Abstract
During the last years, dramatic changes in the electronic publishing landscape have created new roles and changed the traditional ones. Presently, some libraries have capitalised on their experience and knowledge in information technology and electronic publishing to undertake such activities, while at the same time they spearhead the campaign for Open Access spreading within academic communities. The Library & Information Centre (LIC) of the University of Patras (UoP), Greece, has been playing an active role in promoting Open Access (OA) in Greece. Since 2007, LIC has been experimenting with OA publishing practices and tools within the framework of various R&D projects. Two of the major results of these efforts are the ‘Pasithee’ e-publishing platform and the ‘Dexamene’ digital archive for Greek scholarly journals. Both platforms are based on OJS-Open Journal Systems e-publishing software. The two facilities were appropriately modified to meet the LIC’s publishing and archiving requirements respectively. Currently two journals are being hosted on each platform and all four are from the Humanities. The LIC is negotiating with more publishers and editorial teams to host their journals. In this article we focus on: - technical and managerial key issues of the development and operation phases, - services and procedures, - the business model, - technological, procedural and legal issues and problems that were encountered when working together with publishers, editors and authors, and - future plans for improving and upgrading our e-publishing services into an integrated institutional platform to cover all kinds of publications and data types (monographs, conference proceedings, teaching material, bulletins, magazines etc.). The article concludes with a succinct presentation of the Directory of Greek Digital Resources, a pilot infrastructure developed by the LIC which indexes and presents digital publishing initiatives in Greece and aims to become a formal registry of Greek scholarly resources in digital format.
Highlights
Libraries were always considered to be the custodians of knowledge by preserving and giving access to the media of each age, either papyri, codices, or books
Two journals are being hosted in each platform, all four belonging in the Humanities, while Library & Information Center (LIC) is in negotiations with more publishers and editorial teams to host their journals in LIC’s services. In this presentation we focus on the: - technical and managerial key issues of the development and operation phases, - services and procedures, - adopted business model, - technological, procedural and legal issues and problems that were raised from working together with publishers, editors and authors, and - future plans for improving and upgrading our e-publishing services in an integrated institutional platform to cover all kinds of publications and data types The paper concludes with a succinct presentation of the Directory of Greek Digital Resources, a pilot infrastructure developed by LIC, which indexes and presents digital publishing initiatives in Greece and aims to become a formal registry for Greek scientific resources in digital format
There are instances where the publishing initiative is subsumed to another organizational scheme, like the general publishing vehicle of a University, which may include institutional repository activities, like in the case of the Australian UTSeScholarship,[1] or even to the library itself, such as in the example of Linköping University Electronic Press.[2]
Summary
Libraries were always considered to be the custodians of knowledge by preserving and giving access to the media of each age, either papyri, codices, or books. As organizations that heavily rely on the ‘technology’ of each age, the social conditions and the economic parameters, libraries were always trying to find new means to better serve their users This is where the motives of libraries for transformation stand, as they are organizations that closely work with their community and many of their achievements are based on their needs. Libraries see their budgets decreasing and suffer from further reductions each year, while at the same time the amount of scholarly information increases and more requests to expand the collections are being submitted and considered. The recent library economics landscape shows that despite ‘freezes’ or slight variations in journal prices for 2010 [Henderson & Bosch, 2010], libraries still face significant problems due to their own overall budget reductions and the new titles entering the subscriptions ‘arena’. The last section is dedicated to discussing the effectiveness of the e-publishing program and the future challenges
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