A "Third Way" to Sustainable Open Access Publishing

A "Third Way" to Sustainable Open Access Publishing John Sherer, Director, University of North Carolina Press Sharla Lair, Senior Strategist, Open Access and Scholarly Communication Initiatives, LYRASIS John Lenahan, Associate Vice President, Published Content, ITHAKA Lisa Croucher, Executive Director of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN)

For over a year, a working group of university press (UP) leaders have engaged in a modeling exercise with key stakeholders about developing a Third Way to make humanities and social science monographs more accessible. They have operated on the premise that neither the traditional cost-recovery model of publishing nor grant-funded pilots to make books open access (OA) have resulted in a system-wide shift in opening UP monographs. In this new model, UPs would contribute most of their new frontlist monographs to a platform where digital access requires a paid subscription for three years. Presses would be guaranteed a flat fee per book for participation and would be allowed to sell print and consumer eBooks, but they’d also make a commitment to make the book OA after three years. Libraries would be the primary subscription base and they would receive full access to the collection right away, while indirectly supporting the ultimate opening of the book to readers everywhere. The sustainability challenges in publishing, acquiring, and accessing Open Access monographs in the humanities are complex and felt by their authors, publishers, librarians, and readers alike. In this session, a diverse panel will review and facilitate a discussion of the challenges and benefits of such a potential model.

John Sherer is Director of the University of North Carolina Press. He has served as chair of the Association of University Presses Open Access committee and has been the primary investigator for two major grants of $1 million each from the Mellon Foundation exploring scaled infrastructure requirements for university presses.

Sharla Lair serves as a Senior Strategist of Open Access and Scholarly Communication Initiatives at LYRASIS. In this role, she develops new strategies for sustainable scholarly publishing by way of building new open access revenue models, connecting multiple stakeholders, revealing common goals, and facilitating collaboration. Sharla serves on the MIT Press Library Advisory Board, the Open Access eBooks Network OPERAS Specialty Interest Group, and serves as chair of the Open Access eBook Usage Data Trust Board of Trustees.

John Lenahan, Associate Vice President, Published Content, ITHAKA, collaborates with publishers and libraries to develop products and programs that support their organizational needs and missions. He works with the more than 2,000 publishers partnered with ITHAKA to make their content available on the JSTOR platform. He also works closely with libraries to develop growth strategies for the journals and books programs to ensure we meet their research, teaching, and preservation needs.

Lisa Croucher is the Executive Director of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN), a consortium of libraries at Duke University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. TRLN libraries have been engaged with open access activities in various forms for many years, including the IMLS-funded Library Copyright Institute and the Mellon-funded Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute.