Topic: Scholarly communication
Research Report
October 6, 2011
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae® (TLG) 2011
How a Specialised Resource Begins to Address a Wider Audience
The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae® (TLG) provides an example of a specialized resource which draws on multiple revenue streams for its sustainability model. This collection of digitized ancient Greek texts is considered essential for scholars of the classics, which has allowed the project to successfully implement a fee for access despite appealing to a relatively small primary audience. In addition to subscription fees from institutions and individuals, income from an endowment and funding from the University of California, Irvine (where it…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
The National Archives (TNA) 2011
Enhancing the Value of Content through Selection and Curation
In 2008 we examined the activities of the Licensed Internet Associates program (LIA), a business operation within The National Archives (TNA) that licenses TNA’s holdings to commercial entities. Beyond providing direct revenue to TNA in the form of royalty income, the LIA program has played a major role in the rapid digitization of TNA’s documents at an extremely low cost, outsourcing the function to its licensing partners. In the face of a projected 25 percent cut in government funding over…
Research Report
June 14, 2011
Funding for Sustainability
How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources
"Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources" offers an overview of funders' policies and practices, and provides a framework to assist funders and their grantees in thinking about the key elements of post-grant sustainability planning for digital resources. Over the past decade, philanthropic organizations and government agencies have invested millions of dollars, pounds, and euros in the creation of digital content in the not-for-profit sector. Their grants have facilitated major digitization efforts and encouraged innovative…
Research Report
April 11, 2011
US Library Survey 2010
Insights From U.S. Academic Library Directors
"Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2010: Insights From U.S. Academic Library Directors" aims to help academic libraries and other members of the higher education community understand the changing role of the library and how to strategically adapt to an increasingly digital environment. This survey focuses on the issues related to the strategies library administrators are pursuing for their libraries, the management of library collections, the development of new digital collections, and the creation of new services to meet changing user needs.…
Research Report
April 7, 2010
US Faculty Survey 2009
Key Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies
This fourth in a series of surveys conducted over the past decade examined faculty attitudes and behaviors on key issues ranging from the library as information gateway and the need for preservation of scholarly material, to faculty engagement with institutional and disciplinary repositories and thoughts about open access. For the first time, we also looked at the role that scholarly societies play and their value to faculty. Following an initial introductory letter, survey questionnaire booklets were physically mailed to 35,000…
Research Report
September 1, 2009
What to Withdraw
Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization
As journals are increasingly accessed in digitized form, many libraries have grown interested in de-accessioning little-used print originals; but desires to repurpose space often come into conflict with concerns about preservation. “What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization” analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future. For journals that are principally accessed in…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
DigiZeitschriften 2009
Library Partnership and a Subscription Model for a Journal Database
DigiZeitschriften, a German language archive of scholarly journals, was created in 1999 with funding from the German Research Foundation. Since its launch as an online service in 2005, DigiZeitschriften has implemented a sustainability model that includes a partnership of libraries contributing time and expertise, and a financial model of institutional subscriptions that has more than covered its operating costs to date. This case study examines the decisions leading DigiZeitschriften to adopt this plan for sustainability, and explores the benefits as…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Sustaining Digital Resources
An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today
This research is part of a multi-year, international exploration of the strategies being used to support digital initiatives over the long term. In 2008, we selected twelve projects to examine, analyzing the steps their project leaders have taken to achieve sustainability, with special attention paid to their strategies for cost management and revenue generation. "Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today" serves as a guide to the cases, outlining the stages that successful projects undertake in developing sustainability…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Electronic Enlightenment (EE) 2009
Subscription-based Resource Sold Through a University Press
After several years of reliance on foundation support, Oxford University’s Electronic Enlightenment (EE), a database containing the digitized correspondence of over 6,000 thinkers and writers from the long 18th century, needed to transition from a grant funded project to an independently sustainable research project. After hiring a business planning consultant to help them think through different options, project leadership concluded that a sustainability model based on institutional subscriptions to the resource was the best fit for the project’s needs. In…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2009
The Open-Access Contributor-Pays Model
Hindawi Publishing Corporation, a Cairo-based for-profit publisher of science, technology and medical journals, was founded as a subscription-based publisher in 1997. By 2003 Hindawi had begun exploring Open Access models; by 2007 it had become an entirely Open Access publisher, and it now publishes 160 Open Access STM journals. Hindawi’s financial model is based on charging contributors a fee per article published, a model also currently used by BioMed Central and PLoS, among others. Since 2007, Hindawi has continued to…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library 2009
Early Sustainability Planning for a Grant-Funded Digital Library
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways project (MSP2) aims to provide middle school teachers with high-quality materials they can use in the classroom, and to foster greater sharing and communication within the middle school teaching community. The original Middle School Portal was a prototype for the "Pathways" projects funded under the umbrella of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), and MSP2 remains today entirely funded through NSDL. But the project faces a challenge: How will it cover…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2009
Building an Endowment with Community Support
Endowments are often thought of as a source of reliable support for established institutions such as universities and foundations, but in recent years online academic resources have also begun experimenting with the endowment model as a means of sustainable funding. The model holds forth the promise of guaranteeing access to a resource in perpetuity, with the investment returns from the endowment continuously generating funds to sustain the resource. Since 2004, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has successfully raised three-quarters of…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae® (TLG) 2009
Specialised Historical Content for a Niche Audience
Online resources are often described and evaluated in terms of their ability to serve vast amounts of diverse content to wide audiences, but well targeted, specialized digital projects can have a profound effect on an academic discipline. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®, a digital corpus of over 12,000 works of Greek literature ranging from the ancient era to the modern age, has proven its value to scholars and has been able to convert that value into a sustainability model that incorporates…
Research Report
July 14, 2009
Centre for Computing in the Humanities 2009
Leveraging Shared Infrastructure and Expertise to Develop Digital Projects in an Academic Department
The Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) at King’s College London, an academic department focused on the advancement of the digital humanities, engages in a wide variety of research projects that often lead to the creation of electronic scholarly outputs. Using a model that is rare among humanities departments, CCH supplements government and institutional funding for research and teaching with a remarkable number of outside research grants and with revenue generated through knowledge transfer activities that leverage the department’s…
Research Report
November 1, 2008
Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication
The networked digital environment has enabled the creation of many new kinds of works that are accessible to end users directly, and many of these resources have become essential tools for scholars conducting research, building scholarly networks, and disseminating their ideas and work. The decentralized distribution of these new model works can make it difficult to fully appreciate their scope and number, even for university librarians tasked with knowing about valuable resources across the disciplines. In the spring of 2008,…
Research Report
August 18, 2008
US Library Survey 2006
The Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2006 was developed as a complement to our Faculty Survey 2006, exploring the attitudes and practices of librarians on a variety of topics, including the role of the library in faculty research, the print to electronic transition for scholarly journals, and the increasing prominence of electronic resources in research and teaching. In 2006, for the first time, we sought to offer extensive comparison between the faculty attitudes and practices to the attitudes and perspectives of…
Research Report
August 18, 2008
US Faculty Survey 2006
Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education
The Ithaka S+R 2006 Faculty Survey sought to determine faculty attitudes and behaviors related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning, and related subjects. This survey built on our 2000 and 2003 surveys queried faculty members at four-year colleges and universities across the United States on their attitudes and behaviors on a variety of topics, including the changing role played by the library in their research, their evolving dependence on print and electronic research resources, publishing and dissemination preferences,…
Research Report
May 1, 2008
Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources
There is no single formula that Online Academic Resources (OARs) can apply to achieve sustainability, no ‘one-size-fits-all’ plan that any organization can follow to reach a point of financial stability. There are, however, a variety of processes and approaches that can help to improve the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. In an age when traditional content producers – including scholarly publishers and newspapers – struggle to maintain their financial footing in face of the challenges of the digital world, OARs cannot…
Research Report
March 14, 2008
Scholarly Communications in the Education Discipline
In a series of projects, we were asked by JSTOR to examine scholarly communication practices in various disciplines. The goals of this work were to understand how research is conducted and disseminated in select disciplines, and to identify the importance of different scholarly resources. In this project, we focused on the field of education.
Research Report
January 1, 2008
Digital preservation of ejournals in 2008: Urgent Action revisited
Results from a Portico/Ithaka Survey of U.S. Library Directors
The shift from print to electronic journals has raised significant challenges for libraries as they consider ways to ensure the preservation of these important digital resources. In September 2005, library directors from 17 universities and colleges met to discuss the current state of electronic journal preservation and endorsed a statement calling for “Urgent Action” to preserve scholarly electronic journals. In the months that followed, many library associations also endorsed this statement and its principal message that “in a scholarly environment…