Like an open book
The important work of making scholarship free and accessible
Ask a librarian about the scholarly publishing industry and note their response. Do they heave a sigh or change the subject? Do they shake a fist at the sky?
Academic journals are a complicated topic for the library field. They’re necessary, of course; in a profession where “publish or perish” is a career-defining motto, researchers covet publication of their articles in the most prestigious journals with the largest readerships.
But librarians have an insider’s appreciation of the economics of it all. Faculty want access to these publications, of course, but when every dollar in a library budget must stretch far, total costs can cause some heartburn. Big publishers command big subscription rates—sometimes, eye-wateringly so.
“The University has its own priorities, and our library is always here to support that,” said Elsa Álvaro, associate University librarian for collections and access. “Yet every library has a limited budget. We have to be creative about how to support faculty who want their research disseminated widely.”
An open-and-shut case
Enter the concept of open access. This international scholarly movement has exploded over the last several decades in response to the tension around high-profile, high-cost publishing. Many researchers and institutions throw their weight behind efforts to make articles, datasets, and even entire journals open—that is, free to read, download, copy, or print.
“Open access initiatives are one way libraries can do more with even a flat budget to help support scholarship,” Álvaro said. Studies show that an open access article results in more readership and, as a result, more citations for that article. “Citations are a crucial metric of how impactful your research is. So open access can be a very appealing way to share your work more broadly and more equitably.”
Making an article open access, however, usually means paying a fee. (Publishers, after all, want to recoup some revenue for moving things outside their usual paywalls.) The burden for paying this “article processing fee” usually falls to the author, costing anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $10,000 for the highest-prestige journals. But the Libraries have ways to mitigate this cost for faculty and students, such as negotiating some publishing agreements upfront to cover such fees for all faculty. Sometimes the Libraries negotiate those contracts on behalf of the entire Big Ten Academic Alliance for its member institutions.
For example, in 2023 the BTAA announced a three-year deal with multinational publisher Wiley on behalf of 14 member libraries to cover “read and publish” fees; this means researchers whose papers are accepted for publication in a Wiley journal pay no fees personally, nor does any reader pay to see and cite that work.
Homegrown journals
Another way Northwestern Libraries contribute to all this openness is by supporting in-house faculty publishing projects. The result is not just an open article or two but an entirely new venture, controlled by the academic community to ensure maximum freedom to read and share.
In January, the Libraries debuted the second digital journal for which they act as copublisher, a salvo in the effort to bring more balance to academic publishing.
Northwestern University Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought is produced in conjunction with a multi-institutional research initiative in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. RPLaRT (pronounced “ripple art”) is an annual, peer-reviewed venture where the publishing (in the form of design, site hosting, and digital accessibility) is supported by Aerith Netzer, Northwestern’s digital publishing and repository librarian, and Weinberg’s Media and Design Studio.
“Libraries have realized that instead of just serving as departments to purchase literature from publishers, we can make it cheaper for the university and have more research impact if we just publish the material ourselves,” Netzer said.
Northwestern Libraries’ first open access journal project was the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, first published in 2021. At the time, transgender studies was considered a new field, and BATS filled a gap in the literature. The open, library-published model allowed researchers such as founding editor and School of Communication faculty member TJ Billard to quickly disseminate field-defining thought pieces and research that could engage an academic community hungry for more.
“The beauty of open source is that the products are free for anyone to use, they are built by the community, and there’s no cost to them,” said Netzer. “Everybody shares them. It’s a very collaborative and openly shared community.”
Not only are library-led open access projects cost-effective and more responsive than large publishers, but they also offer a better commitment to privacy “due to our commitment to not track or serve advertisements to readers,” she said.
At the RPLaRT launch event, Bradley Underwood ’25, associate editor of the new journal, spoke about his long-gestating vision to launch a fresh publishing outlet for the field. However, he had concluded that the barriers were simply too high.
At the time he thought, “Surely there’s some Faustian bargain to be made” to achieve that dream. But after working with Netzer, he marveled at the capacity of a library to ease the burdens of publishing. “Now here I am with my soul intact,” he said with a smile.
The inaugural issue features “Varieties of Belief in The Brothers Karamazov” by Northwestern professor Gary Saul Morson and other articles analyzing 19th-century Russian empiricism, universal themes in great Russian literature, and prerevolution Marxist thought.
With efforts like BATS and RPLaRT, the Libraries are participating in a little revolution of their own, reimagining how to make information free-flowing and more affordable than ever.