Lisa Hinchliffe
President, Association of College & Research Libraries
University of Illinois at Urbana-Chamaign
Mary Ellen Davis
Executive Director, Association of College & Research Libraries
Association of College & Research Libraries
Janice Welburn
Budget and Finance Committee Chair
Association of College & Research Libraries
Marquette University
Societies and associations that have relied on revenue from journal publications to fund programs and other activities have been striving to find a way to move to an open access (OA) model. Librarians who wish to live their principles have expressed loudly their desire to move professional publications to OA. This session presents a case study of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) journal, College and Research Libraries, and its transition to OA from member benefit/subscription-only through online pre-prints to full OA, which will begin in April 2011. The panelists will discuss ACRL’s commitment to OA principles and the challenges of making those principles a reality in practice including philosophical tensions, sensitivity to the concept of “member benefit,” the business model, and the question of whether to still have print. The case is offered not as a model of what other publications should do, but rather as an example of the kinds of considerations and decisions with which publishers must grapple.
Handout (MS WORD)