Dear colleagues,

A core principle guiding the Next Generation Library Publishing (NGLP)  project is TRANSPARENCY.

In alignment with that principle, we are openly sharing all of our findings from more than a year’s worth of deep community engagement research. 

Our newest publication, Library Publishing Infrastructure: Assembling New Solutions, documents the design, methods, results, and recommendations of the NGLP team’s 2019-2021 study of Library Publishing infrastructure gaps and requirements. 

Based on our research interactions with more than 150 library publishing stakeholders, we  heard remarkably consistent needs and desires from library publishers, including: 

• Ways to integrate existing platforms and tools rather than building new ones 

• Expanded choices that work together to avoid lock-in 

• Unified web delivery and discovery options that work across platforms and tools

• An administrative dashboard that can provide central control and reporting options across platforms and tools  

• Choices among a range of hosted, turnkey solutions  

• Community-led modes of governance and sustainability for tools, platforms, and service providers

This report seeks to make all of our research findings available to and usable by other teams—including projects, tool developers, service providers, and communities of practice. We hope many can use this synthesis of our research to inform their understanding of the interests, needs, gaps, and opportunities in the growing library publishing field.

About the Next Generation Library Publishing Project

The Next Generation Library Publishing project is led by  Educopia Institute, California Digital Library (CDL), and Strategies for Open Science (Stratos), in close partnership with LYRASIS, Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), and Longleaf Services. 

The project is generously funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Its purpose is to improve publishing pathways and choices for authors, editors, and readers through strengthening, integrating, and scaling up scholarly publishing infrastructure to support library publishers. In addition to developing interoperable publishing tools and workflows, our team is exploring how to create community hosting models that align explicitly and demonstratively with academic values.

With many thanks,

Hannah (on behalf of the NGLP team)