Indiana University's Office of the Vice President for Information Technology has released Empowering People: Indiana University's Strategic Plan for Information Technology 2009.
Of particular interest is section "C12 Recapturing the Scholarly Record," which starts on page 35.
Here's an excerpt:
As a grand-challenge domain IU has limited ability to unilaterally affect scholarly communication models. IU does, however, have great opportunities to lead like-minded institutions and other stakeholders in collective efforts to pioneer new models. These may include partnerships and consortia with other universities that are also examining such directions, new relationships with publishers and the commercial sector, and new approaches for engagement with professional associations to help achieve mutual aims.
One area for exploration is the possibility of a publishing infrastructure that is owned (or managed as a back-office production contract) by colleges and universities. This "Big Digital Machine" could provide efficiencies and economies of scale as a means for professional societies, journal editors, university presses, and others to produce, distribute, and preserve their scholarly communications without a need to put university and commercial values in conflict. There are many questions regarding the feasibility, funding model, and efficacy of a universities-owned Big Digital Machine, and any such capability would need to be able to support a diverse set of journal funding and subscription models, for-fee and open access for monographs, and other means that afford business-model control to each scholarly community. There is evidence for reasoned optimism in this approach, however, as many community source software development projects, library consortia, and other higher education collaborations have demonstrated that a cooperative approach can achieve economy-of-scale efficiencies while respecting and preserving institutional values.
