International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2004/2005: Scholarly Publishing in an Electronic Era

This is an excellent and timely analysis of current issues related to scholarly communication and publishing. Edited by G.E. Gorman, it includes ten chapters in four parts that address the current state of scholarly publishing and its future, perspectives of libraries and publishers, access and preservation issues, and models of scholarly publishing. In the introduction Gorman stresses the need to record the current thinking about scholarly publishing for posterity even as that thinking is changing rapidly.

Fytton Rowland, who also serves as Associate Editor of the volume, provides a brief history of the development of scholarly publishing, then discusses current issues such as the impact of consortia, the “Big Deal,” and the need for accurate usage statistics. He continues by addressing open access initiatives, open archives efforts and other models for distributing scholarly works. Alicia Wise addresses the challenges that librarians and publishers share and provides a series of recommendations for funders, researchers, librarians and publishers.

The second section of the book addresses institutional perspectives on scholarly publishing, with the focus being on libraries and publishers. Colin Steele describes the changing role of the library from acquiring and housing of scholarly material to a focus on providing access and the actual creation and distribution of scholarly information. John Cox provides an analysis of the economics of scholarly publishing and its impact on the ability of libraries to keep up with the growing scholarly publishing output. He follows that analysis with a thorough examination of open access and open archives initiatives.

In the third section, access and preservation issues are addressed. Gobinda Chowdhury discusses the usability of information retrieval systems and digital libraries, providing a lengthy list of problems and their possible solutions. David Prosser provides an in‐depth look at how open access can benefit scholars through the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), self‐archiving and other open access initiatives. Stephen Pinfield examines the benefits of self‐archiving in more depth, analyzing the many challenges and issues such as quality control, intellectual property rights, and metadata standards.

Louise Edwards begins the final section with a thoughtful discussion of electronic books as a model for scholarly publishing, addressing barriers to their use, their role in libraries, and their future. John Houghton follows with an examination of the economics of scholarly publishing, focusing on the crisis in scholarly communication, the rising costs of books and journals, and the opportunities presented by the open access movement. Finally, Peter Shepherd provides a thorough discussion of the need for accurate and standardized usage statistics and describes the development of the Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) standard.

While there is some overlap in content among the chapters, this is an excellent collection that provides a thorough analysis of the issues surrounding scholarly communication today. This is highly recommended to academic libraries.

Rebecca L. Mugridge

Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA