SCOOP: The Year in Scholarly Communication – 2021 Edition

It’s time for the SCOOP’s annual recap of happenings across scholarly communication.

Atla’s Year in Scholarly Communication

Atla had several important announcements from its scholarly communication program in 2021:

• Books@Atla Open Press published three new volumes, including the second volumes of the Women in Religion and The Theological Librarian Handbook series.
• The Atla Scholarly Communication Committee collaborated to produce a new LibGuide on institutional repositories and coordinated a panel presentation on selecting and implementing an institutional repository for the 2021 Atla Annual conference.
• The journal Theological Librarianship published the winning essay in the 2021 Student Essay Contest and announced a call for submissions for an upcoming forum on multimodal scholarship.
• Theology Cataloging Bulletin prepared in 2021 for a number of changes to be rolled out in 2022, including a change in name to TCB: Technical Services in Religion & Theology and a call for submissions to new and changed sections of the journal.
• Atla published the first two projects funded by its Open Educational Resources Grant program and opened up applications for new funding. To further support OER creation and implementation by Atla members, we also announced details of a forthcoming ACRL Virtual Roadshow on OER.
• In addition to the OER Grant Program, Atla now offers grants to members who wish to digitize materials in their archives and special collections for access either through the Atla Digital Library or their own digital platform.

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Scholarly Communication Headlines in 2021

DMCA Rulemaking and Exemptions

Under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), every three years the U.S. Copyright Office issues a notice of inquiry inviting petitions for new exemptions to the DMCA’s prohibition against circumvention of technical protection measures controlling access to copyrighted works. In 2021, pursuant to this process, the Copyright Office renewed and adopted new exemptions. Most notably, during this round of rulemaking, the Office issued a new exemption enabling text data mining research on e-books and films.

Impact on Theological Libraries

Many of the exemptions apply to educational and research contexts, such as permitting the circumvention of DRM on DVDs to digitize short clips of films for use in teaching. It is important for libraries to be aware of what is and isn’t permitted under these exemptions to support the research and teaching activities of their faculty and students.

Further Reading

• The Authors Alliance is responsible for securing the new exemption for text data mining research. Read more about their efforts on their website.
• The U.S. Copyright office provides a guide to the triennial rulemaking process as well as a historical ledger of the last eight triennial rulemaking proceedings.
• Library attorney Jonathan Band provides a summary of the “research-friendly” exemptions issued through this round of rulemaking.

The CASE Act

Last month in the SCOOP we provided a detailed overview of The CASE Act and why libraries need to take note of how it may impact them in the future. We encourage you to revisit that post in case you missed it.

Impact on Theological Libraries

As noted in the original SCOOP post, the CASE Act is a concern for all libraries should library workers remain individually subject to legal action even if their employing library opts out of the CASE Act process. Further, libraries should be prepared to advise their faculty and students on the usage of copyrighted works given the likelihood that rightsholders will avail themselves of this process once in place to litigate any uses they believe infringe their rights.

Further Reading

• Copyright librarians Sara Benson and Timothy Vollmer provide a legal overview of the CASE Act and its implications for libraries in this op-ed published in the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship.
• Listen to this interview with copyright librarian Kate Dickson about the impact the CASE Act will have on those working in libraries.
• You can read all the public comments filed in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at the link shared above, but we recommend that you start with the comment filed by the Library Copyright Alliance.

Clarivate-ProQuest Merger

The announcement that Clarivate intended to acquire ProQuest made headlines throughout the scholarly publishing and library communities. The federal government also took notice, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) initiated an investigation into the proposed merger. The merger was not blocked by the FTC and officially went through at the end of the year.

Impact on Theological Libraries

Whenever there is consolidation in the scholarly communication market, there is a risk of decreased competition and increased cost, which can negatively impact libraries. Libraries are encouraged to continue to invest resources in open infrastructure and other initiatives designed to open up the scholarly communication ecosystem.

Further Reading

• The brief filed by SPARC after the FTC opened its investigation outlines many of the reasons libraries and the scholarly communication community should be concerned about decreases in competition and further corporatization in the scholarly information ecosphere.
• The blog “Invest in Open” provided perspective on why the acquisition in this space is concerning and offered additional reasons why the acquisition should be of concern – namely the introduction of “surveillance capitalism” into the research process.

“Big Deal” Cancelations and Negotiations

In the SCOOP’s 2020 and 2019 year-end recaps, we covered the topic of “big deal” journal package subscription cancelations and negotiations. At the center of these discussions were the negotiations between Elsevier and the University of California system. Again in 2021, these two entities made headlines when they entered into a groundbreaking transformative agreement to facilitate the opening up of University of California research to the global community.

Impact on Theological Libraries

As we have noted in the past, theological libraries affiliated with larger university systems who may be considering similar negotiations or terminations should be aware of what content their patrons access that could be impacted by any big deal terminations. For smaller or stand-alone theological libraries, it is important to be well-versed in open access and the changing nature of scholarly publishing and to prepare to negotiate with publishers for license terms that support the publishing activities of faculty as well as the library’s own budget needs.

Further Reading

• The Scholarly Kitchen covered the latest transaction between Elsevier and the University of California and gave a landscape overview of big deal contracts worldwide.
• ITHAKA S-R provided a research report and recommendations for libraries on navigating this climate of big deal negotiations and transformative agreements.

Continuing Litigation Against Sci-Hub

Publishers have filed lawsuits in several countries against Sci-Hub and its founder to block and shut down the website that has illegally downloaded millions of copyrighted scholarly articles from their publishing domains and offered them freely through the Sci-Hub portal. While many countries have blocked ISPs and access to Sci-Hub, litigation in India took an interesting turn when researchers there intervened in the lawsuit, contending, among other things, that the service does not run afoul of India’s copyright law.

Impact on Theological Libraries

Use of Sci-Hub among students and faculty is well-known and libraries of all types should encourage legal access to copyrighted content and discourage access to services that are in breach of license or subscription agreements as well as of local copyright laws. The outcome of the India litigation is unlikely to impact litigation in the U.S. given the differences in copyright law, but libraries should stay tuned to any developments in this matter.

Further Reading

• Nature speculates on what the India litigation could mean for researchers.
• From India’s educational media, a thorough review of the legal arguments being advanced in favor of Sci-Hub.

Keep Up on News and Trends in Scholarly Communication

To keep up on scholarly communication issues throughout the year, look for the SCOOP column every month on the Atla blog but also consider these useful and informative sources:

• Hosted by Harvard University’s Berkman Center, the Open Access Tracking Project provides a feed of stories and news on open access in a variety of forms (e.g., Twitter, RSS).
• The Journal of Scholarly Communication and Librarianship is an open access peer-reviewed journal publishing articles investigating the modes and technologies of scholarly communication, particularly as relates to libraries.
• The “Scholarly Kitchen” is the blog of the Society of Scholarly Publishers and features posts written by a wide array of authors from both the scholarly publishing and library worlds and that often inform and tantalize readers.

The SCOOP, Scholarly COmmunication and Open Publishing, is a monthly column published to inform Atla members of recent developments, new resources, or interesting stories from the realm of scholarly communication and open access publishing.