Understanding the needs of scholars in a contemporary publishing environment: Survey results

PWW Research Team

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/98576 Copy

Description

Title

Understanding the needs of scholars in a contemporary publishing environment: Survey results

Author(s)

PWW Research Team

Issue Date

2017-11-16

Keyword(s)

• digital scholarly publishing
• library-based publishing

Abstract

Publishing Without Walls (PWW) is a Mellon-funded initiative at the University of Illinois led by the University Library in partnership with the School of Information Sciences, the department of African American Studies, and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Our project is developing a scalable, sustainable model for library-based digital scholarly publishing. The model aims to lower publishing barriers – both for scholars new to digital publishing and for institutions with limited resources – while opening publications to the widest possible readership. With a goal of broad adoption in academic libraries, our model locates the humanities scholar at the center of the scholarly communication ecosystem and affords services that are informed by and responsive to scholarly needs. The research guiding development of this model aims to identify and explore perceived gaps in the current publishing system, including the gap between what and how scholars want to publish and what existing systems accommodate; the gap between the everyday practices of humanities scholars and tools for producing and supporting digital scholarship; and the gap between digital scholarship and publishing opportunities at resource-rich institutions and resource-limited institutions, especially Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This report gives the results of one piece of an ongoing, multimodal research effort. Through a large-scale survey and a series of interviews with humanities scholars, this effort aims to lay a solid foundation of understanding about scholarly needs in the contemporary publishing environment. This report explains the survey method, gives a summary of participants’ self-reported demographics, and details survey results, proceeding question by question. The goal of this report is not to provide interpretation of the meaning or significance of survey results, but to document the results themselves as a foundation for future interpretation, and for informing ongoing research and development of the publishing service model.

Publisher

Publishing Without Walls

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/98576

Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Copyright and License Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Owning Collections