LPC Blog

The Library Publishing Coalition Blog is used to share news and updates about the LPC and the Library Publishing Forum, to draw attention to items of interest to the community, and to publish informal commentaries by LPC members and friends.

March 9, 2022

Announcing the new LPC Board members and Bylaws Update Approval

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Thank you to everyone who voted in this year’s LPC election. We know that things like this can seem small and insignificant in our busy schedules, but submitting a ballot ensures that the LPC can continue functioning smoothly to support library publishers like you!

LPC Board Election Results
Thank you to everyone who ran for the LPC Board this year. The incoming Board members, with terms running from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2025, are:

  • Perry Collins, University of Florida
  • Kevin Hawkins, University of North Texas
  • Amanda Hurford, PALNI
  • Janet Swatscheno, University of Illinois Chicago

They will join the returning Board members:

  • Emma Molls, University of Minnesota, emolls@umn.edu (2020-2023), President
  • Christine Fruin, Atla, cfruin@atla.com (Ex officio Past President)
  • Justin Gonder, California Digital Library, justin.gonder@ucop.edu (2021-2024)
  • Jessica Kirschner, Virginia Commonwealth University, kirschnerj2@vcu.edu (2020-2023)
  • Ally Laird, Penn State University, alaird@psu.edu (2020-2023)
  • Willa Tavernier, Indiana University, wtavern@iu.edu (2021-2024)
  • Melanie Schlosser, Educopia Institute, melanie@educopia.org (Ex officio Community Facilitator)

The Library Publishing Coalition Board oversees the governance, organizational structure, Bylaws, and the review and direction of the membership of the Library Publishing Coalition. As your elected representatives, you are welcome to contact them at any time with questions, comments, or suggestions for LPC.

LPC Bylaws Update
This year’s election was especially important as we worked to update the LPC Bylaws to ensure they are in accordance with our current organization, activities, and values in practice. The Bylaws are our organizational governance document, outlining what the organization is and how it is run. While the Board reviews the document annually, proposed changes accumulate until they reach a significant quantity or bear a significant impact on the daily activities of the organization. The LPC Bylaws were last updated in May 2017.

Thanks to everyone who voted, we surpassed the required 75% threshold of member institutions voting in favor. Thus, the proposed changes are approved and have gone into effect. You can find the new bylaws on the LPC Website’s About page.

Library Publishing Workflows. Educopia Institute. Library Publishing Coalition. Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.
March 2, 2022

Workflow for One

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post in our Library Publishing Workflow Evolution series, featuring reflections from our Library Publishing Workflows partners on how journal publishing workflows at their libraries have evolved over time. You can see the full documentation on the Library Publishing Workflows page.

By Michelle Wilson, writing about her experiences at Columbia University Libraries

Columbia University Libraries’ Digital Scholarship division publishes around thirty open access journal titles. We publish in a variety of disciplines (including medicine, law, history, bioethics, musicology) and support both faculty and student-led projects. Our program has been around for over a decade and, like many, has undergone a variety of changes in administration, staffing, and mission. At present, that mission, the day to day work, and the workflows we employ are set by me, as the sole staff member who works on journals at our library. But the program wasn’t always a one-woman show, and the shape of our workflow today has been influenced by the systems that came before and my experiences of stepping into a program in transition when I was hired in 2018. 

Before there was a Digital Scholarship division at Columbia University Libraries, there was the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS). Part of a system of four “Digital Centers” on campus, CDRS was the development and publishing hub, the endpoint for the dissemination of research in a constellation that included Digital Science, Digital Social Science, and Digital Humanities centers. Around 2016, the digital centers were dissolved and the services they had provided were transferred to a new Digital Scholarship unit under the auspices of the University Libraries. 

A diverse project portfolio with bespoke services

CDRS was collaborative and experimented widely. The Digital Scholarship division now manages a wide array of projects developed during the CDRS era, including digital companions to books published by our university press, a bibliographic encyclopedia of female film production pioneers, and a digital commentary on Dante’s Divine Comedy. CDRS also pioneered the open access journals program at Columbia, which came under my (nearly sole) purview when I was hired as the Digital Publishing Librarian. 

Reflecting the same spirit of experimentation that led to a diverse project portfolio, the journals program I inherited utilized a variety of levels of service and publishing technologies. Most journals were published on WordPress, with a few using OJS as a submissions platform, and one journal fully utilizing OJS as an editorial and publishing software. Journals had varying levels of autonomy or reliance on the program. Most were required to meet only once a year with the journals project manager, while one medical journal was a clear standout in receiving extensive custom development, vendor services and production management, APC processing, and consultation. This particular medical journal was the flagship for the program but, although it was undoubtedly a success in library publishing, the attention and time it required meant that everyone else was lagging behind. 

Quote from Michelle Wilson: Looking at the workflow diagram that emerged from the LPW project, I see a reflection of some of the tension I feel in running a program whose operations are overseen end to end by one person while wanting to provide for individualization. Program management has become a careful balancing act, melding standardization and systemization with a personal touch that would permit journals to exercise freedom with regard to their community building, decision making, and editorial processes.

I really struggled to find my footing within this landscape, where there was so much variation in terms of partner expectations as well as infrastructure management. CDRS had a dedicated staff of developers, project managers, and media production specialists overseeing the development of digital projects. Under the new organization, the developers and project managers were absorbed into centralized IT and digital project management units at the Libraries. This meant that I had to compete with other programs for developer time and be strategic and sparing in choosing the softwares I could support. Even having only two publishing softwares used in different combinations made it challenging to respond to development requests, provide technical support, and train partners. The demands of one journal meant that a hands-off approach needed to be taken with most of the other partners, and that left them vulnerable to inculcating poor practice or, especially in the case of fledgling projects and student-led efforts, frustration and lack of momentum that often ended in the folding of the publication. To address these twin pressure points—concern about labor and workload as well as praxis and equity in distributing library services—I decided to heavily standardize the program.

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