1. Library Publishing Forum 2016 University of North Texas - Denton, TX
A Collaborative Solution to Scholarly Publishing’s Challenges:
Building the Lever Press
Marguerite Avery
Executive Editor
Amherst College Press
Library Publishing Forum 2016
University of North Texas - Denton, TX
When I came on board at Amherst College Press in late October 2015, I was briefed on The Lever Press. It was in the final stages of gelling as an entity, and undergoing the process just described by Becky.

2. The Scholarly Communications Ecosystem
What could possibly be wrong?
Prologue
The Scholarly Communications Ecosystem

3. Scholarly communications - dramatis personae

4. Scholarly communications timeline
Publication is one moment in the process

6. Implementing the Lever Press
Part II
Implementing the Lever Press

7. Congratulations! You have a new Press!

8. What makes a Press a Press? What makes a Library Press a Publisher?
It’s not just about printing and publishing, as everyone has had access to desktop publishing tools since the 1980s. So what is it?

9. Sponsoring Institution(s) Imprimatur
Governing Body
Editorial Board
Acquiring Editors
and Authors
Just like scholarship has its elements that are assembled in a correct order and hierarchy to provide a structured framework, a publishing enterprise has its own logic.

10. How do we attract authors?

11. The Submission Process: getting authors and scholars to submit to Lever Press
orms/d/1moBEeg6lrSD6GmFbi- cAgnsDoD6489B_OsYo9oz_U0A/viewfo rm?c=0&w=1

12. Why Lever Press?

13. Barriers to Access - what problem(s) does OA solve for?
Price
Time
Format
Publishing Industrial Complex
When we think about barriers to access, price tends to be the primary concern, but this isn’t the only issue:
Price - the fee charged to a reader for access to the content. (It’s important to acknowledge the difference between price (what the publisher charges for the content) and its cost (the expense of the labor expended to create the content, as this is considerable)
Time: the amount of time that elapses before research and content reaches its audience (or market) is a major barrier, especially in research disciplines and fields where content is evolving at a very fast clip.
Format: this is a barrier because if we do not have the means to make content available, to publish it in the proper format that does justice to the research and its conclusions, then we have failed to make it accessible.
These three factors are often enmeshed and can be difficult to tease apart, however it is a worthwhile pursuit to consider with more precision as it yields a more complex picture of the research landscape.

14. Price

15. Time
Not working on a catalog

16. Breaking the book - journal binary
Format
Breaking the book - journal binary
Experimentation with new formats!
Not working on a catalog

17. Barriers to Access - what problem(s) does Lever Press solve for?
Price
Time
Format AND (breaking the) Publishing Industrial Complex
With Platinum Open Access +
T&P engagement with 43+ institutions
What is Open Access doing for you? And for scholarship? Liberal arts colleges have a commitment to progressive reform and social change - why not apply this to scholarship?
When we think about barriers to access, price tends to be the primary concern, but this isn’t the only issue:
Price - the fee charged to a reader for access to the content. (It’s important to acknowledge the difference between price (what the publisher charges for the content) and its cost (the expense of the labor expended to create the content, as this is considerable)
Time: the amount of time that elapses before research and content reaches its audience (or market) is a major barrier, especially in research disciplines and fields where content is evolving at a very fast clip.
Format: this is a barrier because if we do not have the means to make content available, to publish it in the proper format that does justice to the research and its conclusions, then we have failed to make it accessible.
These three factors are often enmeshed and can be difficult to tease apart, however it is a worthwhile pursuit to consider with more precision as it yields a more complex picture of the research landscape.

18. Resources

19. Promoting the public good by supporting authors who write to be read.
Authors Alliance
Promoting the public good by supporting authors who write to be read.
Authors Alliance was founding in 2014 by Pamela Samuelson, an intellectual property scholar at UC Berkeley’s Law School, as an alternative to the homogenous response of the estrablished and entrenched Authors Guild, to concerns raised by the Google Books Initiative and its settlement.

20. Managing authors rights Authorship law and policy Reaching audiences
Authorial reputation and integrity
The objectives of the Authors Alliance are:
Maanging authors rights: helping authors to understand and manage the rights necessary to make their works broadly available now and in the future
Authorship law and policy: providing education and advocacy for sound politics that help authors create their works, make them accessible to the public, and ensure their preservation
Reaching audiences: helping authors identify online platforms, journals, libraries, and other tools, techniques, and partners that can help them communicate with their audiences
Authorial reputation and integrity: working to ensure that authors can make their contributions to knowledge and culture widely available without sacrificing their interests in reputation and integrity