A recent editorial in portal: Libraries and the Academy, Who’s to blame for article duplication? raises a few important points and questions –

“The recent discovery of systematic and covert article duplication in Emerald/MCB University Press journals has caused controversy in both academic and publishing circles. […] it is even more disturbing for me to realize that a great many articles were duplicated within library science journals. The fact that this happened on our own watch and on our own turf calls into question librarians’ ability to manage our own literature, let alone the literature of others.”

How much do we know about scholarly publishing, and about LIS publishing in particular? Recently, I read a comment on an elist that named a couple of publishers as being ones writers should avoid due to their copyright and ownership policies. How does one find this information out? We hear anecdotes of good and bad experiences, but there is no clearinghouse of ‘good’ publishers, no central list of ownership policies. In this context, already-limited and propriety tools like citation indexes are no use. If we don’t know this information, being those who spend the most time considering journals, how can other writers?

While librarians have been putting pressure on college faculty to reconsider their support (as editors, reviewers, and authors) for journals that do not sustain the interests of the academy, it does make one wonder whether librarians are practicing what they preach. It would be much too easy to point blame entirely at the publisher’s behavior and absolve ourselves of any guilt and responsibility.

For me, this raises the question – how many librarians are embracing Open Access enough to only publish in journals that have favourable conditions for authors? How many are advocating for a LIS pledge, like the one for law writers? How many are abandoning the old hierarchies of LIS publications, caring not so much about which title will give the most respect, but which will give the most access?