UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries and Indiana University Library are partnering with Next Generation Library Publishing (NGLP) on a Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA)-funded pilot project. The collaboration aims to test and enhance infrastructure solutions for academy-owned scholarly publishing programs that are open source, community-led and rooted in academic values.
The pilot project will create a unified discovery layer for the diverse publishing platforms of the participating libraries, presenting them as a single, shared collection of open access materials.
The partners hope to advance both university libraries’ infrastructure and service models by implementing a scoped version of NGLP’s discovery and display platform, Meru, specifically for the BTAA. The platform allows content from different publishers and across different publishing platforms to be organized and displayed together in various collections.
“Penn State is a passionate supporter of community-owned, open-source library publishing infrastructure, such as Open Journal Systems, and will continue to provide our expertise and support for Meru,” Nathan Hall, University Libraries associate dean for distinctive collections and digital strategies, said. “I am excited we are participating in this pilot and afforded the opportunity to help meet the needs of excellent BTAA library publishing programs.”
The project will involve migrating select journals, books, textbooks and dissertations from the participating institutions’ library publishing catalogs into the NGLP ecosystem while also expanding the types of content that can be displayed and improving the design of the Meru platform. The project’s goal is to support and strengthen academy-owned scholarly publishers with scalable solutions.
“We are thrilled to be participating in this exciting pilot with our BTAA peers,” Ally Laird, Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing team lead, said. “Meru holds so much potential to enhance the discovery and dissemination of the work being published by each BTAA institution’s library publishing programs and to ensure that the excellent research we publish is being read more widely and showcased alongside one another. Penn State is well-positioned to provide a collection of excellent scholarly content for this pilot project and to help shape an excellent BTAA library publishing portfolio platform.”
This project will be aligned with a recently announced IMLS grant-funded project where the University of Iowa Libraries is collaborating with the NGLP team to build a production-ready instance of Meru that showcases the Libraries’ full publication portfolio.
All three university libraries aim to explore consortial approaches to campus-based scholarly publishing that can help achieve economies of scale, increase visibility and impact of their members’ publications and advance the infrastructure for Diamond Open Access publishing. Diamond Open Access publications are those that are free to read and publish without charges to the author.
This effort is also a part of a broader initiative of the BTAA, the California Digital Library and Lyrasis to support Diamond Open Access publishing in the United States. These organizations recognize the importance of pooling efforts to realize the potential of Diamond OA, which supports no-fee scholarly publishing opportunities and ensures open access to academic research.
“The BTAA’s Center for Library Programs is dedicated to exploring Diamond Open Access publishing solutions that enhance the production quality and create efficiencies at scale for our campuses,” Kate McCready, Big Ten Academic Alliance visiting program officer for academy owned scholarly publishing, said.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance continues to advocate for a sustainable and open publication ecosystem. Collectively, faculty and researchers at BTAA member universities publish more than 100,000 articles annually, supported by more than $17 billion in research funding. These institutions are investing significantly in advancing public knowledge through open publishing, producing more than 15 percent of U.S. research publications. Strengthening collective publishing capacity is essential to the BTAA libraries’ mission of promoting open and equitable scholarly publishing models.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance is the nation’s preeminent model for effective collaboration among research universities. For more than half a century, its institutions have advanced their academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty, and served the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs. Governed and funded by the provosts of the universities, Big Ten Academic Alliance mandates are coordinated by a staff from its Champaign, Illinois, headquarters. On Aug. 2, 2024, four new universities will be joining the 15 world-class libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance: the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, the University of Oregon and the University of Washington. More information about the BTAA and its member institutions and libraries is available at btaa.org.
For additional information, contact Kate McCready, Big Ten Academic Alliance, kate.mccready@btaa.org, 612-325-8762; or Sarah Lippincott, Next Generation Library Publishing, sarah@educopia.org.