Libraries As Publishers
One of the biggest issues that comes with scholarly journals is not having them be accessible or affordable to the public. A lot of the scholarly articles that are out there are published in journals and cost money to obtain a subscription. Because of this, it is hard for the public to obtain access to these scholarly journals, thus limiting the audience to the type of information they can obtain.
The idea of an open access journal database exist, but there are issues that come with that as well because some people argue that the articles published in these publications are not peer reviewed. So if this is the case, what can scholars do to provide good and credible research to a greater audience?
One suggestion that Nathan Jurgenson gave in his article, Making Our Ideas More Accessible, was that in order to help make these top-tier journals available, libraries should stop buying from these publications. This idea of course seems easier said than done, and it would require a lot for university libraries to not buy because they need this information for students’ research. So what exactly can be done from here?
One suggestion I propose is to have these scholars submit their research journals to universities, where they can partner with professors to get their information reviewed and have that information published through the library. This would allow for professors to get connected with scholars directly and even allow students to take part of the research and publication process. This would also serve as a way for the university can then have the direct source. Now a question that rises would be how do other universities or the general public get access to the information? Well, the university libraries could come together to create their own open access database with scholarly journals, and serve as a network that would be set up for universities and public libraries across the country.
This would be a possible solution because it would allow for libraries to generate their own publications and their own professor or professors from other universities would be the ones doing the peer review, which would aid in lessening the purchase of outside publications. Once these publication companies see that their content is not being purchased and that scholars are submitting their work elsewhere, it would pressure them to open up their content and make it more accessible for the public.
This of course, is a potential solution and would require a lot of structure for this to work but it is one way to begin thinking about libraries becoming their own publishers and making their own content. This would save libraries money and they could even then bring this access to students and non-students across the country.
