University Publishing in a Digital Age

Appendix B: Comparison of Press and Library Strengths and Weaknesses

Libraries and presses have different and often complementary strengths and weaknesses that could be harnessed to deliver a compelling new publishing enterprise. Libraries, at the nexus of faculty research needs, understand scholars as users of information (robust subject collections – as much as possible – to support research agendas, 24/7 accessibility, preservation, etc.). Presses understand faculty as authors (conferring prestige through selection, improving work through peer review/editing, protecting copyright, maximizing attention, generating royalties). The table below outlines how we see the particular strengths of libraries and presses in terms of scholarly communication in general, and publishing in particular. This will obviously vary by institution; we see this as a catalyst for conversations between libraries and presses that could lead to an effective division of labor between the two.

Libraries:

Strengths
• Technology (people, tools and infrastructure)
• Organizing information (metadata)
• Information storage and preservation
• Close to host institution – at the center of the university’s academic and educational agenda. Direct reporting line to provost; deeply connected to academic departments, professional schools, campus museums, and other entities.
• Have networks of subject specialists familiar with faculty research, instructional needs and publishing trends.
• Understand how to build collections, how disciplines work, and the interdisciplinary way collections interact.
• Multimedia content
• Special collections (own enormous amount of content of value to scholars; good at digitizing this content – including delicate work on rare manuscripts and other material - and offering it for free)
• Operate at granular level with usage. Understand the way users find and retrieve information; understand the usability of information. Well funded (from university budgets and, increasingly, from outside sources). One of largest cost centers within university.
• Operating model (as a cost center) in line with way most of the university conducts business (thus the library talks the same language as the administration)
• Excel at service – bring that mentality to everything they do. Have created a vigorous national and institutional advocacy agenda to maximize the dissemination and bring down the costs of scholarly information (e.g. open access, open source)
• Good at collaborating across institutions (ILL, etc.), and have experience in building shared technology platforms (e.g. union catalogs, bibliographic utilities, bibliographic databases)

Weaknesses
• Commercial discipline - “Libraries would benefit from the financial discipline that comes from a focus on the bottom line. There is a lot of waste in libraries. Libraries, because they have a spend-it-down focus, are a better site for innovation and risk-taking, but libraries don’t know how to sustain innovative projects.”
• Evaluating demand (service mentality prioritizes service functions over revenue generating and usage-determined activities).
• Creating demand (lack the marketing skills, networks, and processes to attract attention for projects. Not market-facing).
• Sustainability (librarians are accustomed to spending down a departmental budget and have limited experience generating revenues from other channels).
• Do not really understand faculty as authors (copyright protection and prioritization of revenue generation for royalties versus maximization of exposure from open access – authors need nuanced balance between these two sometimes contradictory extremes)
• Do not understand publishing process (library idea of publishing is more like digital production. Little sense of how to acquire or incentivize authors, spend capital to make a return on investment, etc.)
• Lack editorial selection, peer-review, and manuscript development systems that confer status/prestige on published products. Do not contribute to credentialing system for scholarship.

Presses:

Strengths
• Commercial discipline – one of the few places on campus that offer a capture mechanism for university-created content. Understand how to monetize scholarship, risk capital for return on investment, operate within the disciplines of a P&L, and protect sustainability of the enterprise.
• Acceptable channel for revenue generation
• Understand publishing process
• Know how to evaluate demand
• Editorial selection and vetting (upstream at the manuscript level and downstream at the book/journal level )
• Credentialing
• Conferring prestige
• Editorial development/improving the quality of content
• Relationships with faculty as authors/creators of scholarly content
• Marketing/awareness building across multiple audiences, but especially within the academy. Cultivate long-established national and international networks among wholesalers, retailers, libraries, individuals
• Fair pricing – finding the best balance between maximizing exposure for a work, rewarding content creators and producers, and keeping down cost of scholarship.
• Keeping works in print
• Understand demand for scholarship by discipline
• Understand copyright protection and rights management

Weaknesses
• Not connected deeply to parent institution; lack status as essential academic department of university; not close to administration. Operating model (commercial) not in line with how most of university conducts business (cost center).
• Lack financial resources/investment capital necessary to experiment, recruit top talent, build new electronic infrastructure, and conduct market research.
• Lack scale: too small to achieve economies, leverage investments
• Far behind the curve in electronic publishing: lack technology tools, infrastructure, people/skills, market knowledge
• Not innovative: cost of failure too high given limited resources
• With exception of a few presses, have ceded the territory of scientific, technical, engineering, and medical publishing to commercial competitors; distant from professional schools on campus
• With exception of a few presses, not good at fundraising (building endowments, attracting substantial money for new initiatives, etc.)
• Developing and promoting a long-term strategy
• Creating new products with information technology
• Slow to move and tradition-bound