Navigating scholarly communication: a big moment for libraries

Rafael Ball explains why the library is indispensable as a bridge builder for the development of the industry

In scholarly publication the standardised seven-page journal article is still the state of the art; it is characterised by a variety of innovative formats that transport content to a target audience based on the respective technology. 

New stakeholders, distribution formats and business models emerge and influence the publishing process. Previous stakeholders are dropping out of the process or being reassigned. Fights for rights and market share increase. A conflict between publicly funded science and the commercial use of its results is in full swing. Public universities and license agreement negotiators are taking no-deals with publishers out of the toolbox of boycott ideology.

Dependencies in the oligopoly market become visible, named and defended. There are winners and losers. 

Managing this immense process of change and resolving the crisis is not only a joint endeavour for all those involved in scholarly communication, but it can be mediated by one institution: the library.

The role of science

Let me start with science. In my opinion, this is where the fundamental processes and procedures involved in the generation of scientific knowledge will change the least. I am convinced that artificial intelligence will not fundamentally change this process either. At best, it will support it.

However, scientists will continue to generate their knowledge through the intellectual application of their skills and, above all, their judgment. They will draw on the results of the community and integrate them into their worldview. AI systems can provide support, but they cannot make the intellectual leap from processing information to generating knowledge. The use of machine systems in publishing and receiving will reach its limits when machines end up publishing for machines. Then we will have to ask ourselves the fundamental question of meaning.

I expect that all future scholarly communication will be digital first.

Only a small, specialised group of scientific disciplines will continue to publish in print. This applies to both the production and the use of information or knowledge. It remains to be discussed whether natural language systems will always be used or whether it will be possible to present, communicate and receive scientific content in other formalised forms, such as vector languages. Approaches using the latter already exist, but they have not yet been widely adopted. 

It is also necessary to discuss to whom and in what form scholarly communication will be addressed in the future. Only to the narrow, internal community? Or to a broad, interested public audience? Or even to a machine for automated processing? 

How should quality control be carried out? Who should organise it? And why should publications still be published formally when they can just as easily be published on the preprint server on social academic networks or on your own website? Is there still a need for the standardised journal article, which is channeled through the publishers’ machinery in the same mode – which floods the reviewers, who write reviews in a fast-track procedure the editors generously ignore because they must meet the economic demands of their publishers?

It is not only the proliferation of paper mills that has become a problem but also the mass production of papers by millions of scientists. Researchers divide smaller and smaller chunks of knowledge into smaller and smaller units to produce publications – spurred by the pressure to publish to demonstrate their performance. They are not only dependent on the brands of their publication media but also victims of an often criticised but not yet reformed reward system.

The role of publishers

What do publishers still want to publish in this age of mass production?

Who still reads the articles in the 200,000 scientific journals that exist worldwide? What does it mean if 20% of all scientific articles are never cited? Does the publisher’s professional ethos still exist, which motivates the publisher to structure and disseminate knowledge, to initiate series and serials, to address authors and editors and to be a real part of value creation in science? Or have the international publishers themselves become like the paper mills they now identify and fight as pests in the system? 

Publishers find themselves in a special market situation. On the one hand, competition is very limited, oligopolies in the international publishing industry dominate the market, and well-known brands prevent customers from substituting products. Publishers exploit this situation by charging extremely high prices for licenses and article fees.

At the same time, academic publishing has become a mass market, with marginal costs falling as the number of titles increases. Publishers are increasingly publishing everything that is offered to them in order to keep the number of journal and e-book packages right and to generate revenue. The old method of pick-and-choose – a quality-driven approach to the production of publications on the publisher’s side and selection and acquisition on the library side – has gone out of fashion.

The position of agencies and distributors in the field of literature supply is also in crisis. Does the classic intermediary still exist today as a service supporter? Is there still a need for someone to take care of everything that the actual business partners are unwilling or unable to do when 90% of academic libraries’ literature budgets are spent on a few big deals with the major publishers? 

In the age of the digital platform economy, intermediaries have been massively marginalised or have disappeared completely, unless they are an international platform themselves. Who still buys a car from a car dealer, shoes from a shoe store or their wine from a vintner? Only the analog avant-garde or the older generation. The rest make the platforms rich. Why should scholarly communication be any different?

Political normative influences 

For many decades, academics were not only free to determine and select their content, research topics and teaching interests – they were also free to choose how to publish or to let the market mechanism work. This has now come to an end. Increasingly, research funders, policymakers and university administrators are using normative guidelines to dictate how scholars should publish and in which mode. 

But it is not only the idea of escaping from a dysfunctional and overpriced market that guides their actions.

Rather, it is also the idea that publicly funded research must make its results available to society free of charge. The discussion about whether the free choice of publication mode is part of scientific freedom is flattening out. This is happening because the majority of scientists either agree with the demands for open access or remain indifferent. From the publisher’s perspective, this constellation of interests remains problematic because scholarly publishing is an international business that operates according to different rules. At the same time, however, there is a demand for global standardisation of the process of content production and distribution.

The role of libraries

Libraries are the oldest open access institutions in the world. They were the first institutions to ensure that knowledge from and for science was made available, structured, indexed and archived. Libraries have always been there when science happened.

Is that still the case today? What are their tasks? What is left of the library as an institution today if it only deals with the accounting of article processing charges (APCs)? Or the development of the much praised small-scale services? Or the management of spaces that are now defined as student workspaces because people are ashamed to use the term “reading room”?

With an attitude like that, the library will have no role in the future. 

But in the great process of change in scholarly communication – which can also be understood as a transformation of the publishing system or even as its crisis – the library can position itself decisively: as a reconciler of the conflicting parties in science communication. 

Today, the library is indispensable as a bridge builder for the further development of scholarly communication in innovative formats and for the support of specific technologies and formats of scholarly communication. This also applies to communication and the balance between science and political, normative forces and for the design of new business models in the publishing system. It continues to make an invaluable contribution in its role as a mediator between the international publishing industry, the local publishing world and many innovative projects and initiatives in the field of scholarly communication. As an integral part of the scientific knowledge and publishing process, the library is now more than ever a neutral authority.

Its role has thus become far more diverse than was possible, sensible or necessary in the analog era.

For centuries, the library was the last link in the value chain of scientific knowledge, responsible for indexing, providing and archiving content. Today, however, the library is right in the middle of the process of scholarly communication, the production of content, the monitoring of scientific projects and the mediation between the many (new) stakeholders in the scholarly process. This requires not only new qualifications and skills in libraries but also a smart and wise ideology-free positioning of library management beyond the conflicting parties in the system. 

Ultimately, however, it also requires a clear commitment from universities, research institutions and colleges. They must not only accept libraries as an integral scientific infrastructure at the heart of the universities but also continue to support and encourage them and trust in their mediating role.

Only then will also be possible to overcome the current crisis through the oldest institution of scholarly communication: the library.

Dr Rafael Ball is Director of ETH-Bibliothek, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Do you want to read more content like this? SUBSCRIBE to the Research Information Newsline!