This session will offer multiple perspectives on how the core expense of producing scholarship has put pressure on all parts of the ecosystem; how many of the new technologies and sales models serve only to move deficits between units of a university while posing new challenges to publishers and vendors; and to consider potential solutions such as new university funding structures or open access publishing programs.
The recent Mellon-funded Ithaka S+R report on
The Cost of Publishing Monographs applied a rigorous methodology to determine the likely actual expense of future open access publishing proposals. The study, however, has deep ramifications for existing print and digital publishing programs in that it reveals that the current model for scholarly communication is unsustainable both from the perspective of academic publishers expected to fund their operations through sales and from the perspective of library buyers unable to acquire an increased volume of increasingly expensive monographs.
We will seek to supply context for the cost-focused Ithaka report by providing a look at operating costs and sales at a university press, by looking at broader acquisitions trends in academic libraries, and by considering alternative models such as the Lever Initiative or the open access Amherst College Press.
