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The Role of Scholarly Societies
A Scholarly Communication Issues & Outreach Toolkit
AUDIENCE: Provided by the UC Libraries Scholarly Communication Officers Group for librarians, information specialists, speakers and facilitators who wish to gain a more informed understanding of the issues and options that are driven by scholarly societies in their role as knowledge creators and disseminators.
PURPOSE:
To present salient factors which define the parameters affecting the role of scholarly societies in scholarly communication; and
to identify resources to assist individuals who are gatekeepers or facilitators of scholarly communication.
See sections below:
Issues Overview
- Most scholarly societies include the advancement and dissemination of disciplinary knowledge as a core, essential piece of their mission.
- However, in order to provide support for non-publishing activities, some societies price their scholarly publications above what is needed for maintaining the publication.
- Societies often turn over their publishing operations to, or partner with profit-maximizing commercial publishers, leading to further price increases.
- High and rapidly rising prices inevitably create barriers to access, reduce the potential impact of the scholarly work they seek to promote, and severely limit the goal of broad-based exposure and knowledge advancement.
- A resolve to defend the goal of knowledge dissemination along with innovations in technology and business models have allowed some societies to:
- separate publishing operations from other operations, keeping publishing revenue at cost recovery levels and keeping subscription prices low;
- ask only for a right of first publication, thereby giving maximum flexibility to authors for other uses of their scholarship;
- produce journals that are free to all potential readers (aka "open access");
- assemble alternative forms of dissemination that take advantage of the timeliness, reach, and integration possible with the Internet.
Readings and References
- Scholarly Societies and Scholarly Communication. University of California Academic Council's Special Committee on Scholarly Communication. December 2005. (One of six white papers). [HTML]
- Working with Societies. UC Berkeley Library. Handout from UC Berkeley's Faculty Conference on Scholarly Publishing. March 2005. [PDF]
- Willinsky. John. Scholarly Associations and the Economic Viability of Open Access Publishing. Journal of Digital Information. Vol.4 Issue 2. April 2003. [HTML]
- American Historical Association Editorial on the "History and Future of Scholarly Publishing" (2005)
- Chronicle of Higher Education Article entitled "New Study compares open access and traditional publishing" (March 25, 2005)
Best Practices for Society Publishing
- Eliminate the use of publication revenues to underwrite other
activities; generate publishing revenue at or near the cost recovery point, thereby minimizing price inflation and maximizing use and impact of scholarship.
- Provide authors the maximum flexibility to use their scholarly work whenever possible by retaining only the "right of first publication" for the society.
- Maximize the use of research findings in journals and other publications by minimizing price and other access barriers; preferably include an option of open, free access to all potential readers.
- Provide alternative forms of dissemination that are timely, broad-based, and use technology effectively to enhance the knowledge base of readers.
These practices complement the UC libraries' guiding Principles for Acquiring and Licensing Information in Digital Formats.
Best Practices Checklist (selected examples)
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