2017 Charleston Library Conference

The unintended consequences of new open access publishing models suggest that better education by librarians combined with the embrace of broader missions for non-profit publishers will benefit scholarship, authors and the information community. Large segments of scholarly publishing today have become increasingly predatory as the drive for profits has come at the financial expense of libraries and institutions, and the social cost of careless peer review practices among other conventions. Most authors lack a deep understanding of their publishing choices and the consequences of these choices. Librarians can educate authors about what constitutes a predatory publication and how they can become better aware of the loose threads that may define or lead to unintended consequences. Non-profit publishers, and university presses in particular, can broaden the scope of their missions to create viable publishing options for campus-based authors.

This session will discuss how librarians and university presses can work together to inform authors and prospective generations of scholars about how they can become more aware of what to expect in peer review; the use and misuses of metrics; the pitfalls of subscription journals that practice predatory pricing; and to generally become better educated about the landscape of publishing options. Experiences with and answers to the following questions will serve as the foundation of the session which is expected to be highly interactive. How can presses and libraries partner right away to provide the web of support authors need to make the best decisions? How do libraries carefully monitor journals for which they fund or contribute to local researchers’ APCs? Are there more ambitious opportunities for presses and libraries to offer new publishing alternatives that better reflect the values and missions of the universities they both support?