Industry report
A ‘rebalancing of power’
The last 12 months have seen a rebalancing of power in scholarly publishing, according to a report in December by Research Information. Here, we present a selection of interviews from the report
Download the report here:
www.researchinformation.info/scholarly-publishing-research-cycle-2018
‘Libraries have a critical role engaging with faculty’ Martha Sedgwick, associate VP of product innovation at SAGE Publishing
What do you see as the biggest challenges in scholarly publishing today?
One challenge is the relatively slow response rate to the opportunities that technology offers education and research, caused somewhat by the ‘comfort’ of the traditional way of doing things and legacy systems. New AI technologies, like machine learning, have huge potential in our publishing systems, how we operate as a business, and for social science research. In other industries and disciplines that movement is happening a lot faster. We’re just starting to see some really exciting new research labs emerging in the social sciences; we’re on the cusp of a major new change where we’ll see more academics making use of data at scale,
18 Research Information February/March 2019
using new technologies, exploring new methods, and working with data scientists to understand society and the impact of technology on the world around us. There’s also the skills gap challenge, especially around technology. Our role as a publisher is to address these challenges and respond actively and creatively, in order to stay relevant and support our key customers and stakeholders. When you see big Silicon Valley players hiring aggressively with big salaries, and start- ups offering lots of excitement, there’s a real need for us to double-down on our mission-led message. We are doing more than selling adverts and what we’re doing is for the social good: supporting and improving education and research, as we explore how technology can build bridges to knowledge.
What can the library sector do to help overcome some of these challenges? Libraries have a very critical role engaging with faculty, educating them about the innovations in research and the tools around them. There’s some really exciting things that some librarians and libraries are doing to embrace and engage with new technologies. Matt Cook, head of emerging technologies at the University of Oklahoma library, has been doing work with VR technologies to explore how these can be used in teaching, a group from the National Library of Norway has collaborated with the library at the University of Stanford to look at machine learning for library purposes, cataloguing and analysing parts of their collection. Those are examples of pioneers in the library world; librarians thinking about how
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