The future of academic publishing: Revolution or evolution?

Key points

• Concerns about a crisis in monograph publishing date back to at least the 1990s, and for traditional journal publishing at least a decade.
• Two key trends behind concerns over book and journal models are pressures on funding and the emergence of open access.
• Despite predictions of a revolution, the academic publishing sector has proved remarkably resilient in adapting to market changes.
• Whilst showing some support for ‘open science’, even early career researchers remain committed to traditional publishing models.
• The growth in scholarly collaboration networks and in sharing across traditional boundaries is the more likely disrupter of traditional publishing.

     

Ideas,Objects, or People? A Smithsonian Exhibition Team Views Visitors Anew

Abstract An exhibition team at the National Museum of the American Indian, working with a visitor studies specialist from the Smithsonian’s Office of Policy and Analysis, used visitor studies conducted by the entire team during planning for a reinstallation of part of the permanent collection. The studies evolved organically during the exhibition planning as questions and hypotheses arose among the team. The answers led to further studies. This research model brought team members together in a spirit of inquiry and a process of discovery, changed their perceptions of themselves and their subjects, and suggested a new typology of visitors.     

The Contemporary Academic Library Resource Sharing Mission: Fragmentation or Evolution?

Academic interlibrary loan practitioners are experiencing changes that can be characterized as either the fragmentation of the resource sharing mission or its evolution into a new form of service routinely making use of new and diverse sources of information outside the scope of past practices. Among these new sources are curated repositories of open access literature, institutional repositories, digital libraries containing scanned public domain literature, and social media article-sharing networking sites. The incorporation of these sources of information into regular workflows presents interlibrary loan practitioners with many challenges. This paper will discuss ways to address these developments.     

Do Museums Change Lives?: Ninth Stephen Weil Memorial Lecture

No museum is actually “neutral,” ever. This article presents the keynote address presented at the annual conference of the International Committee on Museum Management (INTERCOM) and of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM). In it, the author lays out the provocative case that museums not only are not, but should not be “neutral” when it comes to issues of human rights and social justice. Museums need not present both sides of every argument, or retain a lofty academic tone when it comes to the injustices of the present and the past. As an alternative course, the author presents a framework published by the British Museums Association, entitled Museums Change Lives, which offers a vision for museums to engage with challenging topics. He then offers a series of examples where Museums have embraced a new role as a promoter of social good.     

The International Standard Text Code: Call to Action, or Distraction?

Book publishers now have more products to keep track of than ever before: books, eBooks, apps, online products, and the list goes on. Traditionally publishers have used the ISBN to track products in the supply chain. But with as many as 24 ISBNs now associated with a bestselling title, the publishing industry looks to a new identifier, the International Standard Text Code (ISTC), to keep ISBNs in check. In a sea of data, will the ISTC help keep publishers afloat, or weigh them down?     

Aggregators: Cornerstone or Annex?

With the goal of building a high quality academic library collection in mind, the Serials Librarian and the Collection Assessment Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University evaluated the value of journal content accessed through a journal aggregator database. Data from EBSCOhost, UlrichsWeb, and Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Journal Citation Reports were used to evaluate content with respect for subject, quality, and coverage. An important goal of the project was to share the analysis with library liaisons in an effort to assist them with collection development responsibilities. The analysis raises questions about the relationship between discovery, access, and collection development.     

The Failure of Project Eyeball: A Case of Product Overpricing or Market Overcrowding?

The closure in mid-2001 by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) of its experimental tabloid newspaper, Project Eyeball, after less than 1 year of publication, was popularly attributed to a pair of market factors: its 80-cent cover price and competition from a pair of free tabloids that entered the market hot on its heels. Although pricing and competition were doubtless important contributing factors to Project Eyeball's rapid demise, a pair of additional economic concepts emerges on closer examination of the newspaper's brief history and may provide additional clues to its failure. One is the principle of relative constancy, which held, until it was disproved in the 1980s, that the level of expenditures on media remained fairly constant as a percentage of the overall economy. The other is the influence on management practices of share prices of publicly traded newspaper companies, into which category SPH falls. Considering these factors in addition to price and competition helps to better explain the rapid demise of Project Eyeball.     

The Media Audience: A Brief Biography—Stages of Growth or Paradigm Change?

The concept of audience was widely adapted from its earlier origins in public spectacles and performance to apply to the new circumstances of mass media reception in the early 20th century, and especially to the public for film and broadcasting. It could even be applied more generally to include print media. The then novel usage of the term was a component in the larger paradigm of mass communications that in turn rested on certain preconceptions about its ‘mass’ character. These preconceptions have been challenged by subsequent research and theory. More recently, however, the ongoing transformation of the means of communication may have rendered the whole mass communication paradigm itself obsolescent, and with it the concept of a mass audience. In this article it is argued that paradigmatic change in ideas about the audience may be less due to a shift in technology than to the more fundamental theoretical changes of the intervening period.     

The rise of GovTech: Trojan horse or blessing in disguise? A research agenda

As GovTech solutions are steadily entering the public sector, they have yet to find their way into the mainstream literature. GovTech refers to socio-technical solutions – that are developed and operated by private organisations – intertwined with public sector components for facilitating processes in the public sector. GovTech solutions promise a superior customer journey for citizens and businesses compared to current government portals and front desks. GovTech solutions can be a blessing in disguise for governments struggling in their digital transformation journey, carrying the burden of public service innovation and replacing legacy systems with modern GovTech solutions. Yet, there are also concerns that GovTech solutions are a Trojan horse, exploiting the lack of technical knowledge at public agencies and shifting decision-making power from public agencies to market parties, thereby undermining digital sovereignty and public values. This paper develops a research agenda for GovTech based on a conceptual framework. This framework reveals four interrelated design areas for GovTech: institutional, governance, technical and human-centred design. Governments can employ the conceptual framework to further align and develop their strategies by focussing on GovTech governance, referring to the ability to manage the various interdependencies between the four design areas.     

Serial or Monograph: Who Decides?

Some types of publication are viewed by librarians as serials and by publishers as monographs. In the pre-digital environment, cataloging rules and library workflows were developed to manage these publications. The shift to electronic publishing, distribution, and access brings new considerations into play. This article describes current cataloging practice and examines the effects of these shifts on library catalogs and user access through them.     

Unsolicited merchandise: Gift or sale?

Receipt of unsolicited materials by libraries raises questions of liability and responsibility for payment. This article provides a discussion of the law surrounding unsolicited merchandise and references to the state and federal statutes which provide protection for the recipient of unordered goods.     

Library lists: core or apple?

Core lists for medical libraries are intended to offer a minimal coverage of the medical literature. But they have grave drawbacks: (1) The coverage of some specialties is so minimal in several well-known lists as to be misleading. (2) A small hospital lacking a specialist in a particular branch of medicine does not need a specialist journal in that branch. Such a journal is better borrowed from a neighbouring hospital where the appropriate specialist can also be consulted. (3) Many hospitals will stick only to the core list, leading to excessive uniformity across the country.What librarians should be offered is a list of about 300-400 journals from which to make a selection on the following criteria: (1) The preference of the doctors who use the library. (2) The availability of journals in neighbouring libraries. (3) The budget.