The Library Publishing Directory provides an annual snapshot of the publishing activities of academic and research libraries, including information about the number and types of publications they produce, the services they offer authors, how they are staffed and funded, and their future plans. In documenting the breadth and depth of activities in this field, this resource aims to articulate the unique value of library publishing; establish it as a significant and growing community of practice; and to raise its visibility within a number of stakeholder communities, including administrators, funding agencies, other scholarly publishers, librarians, and content creators.
Specifically, the Directory:
- Introduces readers to the growing field of library publishing and helps articulate its unique characteristics as a distinctive “publishing field.”
- Facilitates collaboration among library publishers and other publishing entities, especially the university presses and learned societies that share their values.
- Alerts authors of scholarly content to a range of potential publishing partners dedicated to supporting their experimentation with new forms of scholarly communication and open access business models.
- Enables benchmarking and identification of trends in the field.
Map of global library publishing initiatives
Beginning in 2020, the Library Publishing Coalition and the IFLA LibPub SIG are partnering to survey the landscape of publishing in libraries across the globe. See the IFLA LibPub SIG map of global library publishing initiatives.
Library Publishing Directory research data set
LPC releases the data from all years of the Library Publishing Directory in the form of a research data set. This resource is composed of the data that underlie the 2014–2024 Directories, in csv format. Researchers will also find the original survey instrument and data dictionary for each year. For those interested in identifying changes to the survey design, a crosswalk file maps field additions and deletions over time. Finally, a readme file provides descriptive, methodological, and licensing information about the data. Download the zip file.
