• Discussion Group Notes
• Group #2884
• Group #2885

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Notes from Discussion Groups: Objective 8. Respond to the crisis in scholarly communication by clarifying alternatives for publishing outlets for faculty and others at the university.

Group #2884
Facilitator: Susette Newberry
Note-taker: Margaret Nichols
LMT: Tom Hickerson, Ross Atkinson
Attending: Pedro Arroyo, Pat Court, Phil Davis, Erla Heyns, Peter Hirtle, Martha Hsu, Gordon Law, Mary Ochs, Jill Powell, Marcy Rosenkrantz, David Ruddy, William Sayers, John Saylor.

The objective

• Concerns and interests expressed during introductions
  • The high cost of journals is a driving concern
  • Several group members expressed a strong commitment to open access
  • Two people noted the intimate connection between scholarly communication and collection development
  • One person expressed interest in the issue as an author of scholarly articles; another is interested because her library is doing some Web publishing.
• The measures of success should include financial measures.
• A comment on the first sentence of plain text following the boldface in goal 8: “Clarify responsibilities” for whom—faculty, librarians, CUL? Perhaps this is answered by the first bullet under Implementation.
• The current situation is very fluid; this makes clarity difficult in establishing responsibilities and steps for implementation.

Implementation

• Implementation should include letting people know what their alternatives are.
• The focus should be on defining a vision for CUL. A financial analysis should be part of this vision.
• We need responsibility, authority, and accountability.
• Referring to the Open Access report issued by a committee including John Saylor and Phil Davis: should CUL do more such studies? Who should be doing what?
• We need talking points for conversations with faculty who ask for concise advice on scholarly communication issues (the “elevator talk”). SPARC has a brochure we could use (or use as a model) for a concise summary on the issue.
• The current crisis contains both a positive aspect and a negative one. The positive aspect is the advent of new opportunities for scholarly publishing. The negative aspect is the diminishing access to scholarly publications.
• A [policy] statement on scholarly communication would be useful in managing DSpace.

• Textual comments on Goal 8 and following paragraphs in the Priority Objectives Document
  • First bulleted item under Implementation: a “multi-level shared vision” is more a goal than a step in implementation.
  • The implementation bullets listed are all really goals.
  • The sentence in boldface at the top of the page is more specific than the “specifics” below.
  • It’s not clear whether we are to come up with a single solution or a series of options.
• What is CUL’s position on the scholarly communication crisis? Should it have a single position? [There were (at least) two distinct schools of thought on this question:]
  • Dissension on this issue is OK—that’s the academic model, rather than the religious or the corporate one. The academic model is bottom-up rather than top-down.
  • But we need a clear message to communicate to faculty.
  • Could we present the CUL position as a group of options?
  • This issue is important enough so the Library should have a position on it. This will help in negotiations with publishers, for one thing.
  • CUL should have a policy and also offer publishing alternatives to faculty.
  • The “shared vision” mentioned under Implementation in the document can include suggestions for alternative publishing venues. We should be factual, though, not evangelical, in our stance on the issue. A position like “All commercial publishers are bad” would not be right.
  • Copyright is another, related area in which we should inform faculty of the issues.
  • We could develop a policy statement to use as a framework for implementation. Texas, for instance, has a policy that the management of copyrights should further the university’s mission.

Potential partners

In addition to those named in the document:

• Commercial publishers (or publishers in general)
• Cornell University Press
• Faculty groups, e.g. the Faculty Senate
• Cornell President’s Office
• Vice Provost for Research (Richardson)
• Government—a major source of funding

Measures of success

• Are we sure that success in this area can be measured in quantifiable terms?
• One possible measurement would be a decline in the per-unit cost of scholarly information.
• Cost is a symptom of the problem, not the heart of the problem. It’s not the only symptom, though.
• The validity of “Increased publication in open access forums” as a measure of success was questioned. Current scholarly e-resources like arXiv may be hugely valuable to the scholarly community without any increase in the number of articles published there.
• Is there some way to be more specific about measures of “Increased awareness of issues among CU faculty and administrators”? One more specific measure might be changes in requirements for tenure or promotion of faculty (and librarians!) to include e-publications as fully valid scholarly publications.