The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT) has proclaimed support for open-access publishing of journal articles by signing the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE). UT is the eighteenth institution to join a roster of signatories that includes Harvard, Duke, Sloan-Kettering, and other preeminent research institutions.

Open-access publishing is an alternative to the prevailing business model of subscription-based journal publishing. Open-access journals are freely available online to researchers, scholars, and the public worldwide.

COPE was formed in 2009 to encourage equity of the two models of journal publishing.

For universities, open-access publishing offers several advantages over the traditional model. Open access insures that research and scholarly work will be broadly disseminated and discovered. Scholarly work and research results are published online, through journals and institutional digital repositories, and made immediately available to the millions of people around the world who have access to the Internet.

Open-access publishing also allows authors to retain copyrights in their own scholarly work rather than ceding copyrights to a commercial publisher.

Commercial publishers play a valuable role in the cycle of scholar communication. However, in recent decades inflation in costs of subscription-based journals has consumed an every larger portion of university libraries’ collections budgets.

“Open-access publishing offers an attractive and viable alternative to the scenario of ever-increasing journal subscription fees,” says Steve Smith, UT’s dean of libraries. Publication costs for open-access journals are borne on the front end by sponsoring organizations or through author fees (article processing charges) rather than subscription fees charged to the end user. “We are proud that UT’s Open Publishing Support Fund has, since 2008, been subsidizing publication in open-access journals,” declares Smith. The Fund, a project of the university libraries and the office of research and engagement, has to date underwritten the publication of 79 open-access articles by 48 faculty and graduate student authors.

The University of Tennessee has long had a policy of supporting and funding open-access publishing. A decade ago, a group of UT life sciences faculty requested that the university provide incentives for faculty to publish in open-access journals. The UT Faculty Senate endorsed the Tempe Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly Publishing in 2003 and passed a resolution in May 2006 endorsing administrative incentives to encourage faculty publication in alternative scholarly outlets.

“Joining COPE confirms the university’s commitment to a new culture of scholarly communication,” according to Taylor Eighmy, UT’s vice chancellor for research and engagement. “For tenure and promotion decisions, ‘peer-reviewed’ is ‘peer-reviewed,’ whether on paper or online. The ultimate goal is to create and disseminate new knowledge. Sharing UT’s research and scholarship is central to our mission as a land-grant institution.”

The University of Tennessee Libraries, in collaboration with more than 50 other academic libraries and the Educopia Institute, has joined a two-year project (2013-2014) to create the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC). As one of the founding institutions, the UT Libraries will play an integral role in the design and implementation of the LPC.

Academic libraries and the researchers and organizations they support are facing a new paradigm in scholarly publishing. The web, information and social media technologies, and the Open Source and Open Access movements are changing the framework in which scholarship is created, collected, organized, and disseminated. Yet, as shown by the highly regarded, Institute of Museum and Library Services-funded Strategies for Success project (http://wp.sparc.arl.org/lps/), library-based publishing groups lack a central space where they can meet, work together, share information, and confront common issues.

Through seed support from Educopia and participating institutions, the LPC project will engage practitioners to design a collaborative network that intentionally addresses and supports an evolving, distributed, and diverse range of library production and publishing practices.

During the first stage of the project, the LPC’s project team will document and evaluate how best to structure this initiative in order to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing for this field. The project team will produce several concrete deliverables, including:

• Targeted research, building on existing broader surveys, that will focus on topics of particular interest to the community, including costs, staffing, and how libraries are financing these ventures.

• Compilation of a directory of existing library publishing services, providing details including staff contacts, types of products produced, and software platforms utilized.

• A forum for networking and sharing communications about library publishing services, including an annual event and ongoing virtual training and community-building activities.

• The design and implementation of the Library Publishing Coalition as an ongoing, institutionally owned organization that serves the needs of this community.

Steven Escar Smith, Dean of Libraries at the University of Tennessee, notes that “the University of Tennessee is already a national leader in providing open access to our institution’s scholarship. Trace, our online archive of research and creative works, gives UT’s scholarship wider visibility and greater impact. And the UT Libraries’ digital imprint, Newfound Press, publishes works that are unlikely candidates for market-driven presses because of their narrow focus or innovative format. By joining the LPC, we will continue to work with other leading academic libraries to find new ways to lower costs and overcome other barriers to disseminating the products of scholarship.”

More information and a full list of participating institutions are available on the project website, http://www.educopia.org/programs/lpc.

About Educopia

The Educopia Institute serves and advances the well-being of libraries, information/research centers, and their parent institutions by fostering the advancement of shared information systems and infrastructures. Educopia acts as a catalyst to assist and advise libraries and other closely affiliated cultural memory institutions in the creation of new digital means of preserving and providing access to scholarly communication and the cultural record in socially responsible ways.

–

Contact:
Holly Mercer, Associate Dean for Scholarly Communication and Research Services, University of Tennessee Libraries, hollymercer@utk.edu, 865-974-6600

Librarian David Atkins is the 2012 recipient of the Tenn-Share Resource Sharing Award. Atkins is associate professor and head of resource sharing and document delivery at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries.

The Tenn-Share consortium — with over 600 member libraries, museums, archives and information agencies — helps Tennessee libraries deliver efficient, effective library services through group purchasing power and innovative resource sharing projects.

Atkins is being recognized for his ongoing leadership within Tenn-Share and his tireless promotion of resource sharing efforts across the state and around the world.

He is active in many state, regional, and international resource sharing endeavors. He pioneered a cooperative library exchange program between the UT Libraries and Makerere University Libraries in Kampala, Uganda, and helped Makerere implement an electronic document delivery system.

Atkins has led many Tenn-Share projects including the Auto-Graphics-to-ILLiad Bridge (connecting the state’s public library and UT interlibrary loan systems) and Info-to-Go (which gives the Knox County Public Schools interlibrary loan access to the Knox County Public Libraries and UT Libraries).

Most recently, he spearheaded efforts to create a new statewide, library-to-library courier service, Firefly (www.tenn-share.org/firefly), to facilitate interlibrary loans among all types of libraries in Tennessee. (The service draws its name from the synchronous fireflies of the Great Smoky Mountains.) Tenn-Share launched a prototype of the Firefly courier service, dubbed Glowworm, in August. In November, Firefly will begin serving more than 200 academic, public, and school libraries across Tennessee.

Atkins currently chairs the American Library Association’s Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section (STARS) and is a past chair of the ALA sectional committee on international interlibrary loan.

Atkins will receive the Resource Sharing Award at Tenn-Share’s fall conference in Nashville on September 28.

UT Dean of Libraries Steven Escar Smith will serve on the Tennessee Advisory Council on Libraries. He was appointed to the council by the Tennessee Secretary of State, Tre Hargett.

The Tennessee Advisory Council on Libraries is the state entity that oversees library services that benefit all Tennesseans. The council advises the Tennessee State Library and Archives on long-range plans for library programs, services and activities in Tennessee.

The Tennessee State Library and Archives collects and preserves books and records of historical, documentary and reference value, and encourages and promotes library development throughout the state.

The Tennessee State Library and Archives supports Tennessee’s Regional Library System; provides construction funding, library materials, continuing education, and technology assistance to Tennessee’s public libraries; and encourages resource sharing across the state.

One ongoing project of the state library that benefits Tennessee’s colleges and universities is the Tennessee Electronic Library, an online collection of research resources made available free of charge to Tennessee residents.

Smith’s initial appointment to the Tennessee Advisory Council on Libraries is a three-year, renewable term.