Selecting Your Strategic Approach

Introduction

In this curriculum, we're focused on publishing open textbooks. However, it's possible that open textbooks are just one element of your library publishing program. Within that context, you will want to consider what type of open textbook publishing program you’ll offer and what kinds of projects you’ll support. This way you can chart your program’s direction and map your priorities. Clearly defining your program tells everyone what they should be working on, and what they should be working on first. For example, do you want to start with targeting high enrollment courses?

Selecting Your Strategic Approach

Library publishing programs typically take one of two approaches, opting either to provide a campus publishing service or develop an editorially, or content-driven publishing portfolio. Some libraries move to a hybrid model, after first gaining experience with one approach or the other.

Service Driven

Most library publishing programs launch with a service-oriented strategy. This strategy focuses on campus stakeholders and involves providing services in response to faculty and student needs and the strategic priorities of the institution. Library publishing services typically maintain and support a publishing platform (often an institutional repository or publishing software), and provide a suite of services that help faculty authors take advantage of the platform. Services may include:

  • Training on using the platform or in editorial workflows
  • Advisory on metadata, indexing, and discovery
  • Guidance on copyright and licensing

Content generally comes to the library fully formed and ready for publication. Libraries choosing the service-focused approach may find they need to support an array of content types in a variety of formats. This will require:

  • Reliable technical support for bug fixes and breaks as well as upgrades and migrations
  • Staff time and expertise for author/editor training and advisory
  • Staff time to ingest, format, and maintain content in the platform
  • A realistic understanding of their capacity (how easily can their services scale if demand is high?)

Editorially Driven

Less common than a service-driven strategy, especially in open education, is an editorially driven program focuses on external audiences. These programs analyze trends in scholarly disciplines, curricular areas, or communities of practice to identify publishing opportunities. They seek out content in specially targeted discipline or subject areas and often have a hand in shaping the final product. Editorially driven library publishing programs may find it wise to align their disciplinary interests with areas of faculty expertise, or topics of local or regional relevance. These kinds of programs typically require dedicated staff whose role is to acquire, commission, and recruit projects, as well as to work closely with faculty. It requires more intervention on the part of the publisher than a service-oriented program. All the minimum requirements for a service driven approach apply to the editorially driven model. 

Identifying Needs and Opportunities

The approach you take should be informed by an opportunity assessment or environmental scanning process that helps you understand where you can best fill a need. An “if we build it they will come” approach is risky and could result in a significant amount of work to launch a program that withers from lack of interest and uptake. The following considerations can help guide your environmental scan and refine your strategy.

  • Are there populations on your campus that are historically underrepresented in existing works? Are there opportunities to connect with scholars beyond your institution to create publications in response to this omission?
  • Are faculty already self-publishing open textbooks that could benefit from a more centralized publisher and economies of scale?
  • Has the university started a new major or degree program that will require new course materials? Could your press participate in creating open options?
  • Are there opportunities to approach university administration/departments/faculty about creating open textbooks?
  • Are there other formal publishers on your campus (such as a university press)? How might you partner with them?

Libraries can begin to answer these questions by undertaking a campus publishing audit or inventory to locate potential partners who already publish or would like to publish open textbooks. Librarians may also consider conducting a more formal survey or a “listening tour” with faculty to ask about open textbook publishing interest, activities and pain points.

Make sure you also include the broader university in your environmental scan. Look for opportunities related to the university’s strategic plan, such as a focus on making education more affordable for students,  and for opportunities based on the library’s goals, perhaps related to student success.

Strategic priorities

Strategic priorities of an open textbook publishing program may include:

  • Contribute to and align with overall mission/strengths of the university
  • Impact research, pedagogy, and/or public debate
  • Collaborate with university’s departments & centers
  • Increase digital dissemination and/or digital innovation
  • Develop new or alternative funding opportunities (i.e. grants, subventions, new markets)
  • Assist faculty in publishing open educational resources (OERs)

Adapted from Library Publishing Curriculum, Developing Editorial Strategies, Unit (Links to an external site.) 4 Links to an external site. from the Library Publishing Coalition Links to an external site. (CC BY 4.0 (Links to an external site.)) .