For immediate release:
November 10, 2008

For more information, contact:
Karla Hahn
Association of Research Libraries
202-296-2296
karla@arl.org

Nancy L. Maron
Ithaka
212-500-2349
nancy.maron@ithaka.org

Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication

ARL Releases Final Report from Ithaka Study

Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released the final report from a study that ARL commissioned Ithaka to conduct, Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication, by Nancy L. Maron and K. Kirby Smith, along with the database of exemplars that the study produced.

In the spring of 2008, ARL engaged Ithaka’s Strategic Services Group to conduct an investigation into the range of online resources valued by scholars, paying special attention to those projects that are pushing beyond the boundaries of traditional formats and are considered innovative by the faculty who use them. The networked digital environment has enabled the creation of many new kinds of works, and many of these resources have become essential tools for scholars conducting research, building scholarly networks, and disseminating their ideas and work, but the decentralized distribution of these new-model works has made it difficult to fully appreciate their scope and number.

Ithaka’s findings are based on a collection of resources identified by a volunteer field team of over 300 librarians at 46 academic institutions in the US and Canada. Field librarians talked with faculty members on their campuses about the digital scholarly resources they find most useful and reported the works they identified. The authors evaluated each resource gathered by the field team and conducted interviews of project leaders of 11 representative resources. Ultimately, 206 unique digital resources spanning eight formats were identified that met the study’s criteria.

The study’s innovative qualitative approach yielded a rich cross-section of today’s state of the art in digital scholarly resources. The report profiles each of the eight genres of resources, including discussion of how and why the faculty members reported using the resources for their work, how content is selected for the site, and what financial sustainability strategies the resources are employing. Each section draws from the in-depth interviews to provide illustrative anecdotes and representative examples.

Highlights from the study’s findings include:

• While some disciplines seem to lend themselves to certain formats of digital resource more than others, examples of innovative resources can be found across the humanities, social sciences, and scientific/technical/medical subject areas.

• Of all the resources suggested by faculty, almost every one that contained an original scholarly work operates under some form of peer review or editorial oversight.

• Some of the resources with greatest impact are those that have been around a long while.

• While some resources serve very large audiences, many digital publications—capable of running on relatively small budgets—are tailored to small, niche audiences.

• Innovations relating to multimedia content and Web 2.0 functionality appear in some cases to blur the lines between resource types.

• Projects of all sizes—especially open-access sites and publications—employ a range of support strategies in the search for financial sustainability.

The report is freely available on the ARL Web site at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/current-models-report.pdf. Search the database at http://www.arl.org/sc/models/model-pubs/search-form.shtml.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.

Ithaka is an independent not-for-profit organization whose mission is to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide. The group promotes innovation in higher education by supporting entrepreneurial not-for-profit initiatives to develop financially sustainable organizational and business models. Ithaka aims to combine a commitment to the core values of higher education, a deep understanding of technology and its impact, and experience developing economically sustainable not-for-profit business models, to help advance community-wide benefits during this time of technological transition. Ithaka is on the Web at http://www.ithaka.org/.