2014 Charleston Library Conference

Concern about the sustainability of scholarly monograph publishing is nothing new. Long-form scholarship, while crucial to the academy, is expensive to produce and often finds only a very small audience of readers. For most of the history of scholarly book publishing, universities helped support the cost of publication, and academic libraries purchased a large enough portion of an initial print run to make book publishing sustainable. Libraries have long had collection development strategies that allowed for purchasing monographs “just in case.” The introduction of e-books allowed for the development of demand-driven acquisition (DDA), which allows libraries to only purchase books with demonstrated need, and of the short-term loan (STL), which allows libraries to pay for temporary access of lower use monographs. This model has made it possible for libraries to present bigger collections to their users than would be possible under traditional models, but publishers have seen radically decreased revenues as STL programs have expanded – something that impacts their ability to continue to publish scholarly monographs. Recent decisions by some publishers to raise STL fees highlight the challenges facing all participants in the scholarly communication ecosystem. A monograph that does not recoup the costs associated with its production cannot be published – something that impacts scholars at all of our institutions. This panel of publishers, librarians, and an approval vendor will share data and experiences to help lead to greater mutual understanding, and which will hopefully help make long-form scholarly publishing sustainable in this new era.