The Partnering to Publish seminar, jointly sponsored by the Society for Scholarly Publishing and the Association of Research Libraries on November 10, 2010, provided an occasion to learn about current partnerships between librarians and publishers in an environment where traditional roles are changing and to explore new opportunities for cost-effective and innovative joint ventures.

As the skills and infrastructure needed to sustain scholarly communication change in the electronic age, many organizations are reevaluating their publishing strategies. Smaller societies and institutions are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the demands of their authors to link research data with publications, repurpose content in new ways online, or push the boundaries of intellectual property to mix and mash-up. Librarians, meanwhile, are extending their skills to organize and preserve data, support XML workflows, and build deep understandings of digital rights and permissions.

Innovative partnerships are evolving; between university presses and academic libraries, between federal librarians and government research staff, and between disciplinary societies and university libraries with strength in their fields. Academic libraries are helping societies with print journals to transition to the electronic environment, federal librarians are collaborating with their agencies’ researchers to increase the visibility and impact of their publications, specialist societies are working with institutional repository managers to allow authors to link their journal articles to durable data sources, and university presses are refocusing on the needs of their host institutions.