...[I]n late 2007 the Association of Research Libraries surveyed its membership to gather data on the publishing services they were providing....
The survey verified that research libraries are rapidly developing publishing services. By late 2007, 44% of the 80 responding ARL member libraries reported they were delivering publishing services and another 21% were in the process of planning publishing service development. Only 36% of responding institutions were not active in this arena.
These libraries are publishing many kinds of works, but the main focus is journals; 88% of publishing libraries reported publishing journals compared to 79% who publish conference papers and proceedings, and 71% who publish monographs....
Libraries are making large contributions of organizational resources to support publishing service programs, so it is not surprising that a substantial portion of library publishing uses business models that enable open access or work toward such a model to best leverage those institutional investments. Subsidizing locally managed open access publishing is an alternative to subsidizing subscription models with inherent access restrictions. Libraries are avoiding the substantial overhead involved in subscription-based business models and traditional print runs....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/03/2008 10:18:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
