Utility, Morality, Strategy, and Scholarly Communication
Should the library focus first on serving its local constituency, or on changing the scholarly communication ecosystem? No matter how we answer this question, the implications will be complex.
Taking a Big Bite Out of the Big Deal
Unsub is the game-changing data analysis service that is helping librarians forecast, explore, and optimize their alternatives to the Big Deal. Librarians breaking away from the Big Deal often credit Unsub as a critical component of their strategy.
Forecasting the US Higher Education Market: A Primer
As scholarly publishers reforecast and consider strategic directions, here is a primer on the US higher education market
Guest Post – Seamless Remote Access During a Global Pandemic: An Indispensable Necessity
Ralph Youngen from the American Chemical Society discusses their efforts to provide remote access to researchers during the current pandemic and how new technologies and standards like RA21 and SeamlessAccess are helpful.
To Bundle or Not to Bundle? That Is the Question
Some libraries are seeking transformative agreements, others are unbundling the Big Deal. Can major publishers reestablish value without a major revenue sacrifice?
Seeking Sustainability: Publishing Models for an Open Access Age
Open access, scholarly publishing, business models, and sustainability. The past is prologue. The present is complex. @lisalibrarian provides SSP a primer.
Academic Libraries at a Pivotal Moment
New findings from Ithaka S+R provide the most recent and comprehensive evidence for how academic library acquisitions and open access initiatives may proceed in light of the present disruptions
The Internet Archive Chooses Readers
How will we meet this moment of global crisis? The Internet Archive breaks glass.
Academic Library Response to COVID-19: Real-Time Data Gathering and Dissemination
The story behind the survey for and from the academic library community as it responds to COVID-19 by @lisalibrarian + @cwolffeisenberg.
Measuring the Success of Transformative Agreements
I asked twelve publisher/customer pairs how they will measure the success of their transformative deals five years from now. The responses were very interesting.
Will the Future of Scholarly Communication Be Pluralistic and Democratic, or Monocultural and Authoritarian?
One way or another, the #scholcomm community is going to choose either a diversity of publishing models or a monoculture, because it can’t have both. How will this choice be made, and by whom?
“Recenter Library Systems on the User”: An Interview with OhioLINK’s Gwen Evans
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,
Guest Post — An Update to OhioLINK’s Affordable Textbooks Initiative
Gwen Evans from OhioLink looks at the positive results of the consortium’s statewide affordable textbooks initiative.
ACM’s New Open Access Agreements: A Q&A with Scott Delman
A conversation with Scott Delman of ACM about the publisher’s recently-announced deal with four major US research universities.
Revisiting — Transformative Agreements: A Primer
Do you know what is meant by the term “transformative agreement” or how “Read and Publish” deals are structured? Today we revisit the 2019 primer by @lisalibrarian explaining the basics concepts behind these increasingly important approaches.