Library and Scientific Publishing

Dear Colleagues,

In the past few decades, scholarly publishing has undergone major transformations. Continuous subscription prices increases for scholarly journals and a growing volume of scientific data were elements of the environment, which led to the need for change in the parameters of the scholarly publishing industry. The stream of new possibilities brought by digital information technology facilitated the extraordinary rate of these transformations. Reference books and monographs, as well as scholarly journals, have moved relatively rapidly into e-form. The search for alternative models of scholarly publishing, as a solution to the high costs of publications, led to the Open Access (OA) movement. The creation of subject repositories was followed by institutional ones, and nowadays the OA literature is increasingly accepted. As the number of high quality open access journals grows and repository infrastructure matures, OA publications are progressively included in citation analyses and impact studies. The traditional models of scholarly communication have shown to be insufficiently flexible to adapt to the new environment, leaving a major a major role in the alterations in scholarly and scientific communication to the networks.

Libraries are inextricably involved in these issues and accompany all of these movements of scientific publishing. As a consequence, librarians are having to redefine their roles and the services they provide to better serve the research and teaching needs of their institutions. As libraries become responsible for establishing databases of publications or institutional repositories, there is increasing potential for libraries and university presses to cooperate. Emerging roles both for libraries and presses, in a trans-institutional publication system are forecast.

In this environment, which brings together scientific publications, libraries, and technologies arose our interest in this Special Issue. We seek studies for further reflection on the challenges outlined above. We invite submissions by those interested in the topic as researchers in the field of library and information science, publishers, librarians and scholars from other social sciences. In terms of the genre, contributions can be think pieces, theoretical discussions, research reports with empirical data, or reviews of relevant literature. The threads of interest include but are not limited to:

New roles and trends for libraries

• Evolving roles for libraries, librarians and information professionals
• The implications of OA for libraries
• Impact of e-journals on libraries
• E-books and economic impact on libraries
• University institutional repositories and libraries

New roles and trends for publishers:

• Impact of OA movement on traditional scholarly publication model
• Future trends and roles in the world of publishing and publishers
• Sustainable economic models for scientific publishing

Open Access

• Open Access within higher education
• Open Access, the journal impact factor, and altmetrics
• The economics of Open Access publishing

All submissions will undergo the regular peer review and editorial procedures followed by the journal, using double-blind review. Please remove all reference to the author/s of the submission in the text and reference list.

We look forward to your contributions to this important topic.

Dr. Beatriz V. Cendon
Dr. Marlene Oliveira
Guest Editors