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Berkeley Center for Study of Higher Ed University
as Publi
The report of a November 1, 2007 meeting sponsored by the
University of California, Berkeley Center for the Study of Higher
Education on the potential roles of universities as publishers is now
available; the announcement is reproduced below.
I had a chance to participate in this meeting, which was a lively
and wide-ranging discussion that took the July 2007 Ithaka report on
university publishing in the digital age as a point of departure;
Laura Brown, the author of the Ithaka report, was a participant in the
sessions at Berkeley.
Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI
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The University as Publisher: Summary of a Meeting Held at UC
Berkeley on November 1, 2007.
Diane Harley (ed.), Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE)
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/docs/university_publisher.pdf
Abstract
With the advent of electronic publishing, the scholarly
communication landscape at universities has become increasingly
diverse. Multiple stakeholders including university presses,
libraries, and central IT departments are challenged by the increasing
volume and the rapidity of production of these new forms of
publication in an environment of economic uncertainties.
As a response to these increasing pressures, as well as the recent
publication of important reports and papers on the topic, the Center
for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) convened a meeting of experts
titled, The University as Publisher. The event was
sponsored as part of the A.W. Mellon Foundation-funded Future of
Scholarly Communication project at CSHE.
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication/
Our goal was to explore among stakeholders --faculty, publishers,
CIOs, librarians, and researchers-- the implications of the academic
community, in some structure, taking over many, if not all, aspects of
scholarly publishing. Two themes were the focus of the public
panels: Institutional Roles in Evaluation, Quality Assessment,
and Selection and Structuring and Budgeting Models for
Publishing within the University Community.
Our discussions included the importance of distinguishing between
informal dissemination and formal publishing and the challenges that
each presents to the university community. The harsh economic
realities of high-quality formal scholarly publication, not least of
which are managing peer review and editorial processes, were
emphasized. Understanding disciplinary needs was cited as
paramount throughout the discussions; the needs and traditions of
scholars in the sciences and humanities, as well as among myriad
disciplines, will likely demand different dissemination and publishing
models and solutions.
An additional theme that emerged was acknowledging the diverse forms
electronic dissemination takes in the academy and the need to foster a
spectrum of alternatives in publication forms, business models, and
the peer review process. Budgetary and academic freedom concerns
were explored as well. Regarding the expensive infrastructure
required for electronic dissemination and publishing, it was agreed
that there is enormous duplication among the university press, IT, and
the library.
Participants included Laura Brown, Diane Harley, James L. Hilton,
Donald Kennedy, C. Judson King, Mark J. McCabe, Mark Rose, Ellen
Wartella, Kate Wittenberg, Catherine Candee, Raym Crow, Nicholas P.
Jewell, Tom Leonard, Sheila Levine, Clifford Lynch, James Neal, Sarah
Earl-Novell, Abby Smith, Shel Waggener, Keith Yamamoto
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Contacts:
Diane Harley
dianeh@berkeley.edu
(510) 642-5040
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/dharley
C. Judson
King
cjking@berkeley.edu
(510)
643-3199
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/cjking.htm
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