Academic publishers reap huge profits as libraries go broke

 'Oligarchy' of publishers

5 companies publish more than 50 per cent of research papers, study finds

(53 per cent of scientific papers, 70 per cent of papers in the social sciences)

Larivière says the cost of the University of Montreal's journal subscriptions is now more than $7 million a year  – ultimately paid for by the taxpayers and students who fund most of the university's budget. Unable to afford the annual increases, the university has started cutting subscriptions, angering researchers.
"The big problem is that libraries or institutions that produce knowledge don't have the budget anymore to pay for [access to] what they produce," Larivière said.

 Vincent Larivière, University of Montreal           From: CBC News June 15th 2015 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

Essentially, they've become an oligarchy, Larivière and co-authors Stefanie Haustein and Philippe Mongeon say in a paper published last week in the open access, non-profit journal PLOS ONE.

Second Lady (Nigeria) urges librarians to sharpen skills

TheSecond Lady of Nigeria, Matilda Amissah-Arthur, highlighted OA yesterday at aninternational workshop for librarians. "Mrs Amissah-Arthur said...the services [of a library] had evolved from the days of closed stacks, through shelf browsing, card catalogues and OPACs to open access and institutional repositories...."

Providing Library Research Support for Scholarly Publishing Literacy

This paper argues that scholarly publishing literacy should be treated as an extension of information literacy delivered through a broader research support framework. This paper presents a research librarian's perspective, and draws on literature and the author's practice to illustrate key points. Issues for further investigation are identified.

Article-processing charges (APCs) add complexity to librarian role

Earlier this year SAGE and Jisc organised a librarian roundtable to examine the implications of managing article-processing charges. Research Information editor Siân Harris, who also wrote the report of the event, describes some of the key findings

The impact of open access on librarians

"Open access (OA) is possibly one of the greatest (in a size sense) topics being discussed in academic publishing right now, and with just cause. It has a real chance to fundamentally change the research landscape and dissemination of its results, potentially facilitating greater productivity, collaboration and transparency in the research method.

The most vocal bodies or individuals to talk about this issue have generally been from either the researcher or the publisher side, which are the two groups it most affects. But what position should the library take in these discussions, and how will an increase in the volume of open access material (and a potentially exponential one) change the type and volume of work for the librarian?......

What it boils down to
So, to paraphrase this and run the risk of repeating in another short list what is said above a few times, the future of open access for libraries will involve:

1. More advanced discovery services
2. Communication, training and networking with own institutional community
3. Repository building and curation"

 see discussion on Swets Blog

Academic libraries need to evolve to continue to meet the needs of their users in an open-access world, reports Sian Harris

Some snippets from this article:

"A big potential change for libraries will be the effect of OA on allocation of university budgets.."

.. still a strong culture of mistrust and misunderstanding about OA amongst researchers and that communicating with researchers and institutions about it will be an important function for libraries..."

"Managing metadata will be very important for good discoverability but functions such as metadata management and preservation are likely to be done on a web scale rather than on an institutional level, they noted. Libraries are also well placed to – and in many cases already do – manage institutional repositories...."

 " Value will be added by digitising and making available unique collections and libraries will increasingly need to work together and share functions and services...."

"While research librarians have been amongst the strongest advocates of OA models, the implications of these models for research libraries and their future role in supporting the research process are less well understood,..."