Academic Library-Based Publishing: A State of the Evolving Art

As technology has advanced, scholarly communication has evolved, creating new opportunities for academic libraries to serve researchers. This article examines the current state and potential future of academic library-based publishing. The review of the literature explores the scholarly communication ecosystem as it pertains to new publishing paradigms supported by academic libraries, including the complexity of nontraditional publishing models. These models and their implications, as well as how they may be implemented, are then explored in the academic library environment. Next, survey data from nineteen academic librarians collected at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in January 2015 is presented. Based on the literature and the survey data, this article argues that the principle concerns for academic library-based publishing going forward include 1) the need for the dedicated and/or sustained financial models for library-based publishing initiatives and 2) the cultural and financial capital to support librarians as they further expand their knowledge and expertise to support additional publishing-related functionalities in support of these new models. Both of these concerns ultimately tie to the persistent question of perceived quality, and by extension, reputation, of library-based publishing and open access publishing more broadly.