On September 25-26, 2002 the Libraries, along with the Office of the Provost, the School of Information Sciences, and the Association of Distinguished Service Professors, hosted SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING & THE COMMON GOOD: CHANGING OUR CULTURE, a symposium for the UT academic community.
The conference focused on these issues:
Over 200 UT faculty, graduate students, support staff, local area librarians, and invited speakers participated in the two-day symposium led by Dean of Libraries Barbara Dewey and UT Provost Loren Crabtree. The program raised awareness about a serious crisis in scholarly communication. Scholars are generating important research that is unavailable to the worldwide academic community because of dramatic increases in journal costs. University of Kansas Provost David Shulenburger gave the symposium keynote address on the reasons that the current commercialization of scholarly publishing is unsustainable. Universities cannot continue spending an additional half million dollars (or more) each year to purchase permitted the library to purchase a declining proportion of the scholarship that has been produced.
Because faculty make choices that affect the cost of publications, the symposium also featured presentations on protecting the intellectual property of the academy. Peggy Hoon, Scholarly Communications Librarian at North Carolina State University, described ways that universities and faculty can retain rights to their research content. Martin Blume, Editor-in-Chief at the American Physical Society presented a scholarly society publisher's perspective on the costs of providing print and electronic access to journals. Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, and Carol Tenopir, professor in UT's School of Information Sciences talked about profound changes in the dissemination of scholarly work that are possible in the digital environment.
Faculty are pursuing peer-reviewed alternatives to traditional publishing, and a panel of UT faculty spoke about their projects. Provost Crabtree moderated the concluding session on developing an action agenda for UT. Possible next steps include continued attention to campus awareness about scholarly communications; creation of university policies about information and intellectual property; development and expansion of university services to advise faculty about their scholarly publishing options; and support for alternatives to commercial journals, such as initiatives being explored through the library's Digital Library Center where faculty can share their research via the Web.
During symposium breaks, UT faculty, staff, and members of the local information community gave demonstrations of digital access to scholarship. Staff and faculty from across the library collaborated with the Symposium Committee to make the event a success. The symposium web pages (www.lib.utk.edu/admin/symposium) are being updated to serve as a reference for UT efforts to regain control of our scholarly communication system
Linda Phillips
Head, Collection Development & Management
 |
 |
 |