Task Force on Economic Models for Scholarly Publishing

2009-2011

Committee Roster

Lynne Withey, California, Chair
Steve Cohn, Duke
Ellen Faran, MIT
Michael Jensen, NAP
Garrett Kiely, Chicago
Will Underwood, Kent State
Bruce Wilcox, Massachusetts
Richard Brown, ex officio
Peter Givler, ex officio
Alex Holzman, ex officio
Kathleen Keane, Johns Hopkins, ex officio

Report

The Task Force Report, "Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Business Models for University Presses," was released in March 2011. Read more >

Rationale and Charge

The scholarly communications system is going through a period of enormous change and uncertainty, struggling with changes affecting the enterprise as a whole and, in addition, a growing movement within universities to play a larger role in the dissemination of scholarship.  University presses’ position as businesses operating within universities has always been challenging and is becoming even more so in the current climate.  But there is also an opportunity for presses to play a significant role in a reconfigured scholarly communications landscape — one that places universities at its center.  So far, however, the expertise that presses can provide in this changing world is not widely recognized nor put to best use.  Experimental, collaborative projects, usually involving presses and libraries, offer promise but have yet to demonstrate that they can be scaled or sustained financially.  The broader debate on scholarly publishing focuses primarily on policies to retain copyright and disseminate scholarly work through open access repositories.  Little attention has been paid thus far to the economic consequences of the proposed changes, or to their usefulness for consumers of scholarly research.

It is time for university presses to speak up and propose ways in which they can help the university community address the perceived problems in the current scholarly communications system.  To this end, the AAUP proposes to commission a Task Force on Economic Models for Scholarly Publishing.  Building on the work done by several other groups, the Task Force will examine the current state of scholarly publishing with a  particular focus on universities’ needs and the roles that university presses can play in meeting those needs.

The task force will focus on three broad questions, each of which has several parts:

• The movement for “free and universal access.”  This effort was driven initially by the high cost of STM journals, but there is also a larger principle at work— the belief that universities should make the research of their faculties broadly available.

• How central is "free and universal access" to universities' mandates?  What intellectual property and what services must be freely available?  What is the appropriate way to pay for the costs of publishing such work?

• Does the open access mandate extend to provision of text materials to students?

• Must access be free, literally, or is it sufficient if scholarship is made available at a reasonable cost?

• How can free(er) access work?  How do we reconcile faculty concerns about publishing in the most appropriate (and most prestigious) journals with libraries’ concerns about cost? What are the possible business models?  These models will, presumably, vary according to type of publication —journals, monographs, textbooks.

• Serving scholars’ publication needs.  What does it mean to “publish” in the 21st century? Are current outlets for publication sufficient to meet scholars’ needs?

• What is the definition of publication? How does the definition vary across disciplines?  To what extent does the definition include, for everyone:  peer review, professional editing and formatting, publicity, marketing, print and online distribution?  In a world of mass digitization, individual websites, institutional repositories and other means of disseminating vast amounts of information to wide audiences, how do we manage quality control?
• If the movement for OA in the STM world succeeds, or moves along significantly, what will that mean for scholars in fields served primarily by high-cost journals?  Will it be necessary to establish alternative journals? If so, what role might university presses play?
• As publishers’ capacity to issue specialized monographs shrinks, how do we serve scholars in fields where books are the primary medium of publication?  To what extent are electronic publication and/or deposit in institutional repositories adequate solutions?
• How do we serve scholars who want to publish work that doesn’t fit nearly into the standard book and journal models?
• Scholarly research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, but the academy continues to be structured primarily along disciplinary lines—journals, departments, societies, etc.  How can we help ensure that interdisciplinary research is published in such a way that it reaches the varied audiences desired?

• How can the academic community as a whole work together to resolve these issues?  University presses have a responsibility to work with their own institutions on solutions, but historically, presses have served the scholarly community at large in addition to their own institutions.  How can university presses work together to achieve solutions to the issues described above?

• What new roles should presses play in the changing scholarly publishing landscape?
• How might we expect roles to differ among institutions of various types and sizes?
• How can presses work most effectively with other stakeholders, especially libraries and scholarly societies?

Method

Given the breadth of these issues and the limited time available, the Task Force will begin by reviewing previous analyses of these issues; identifying the key players (e.g., in addition to university presses, libraries, scholarly societies, other scholarly publishers);  outlining the sometimes competing interests and perspective of these players; and identifying the kinds of data available to inform our work.  The Task Force will then specify those aspects of the problem that we, as university press leaders, can most usefully analyze.  The overall goals will be 1)  a concise analysis of state of the field; 2) recommendations for university presses, with a particular view toward economic issues and relations with the larger university community; and 3) recommendations for the broader community.