Libraries and publishers interact all the time, but how can a library communicate its vision for scholarly publishing? We all know about the limitations of current metrics for journal publishing: all too often the much criticised journal impact factor is used, simply because there has been nothing else available for libraries to use when evaluating a publisher’s offering. Two librarians, Robin Sinn (at Iowa State University) and Rachel Caldwell (at University of Massachusetts Amherst), did something about it. To move library-publisher relations forward, they co-founded the Library Partnership Rating (LPR), which provides a neutral metric to indicate to what extent publishers are meeting goals such as open practices, rights retention, and community engagement. It’s a great idea, but does it work? I spoke with Robin and Rachel in a recent interview, and asked them for more details.
Rachel noted there is a lot of tension between publishers and libraries in figuring out just what “Open Access” and “quality” means – including differences among publishers. One important criterion is that all the information used can be accessed publicly – it’s not any kind of black box. The idea for LPR began from an article by Rachel in 2020. The LPR is based around five values, of which open access is one component, including embargo times, if any, and allowing a green OA deposit. Other criteria include author retention rights, and APC charges, if any. The five values are:
- Community Practices
- Access
- Rights
- Discoverability and Accessibility
- Preservation
Assessment is done by volunteer librarians, and there is an advisory council to help guide strategy. Currently, the scheme is for articles, not books, but expanding the programme to include books is under consideration. The output from the assessment is that publishers are placed on one of four tiers. In light of the ranking the publishers are given, they may choose to change their practice to move them to a higher tier. This kind of tiering is found in the United States LEED assessment for environmental criteria for new buildings (BREEAM is a similar system in the UK).
Sinn and Caldwell are candid that they don’t expect the six largest publishers to change their practice, but small- and mid-size publishers may well reflect on their tier and think about aligning their work more with library values. Rather than “winners” and “losers”, or a simple ranking, Sinn and Caldwell prefer to think of leaders – hence the grouping into four tiers. When I checked the other day, I could see that PLOS and Copernicus Publications were in the top tier. To summarize the role of the LPR, Sinn explained:
We’re not taking on publishing. We’re trying to show publishers what libraries want and need, gather information that librarians want and need, and try to pull it all together so that different groups can get together and talk about it and use it in useful ways to forward academic publishing.
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