Topic: Scholarly communication
Research Report
February 25, 2013
Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Chemists
In this report, we present the results of Ithaka S+R’s study of the scholarly practices of academic chemists. This study, funded by Jisc, presents information meant to empower research support providers in their work with chemists. The report covers themes such as data management, research collaboration, library use, discovery, publication practices, and research funding. The report describes the findings of our investigation into academic chemists’ research habits and research support needs. The digital availability of scholarly literature has transformed chemists’…
Blog Post
February 12, 2013
New Ithaka S+R Research Support Services Project in Art History
This winter, as part of the Research Support Services program, Ithaka S+R is launching a new investigation of researcher practices and support services needs in the field of art history. Our goal is to examine the evolving needs of researchers on a field-specific basis in order to best understand how libraries and other information services providers meet these needs. We are grateful to the Getty Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their joint funding of this project. Our…
Research Report
December 7, 2012
Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians
This study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, uncovers the needs of today’s historians and provides guidance for how research support providers can better serve them. We explore areas such as content discovery, information management, scholarly analysis, collaboration, library use, the writing process, professional interactions, and publication, among others. Our interviews of faculty and graduate students reveal history as a field in transition. It is characterized by a vast expansion of new sources, widely adopted research practices and…
Blog Post
December 4, 2012
Art Books and eBooks
A Difficult Conversation?
In late September, I participated in “Art Books & Ebooks: A Difficult Conversation?” an event hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, organized by Ross Day, Collections Development Librarian at the Met, and focused on the future of books, e-books, and museum publishing in a digital age. Participants reflected on the changing environment for publishing and collections development and management, focusing on how monographs in the field of art and art history fit into or are…
Blog Post
November 20, 2012
Sustainable Scholarship Conference 2012
Videos Now Available
ITHAKA hosted our annual Sustainable Scholarship Conference in October, bringing together librarians, publishers, scholarly society leaders, and a variety of others interested in how higher education is changing as a result of new technologies. This year’s theme was “The Question of Quality: New Forms of Grading, Credentialing, and Peer Review in the Digital World.” Videos of the presentations are now available online. Here are some highlights: Keynote: Kevin Guthrie, president of ITHAKA, focused on some of the key…
Blog Post
June 5, 2012
ORCID and Identity Management Systems
Nature News & Comment recently published an article that focused on some of the ways that the scholarly community could benefit from the creation of a unified identity system for researchers. Researcher disambiguation might be able to simplify the process of applying for grants and submitting papers for publication. It also opens up a whole range of possibilities with regard to measuring scholarly productivity, tracking new forms of scholarship, and using data to learn more about scholarly communications.
Research Report
October 6, 2011
University of Southampton Library Digitisation Unit 2011
Reimagining the Value Proposition
When the original case study was published in 2009, the staff of the BOPCRIS Digitization Centre at the University of Southampton’s Hartley Library had recently completed three large scale, grant funded digitization projects and was exploring different means of ensuring access to the digital content they had created. An early experiment with local hosting had shown that the Library was unprepared to deal with the on-going costs of maintaining these resources, and they turned to external content providers—ProQuest and JSTOR—for…
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
October 6, 2011
DigiZeitschriften 2011
A Niche Project at a Crossroads
DigiZeitschriften, a collection of digitized German language scholarly journals, has continued to successfully support its operations and generate a surplus through a combination of its subscription model and low cost base, thanks to its 14 partner libraries, which help to curate the content and seek grant funding as needed. Since we profiled this project in 2009, its website has been revamped, and Google and other search engines are now allowed to crawl some content for the first time. And yet…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
Electronic Enlightenment (EE) 2011
Outreach or Outsource? The Benefits and Challenges of Partnership, Case Study Update 2011
In 2008 the Electronic Enlightenment launched efforts to transition to an institutional subscription model, part of its long-term plan for sustaining itself beyond the period of grant funding. Now housed at Oxford’s Bodleian Library and working with Oxford University Press as its sales, marketing and distribution partner, Electronic Enlightenment is still in the process of building its subscriber base, a task made more challenging by the impact of the recession on library budgets. This update reports on the challenges EE…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2011
Growing an Open-Access Contributor-Pays Business Model
The original case study in 2009 explored Hindawi’s transition from a subscription-based journal operation to an all open access publisher, with the bulk of revenues derived from fees from authors rather than subscription charges. Because the company’s growth depends on the number of articles published each year, the company changed its focus from marketing to end users to developing new products, entering into partnerships with societies and other publishers, and creating a publishing experience for authors and editors that would…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library 2011
The Challenges of Sustaining a Project as the End of a Grant Approaches
The original case study, "The Middle School Portal 2 (MSP2): Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library: Early Sustainability Planning for a Grant-Funded Digital Library," profiled a new grant-supported initiative: a portal devoted to collecting high-quality teaching resources for use by middle school educators. The resource was part of the National Science Foundation’s National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program, a collection of online resources for educators in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In the first year of…
Research Report
October 6, 2011
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2011
Launching a "Freemium" Model
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a peer reviewed, open access online reference, draws its funding from investment returns from a project endowment, built from the financial contributions of academic libraries. When we first studied the project, it had made great progress toward its goal of building a $4.125 million endowment, but it faced uncertainty over the extent to which the economic downturn in 2008 would affect its investments. In the two years since then, as endowment support has not…
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
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…