Journal Programs and Cross-Disciplinary Research

These slides were presented at the Merrill Advanced Studies Center Research Retreat, held in Nebraska City, Nebraska on July 10-12, 2019. This presentation was later used as a foundation for the white paper of the same name which can be found at https://doi.org/10.17161/merrill.2019.13290.This presentation outlines why library journal publishing programs are uniquely suited to supporting the publication of groundbreaking peer-reviewed cross-disciplinary research. Library publishing programs were one strategy that libraries developed in the 1990s to make scholarly research more visible and to shift control of scholarly publishing from commercial entities back to the academy. The lack of a profit imperative for library publishing programs means that the infrastructure for journal publishing is provided to the institution’s editors for little or no cost, allowing them to spend more time publishing innovative peer-reviewed research and less time fundraising. This model also benefits authors, because the journals don’t have to charge authors publication fees to pay for journal hosting. In addition to lowering the financial barriers to starting a new journal, the journal publishing infrastructure used by libraries follows best practices and standards, such as those outlined by the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-MPH) that make the journal content readily discoverable by internet search engines, increasing the visibility and impact of the research published in them. In addition to infrastructure that ensures visibility, library publishing programs benefit from existing library expertise in collaboration, technology, copyright, data management, scholarly publishing, information literacy, digital preservation, and the effective promotion of online research