Roger C. Schonfeld is director of Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums for Ithaka S+R.
At Ithaka S+R, Roger leads a team of subject matter and methodological experts and analysts that conduct research and provide advisory services to drive evidence-based innovation and leadership among libraries, publishers, and museums to foster research, learning, and preservation. This has included extensive survey research of faculty members, students, and the directors of libraries and museums, as well as collaborative qualitative studies that have examined research and teaching practices and support needs in more than ten academic disciplines involving more than 100 universities. Additional research and policy projects have sought to bolster organizational leadership, diversity and community engagement, and collections management and preservation. The team provides strategic guidance and advisory services for content providers, software companies, university presses, and academic libraries on the transformation of scholarly communications and the research workflow. Ithaka S+R is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that also operates Artstor, JSTOR, and Portico, but the views shared here are solely Roger’s.
Roger currently serves on advisory and project committees for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, ARKS in the Open, the Center for Research Libraries (PAPR), and Toward a National Finding Aid Network. Previously, he has served on the NSF Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access and NISO’s Open Discovery Initiative. Roger has testified before the US House of Representatives on government publishing, advocating for strong approaches to digital preservation. He has authored dozens of research reports, articles, and briefing papers.
Previously, Roger was a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. There, he collaborated on The Game of Life: College Sports and Academic Values with James Shulman and William G. Bowen (Princeton University Press, 2000). He also wrote JSTOR: A History (Princeton University Press, 2003), focusing on the development of a sustainable not-for-profit business model for the digitization and preservation of scholarly texts. He received degrees in library and information science from Syracuse University and in English Literature from Yale University.
Roger’s Ithaka S+R reports and blogposts are available online, and he is active on Twitter as @rschon.
The major US library consortium OhioLINK has created a vision for the systems that libraries use for acquiring content from publishers, managing collections, and enabling discovery. An interview about this vision with executive director Gwen Evans,
A university does not have to “sole source” procurement of publishing services — they could be bid. How might an RFP and bidding process affect transformative agreements and library strategy?
Here are some takeaways from last week’s Academic Publishing in Europe meeting, from Chefs who were there (either physically or virtually).
While some talk about global science, China’s skyrocketing investment in its scientific sector is causing real anxiety for Europe.
An interview with Xiao-Li Meng, Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, about the increasingly central role data science is playing in research and teaching, – and how journals, publishers, societies, and librarians fit in this emerging ecosystem.
The structural transition wrought by the internet continues to transform the journal-centric model of scholarly publishing into a researcher-centric model of scholarly communication. Success requires engagement with researcher identity, which is a struggle even for most of the largest publishing houses. Who is competing to own researcher identity and how can other publishers engage this vital role?
Today, a group of leading publishers is announcing a major new service to plug leakage, improve discovery and access, fight piracy, compete with ResearchGate, and position their platform for the OA ecosystem. This new service shows that publishers are finally beginning to address digital strategy in an environment that has steadily eroded their ability to monetize the value they create. Does it go far enough to reset the competitive environment?
Elsevier’s new CEO Kumsal Bayazit’s debuted in front of a librarian audience at last week’s Charleston Conference. Analysis from Roger Schonfeld.
New today: In a crowded and confusing landscape for research data preservation and sharing, two fundamentally competing visions are emerging. Which will win?
Sharing research data is increasingly becoming a real business. Today, we provide an overview this landscape and highlight several recent announcements that may indicate future strategic prospects.