University of Houston Libraries is now a member of the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC).

The LPC “extends the impact and sustainability of library publishing and open scholarship by providing a professional forum for developing best practices and shared expertise.”

Taylor Davis-Van Atta, digital scholarship coordinator, said the membership speaks to UH Libraries’ growing emphasis on making UH scholarship widely visible and discoverable. “With the Libraries playing a larger role in research production through new services and initiatives such as the Digital Research Commons’ sponsored projects program and the Alternative Textbook Incentive Program, we are building in the Libraries the means of producing and publishing a wide range of original scholarly works,” he said.

In the evolving landscape of scholarly communications, it becomes increasingly essential to establish a collaborative foundation of knowledge that is relevant among various institutions working in this space. With LPC membership, Davis-Van Atta said, UH Libraries has gained “access to a leading community of librarians who are partnering with researchers in innovative ways and developing open source tools and platforms that allow these partnerships to produce dynamic and interactive kinds of scholarship—and to publish this scholarship to the web in a variety of ways.”

Learn more about Cougar ROAR, Research Open Access Repositories.

LPC membership allows UH Libraries to build upon its existing expertise in the areas of copyright, publication agreements, open educational resources (OER), and open access, and will spur expansion of related services for UH faculty and students.

“Many UH instructors are interested in publishing OER, as it eliminates textbook costs for students and allows more flexibility regarding assigned educational materials,” said Ariana Santiago, open educational resources coordinator. “Through the LPC, we can more easily learn from other institutions and incorporate best practices into the OER program at UH.”

Local and national partnerships augment UH Libraries’ collections and services and expand the research environment for faculty and students. Consortia, common in the academic library world, provide access to cost-effective cooperative purchases of licensed resources as well as expedited resource sharing. Learn more about UH Libraries’ memberships and consortia.