Library publishing, also known as campus-based publishing, is the practice of an academic library providing
publishing
Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
services.
Concept
A library publishing service usually publishes
academic journals and often provides a broader range of publishing services as well. This can include publishing other formats such as scholarly
monographs and
conference proceedings
In academia and librarianship, conference proceedings are a collection of academic papers published in the context of an academic conference or workshop. Conference proceedings typically contain the contributions made by researchers at the confer ...
. It generally has a preference for
open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
publishing.
Library publishing often focuses on electronic publishing rather than print, thus complementing the role of traditional academic presses. Sometimes a library and a
university press
A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. They are often an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. They pro ...
based at the same institution will form a partnership, with each focusing on their own area of expertise.
For example, the
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
library publishing service publishes peer-reviewed journals and also collaborates with the university press to publish
open access monographs.
Software is available to manage the journal publication process. The open source
Open Journal Systems by the
Public Knowledge Project, and
Digital Commons'
bepress, are both widely used by library publishing services. Some libraries use Open Journal Systems to create
overlay journals which present scholarly content that is held in an
institutional repository.
History
Library publishing has a long history and has been around since before the Internet.
In 1990, academic libraries published two of the first scholarly electronic journals on the Internet. The University of Houston Libraries began publishing ''The Public-Access Computer Systems Review'' and the Virginia Tech University Libraries began publishing the ''Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research.''
The Synergies project (2007-2011) was a collaboration between different Canadian universities to create infrastructure to support institutional publishing activities. A survey conducted by Hahn in 2008 found that at that time 65% of research libraries in North America either had a library publishing service or were considering creating one.
In 2011 in the UK,
Jisc funded three library publishing projects: Huddersfield Open Access Publishing (HOAP) at the
University of Huddersfield, SAS Open Journals at the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...
, and EPICURE at
UCL.
The Library Publishing Coalition was launched in 2013 to provide a hub for library publishing activities.
In October 2013, during
Open Access Week, they launched a Library Publishing Directory which contains information about library publishing activities at 115 academic and research libraries.
See also
*
:Academic journals published by university libraries
*
:Library publishing
*
Scholarly commons
*
University press
A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. They are often an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. They pro ...
References
Further reading
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External links
Library Publishing CoalitionCampus-based Publishing Resource Center
{{Authority control
Academic publishing
Open access (publishing)
Electronic publishing