The Library Publishing Coalition: organizing libraries to enhance scholarly publishing

Abstract

Library-based publishing efforts are gaining traction in academic and research libraries across the world, primarily in response to perceived gaps in the scholarly publishing system. Though publishing is a new area of work for libraries, it is often a natural outgrowth of their existing infrastructure and skill sets, leveraging the institutional repository as publishing platform and repositioning librarians' skills as information managers. For decades, these initiatives were primarily ad hoc and local, limiting the potential for library publishing to effect significant change. In 2013, over 60 academic and research libraries collectively founded the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC), a professional association expressly charged with facilitating knowledge sharing, collaboration and advocacy for this growing field. This article offers an overview of library publishing activity, primarily in the US, followed by an account of the creation and mission of the LPC, the first professional association dedicated wholly to the support of library publishers.

Making Institutional Repositories Work

“…1 and yet another 15% do so on the Fedora Commons repository platform (Lippincott, 2014). Such crossover is hardly surprising, given the publication role repositories fulfill for institutions and the limited resources that libraries can allocate to development and areas of growth.…”

Open Dialog

“…Some will focus exclusively on journals from faculty at their local institutions, while others may publish journals, books, proceedings, and more from authors across the globe (Lippincott, 2015). In order to get a better idea of the growth and experiences of library publishing programs, I'd like to focus on two in particular.…”

Sustainable open access for scholarly journals in 6 years – the incubator model at Utrecht University Library Open Access Journals

“…As Sarah Kalikman Lippincott noted in 2016: ‘Library‐based publishing services have likewise emerged organically over the past several decades, largely in response to the perceived gaps in and frustrations with the current publishing system […]’. (Lippincott, ). Especially in recent years, it is clear that there is a renewed interest in institutional publishing.…”