and affordable scholarship in the library? Which roles should libraries take on in publishing academic journals?

Eventually, we decided to officially call Duke University Library the Project Vox publisher. The project is a collaboration between the Department of Philosophy and Digital Scholarship Services. The site is hosted on library servers, and two full time library employees devote a significant amount of work time to project management and content development. Project Vox is not the only Duke Library publication — the Library offers open-access journal publishing support for projects generated by the Duke community, which means that they host the journal publishing software and provide guidance and training — but since this falls outside of the traditional journal scope, it is interesting to consider how libraries can contribute to the sustainability of unique digital publications. Should we take on all the responsibilities of publisher? How can we do this in a sustainable, responsible way? This is an ongoing conversation that is happening in the library world, and we would love to hear your thoughts!

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