The Serials Librarian, 62:73–78, 2012Copyright © The North American Serials Interest Group, Inc.ISSN: 0361-526X print/1541-1095 onlineDOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2012.652463

Collaborating for Sustainable Scholarship:Models that Serve Librarians, Publishers,

and Scholars

CAROL MACADAM and KATE DUFFPresenters

WENDY C. ROBERTSONRecorder

MacAdam and Duff discussed the benefits and challenges ofimplementing JSTOR’s Current Scholarship Program (CSP). Theprogram, which began in 2011, is designed to provide asustainable publishing platform for university presses. JSTORworked closely with partners to meet their unique needs and ensurethat libraries retain existing access, while standardizing as muchas possible. Combining subscription lists was a major issue for thetitles moving to the new platform. JSTOR also needed to developworkflows and expertise to support new content. Future plansinclude improving design options, expanding to new presses, andintegration with new JSTOR projects.

KEYWORDS JSTOR, Current Scholarship Program, publishing,platform changes

Carol MacAdam, Library Relations Outreach Coordinator at JSTOR, began thesession with background regarding the changing landscape for universitypresses and their need to be online and engage with users. Further infor-mation about these changes can be found in Ithaka’s University Publishingin a Digital Age.1 Recognizing that JSTOR was well placed to help solvethese problems for university presses brought about a major change: JSTORwould begin working with current serials publications. JSTOR’s objectiveswere to enhance their partnership with scholarly publishers who “sharean understanding of the problems facing scholarly communications andwho have a deep desire to work together to craft a sustainable publishingmodel that embodies academic values.”2 The Current Scholarship Program

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(CSP) launched in January 2011 and includes 174 journals from 19 publisherpartners.

The University of Chicago Press has worked with JSTOR for many yearsand has 76 journals in their archival collection, making them an ideal partnerfor the Current Scholarship Program. They have about 50 current journalsand began publishing online in 1995. Kate Duff, Marketing Director for theJournals Division of the University of Chicago Press, indicated that despiteconsiderable in-house expertise, they lacked the resources to meet growinguser, librarian, and society expectations. Collaboration with JSTOR was natu-ral because of their shared missions. JSTOR could offer more titles on relatedsubjects and has a broader customer base. Implementation of the CSP hadan ambitious timeline of about a year from the date the contract was signeduntil launch. This timeline and the change to supporting new content forJSTOR meant issues needed to be resolved quite quickly.

One important consideration was establishing fair and standardizedpricing. The University of Chicago Press had offered a single-seat subscrip-tion option for its journals along with a full-access, enterprise-wide option.The single-seat option was not an industry standard and was not sustainable,so they opted to eliminate it when they moved to the JSTOR model for pric-ing. However, they were concerned about giving their customers large priceincreases. The new pricing model with JSTOR aimed to be revenue neutralfor the press in 2011. Many customers (about 24 percent) had lower pricesin 2011, and 33 percent of the customers had price increases of less than5 percent, but some customers faced more substantial increases. Their staffcontacted the most negatively impacted customers to discuss the optionsand they were able to offer a substantial discount to these customers whosubscribed to the Complete Chicago Package.

Another major hurdle was branding for JSTOR, the publisher, the soci-ety, and the journal. JSTOR needed to balance consistency and scalabledesigns with flexibility and additional journal information, while also makingthe path to content as fast as possible. The iterative design process involvedmany compromises and there are things they hope to improve in the future.

Technological issues also presented significant challenges, as 2,095 vol-umes and 50,000 articles published by Chicago needed to be migratedto JSTOR and integrated with the back issues. Despite both University ofChicago Press and JSTOR using platforms designed by Atypon, there weremany problems which needed to be resolved. For example, there wereseveral years of overlapping content, including content in HTML from thePress versus the PDFs scanned by JSTOR. Articles sometimes had multipleDigital Object Identifiers (DOIs). JSTOR needed to make many changes toaccommodate the entirely new process of real-time workflows, working withXML-based full text, multimedia, and rapid-release articles ahead of print. Allof these changes meant the University of Chicago Press journal staff spentsignificant time doing quality control before launch.

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A fourth obstacle was integration of the customer systems and sub-scription information. Both Chicago and JSTOR brought the subscriptionagents into the conversations early to make sure the process would go assmoothly as possible. This was particularly important since JSTOR had notpreviously worked with subscription agents. There were many differencesin customer records, requiring an almost customer-by-customer check of thedetails. They also had problems reconciling customers who use a consol-idation service, with print being collected by an agent before shipping tothe customer. The renewal workflow had additional complications and theyprovided a long grace period to help avoid difficulties. Throughout all ofthis, communication among the partners, with subscription agents and withcustomers, was extremely important.

MacAdam expanded on these issues from the JSTOR perspective. JSTORused this opportunity to rationalize and make transparent some of their long-term policies, cleaning up inconsistencies and licensing anomalies wherepossible. Their efforts to make policies, fees, and subscription options con-sistent sometimes created new problems. The start date of content availablewith a subscription was sometimes inconsistent with the digital availabilitydate, sometimes by as much as nine years. This could have meant somelibraries would have lost access to content which they previously held,which is not acceptable to JSTOR; they resolved this issue so no librarieslost access. Retention of access is critical to JSTOR, so they also reviewedpost-cancellation access policies. Now JSTOR has a policy that covers allpublishers, and in some cases subscribers have greater post-cancellationaccess than previously.

JSTOR wanted to accommodate as many of the varied needs of thepublishers and libraries as was feasible. They did not want to dictate howsubscriptions needed to work or with whom an order must be placed.Pricing is set by publishers, and titles may be ordered individually or incollections, and may be ordered through an agent, directly from the pub-lisher, or with JSTOR. Rolling start dates were another challenge becausepreviously most JSTOR participation had all been by calendar year.

Pulling together subscriber lists and subscriptions created challenges,and sometimes even identifying the subscriber could be a problem. Forexample, since print-only subscriptions no longer were an option, a uni-versity’s law school print subscription might have become a campus-wideelectronic access title, potentially increasing the cost. While striving for con-sistent pricing models, JSTOR did not want to impose changes on existingrelationships, such as hospital systems and state university systems, so theserelationships were grandfathered into the pricing structure. In some cases,previously print-only titles accidentally became cancellations because thatoption simply did not exist any longer. JSTOR staff spent quite a bit of timecommunicating with subscription agents and libraries to avoid droppingaccess. Throughout this work they discovered problems with publishers’

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subscriber lists. They expect the renewal process in succeeding years to gomore smoothly than the labor-intensive process of the first year.

Traditionally, JSTOR has developed a collection with input from librariesand scholars. Publisher content is added to collections where it enhancesthe value to the user of the journal and the collection. However, for CurrentScholarship, JSTOR accepts all titles that a publisher chooses to add to theprogram, which allows JSTOR to move into new areas, and develop theirpublisher partner relationships. JSTOR branding is very prominent in thearchive. However, the CSP is giving journals a more unique look and feel.JSTOR is also introducing new features, such as full-text HTML and multi-media files. The transition to current content online sometimes brought withit new and challenging requests from journals. For example, the Journal ofthe Society of Architectural Historians had not been online, but once thechange was made, the editors wanted to use multimedia and Google Earth.The JSTOR developers have worked to accommodate as many as possible ofthese varied needs. In order to support existing access, JSTOR also needed tointroduce the option of subscriptions to entire back runs of individual titles.

JSTOR allowed publishers to move some or all of their content intoCSP. This sometimes caused confusion when a publisher initially indicatedall their titles would be part of CSP and then did not include them all. Somepublishers, such as the University of Chicago Press and the University ofCalifornia Press, opted to close down their existing sites for current con-tent. The CSP agreement is non-exclusive, so some publishers have optedto maintain their existing platforms, as well as continuing relationships withmany journal content aggregators. This varied approach allows each pub-lisher to do what it believes best for itself, but did result in the potential forincreased confusion for customers.

Throughout the process, JSTOR tried to communicate with their cus-tomers. However, the message was not an easy one to convey. It wasnot clear to many libraries that this was essentially a platform change fortheir content. Instead some libraries said “we decided not to participate inCSP,” not realizing it was simply a change in platforms for titles to whichthey already held subscriptions. JSTOR staff have worked hard to repeatclarifications in as many forums as possible.

A challenge for JSTOR may be that publishers may choose to withdrawfrom the program in the future. Unlike the content in the JSTOR archivecollections which is stable for participants, libraries could lose access to thecurrent content on the JSTOR platform. This is a challenge because JSTORhas long been equated with archival access. Perpetual access agreements forthe current content are between the libraries and the publisher, and so JSTORmay simply not be the location for that content any longer. As with any othersubscriptions, libraries need to review their license terms to determine if theyhave perpetual access to CSP titles.

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Duff indicated that in the future, the University of Chicago Press plansto develop new ways to package content because the publishers and JSTORhave been introduced into new markets. They also want to continue to workon the design and technological issues. As the CSP develops, they hopethere will be additional synergies among the publishers. MacAdam indicatedthat JSTOR will consolidate its outreach efforts, and reach out to additionalpublishers and societies. They will consider new subscription packages bypublisher, JSTOR collection, or by discipline. They may also offer individualsubscriber options in the future. Another future plan is integration with thenew Books at JSTOR, allowing searching across book and journal content.She hopes that further collaborations will be built on the success of thisprogram.

One audience member asked what the comfort level is throughoutJSTOR with this redefinition of their mission to include current content.MacAdam responded that JSTOR does not believe it is a change in their coremission. While there are workflows they have not previously done, keepinguniversity presses sustainable and providing access to current scholarship isimportant. JSTOR is committed to doing this, despite some discomfort anddifficulties, and views the program largely as a success.

Another audience member commented on the difficulty for users seeingavailable content on JSTOR that the library does not have access to. This isparticularly awkward when students know they have access to other JSTORcontent. MacAdam replied that this issue is larger than just the CSP titles andrelates to changes to the JSTOR platform made in August 2010. Libraries canset searching in JSTOR to only show what is accessible. However, for thebrowse function JSTOR has elected to provide users with a view of all thatis available, with links to their other avenues for access.

The session ended with the wrap-up of the audience’s questions.MacAdam’s overview showed attendees how the Current ScholarshipProgram provides JSTOR with means to extend its services both to librariesand to university presses. Duff’s details on how the University of ChicagoPress Journals Division addressed specific questions with this transitionhelped audience members see how presses are willing to work throughchallenges for the benefit of their patrons.

NOTES

1. Laura Brown, Rebecca Griffiths, and Matthew Rascoff, University Publishing in a DigitalAge. Ithaka Report (Ithaka, July 26, 2007), http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/strategyold/Ithaka%20University%20Publishing%20Report.pdf (accessed July 10, 2011).

2. University of California, “UC Press Partnership to Improve Access to Scholarship,” news release,August 13, 2009, http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/21676 (accessed November 28,2011).

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CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

Carol MacAdam works as the Library Relations Outreach Coordinator atJSTOR.

Kate Duff is the Marketing Director for the Journals Division, University ofChicago Press.

Wendy C. Robertson is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at the Universityof Iowa.