Posts by Nancy Adams

July 12, 2021

Kudos to the 2020-21 Program Committee!

The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.

* * * * * * * * * *

This Kudos recognizes Justin Gonder (California Digital Library), Sonya Betz (University of Alberta), Jason Boczar (University of South Florida), A.J. Boston (Murray State University), Robin Bedenbaugh (University of Tennessee), Jane Buggle (Dublin Business School), Johanna Meetz (The Ohio State University), Regina Raboin (University of Massachusetts Medical School), David Scherer (Carnegie Mellon University), and Lauren Collister (University of Pittsburgh) for their outstanding work on the 2021 Library Publishing Forum.

Congratulations to the Program Committee for their work on our first-ever born-virtual Library Publishing Forum! They put together a stellar program (including a number of presentations from colleagues outside of North America) and their thoughtful hosting gave this all-virtual event a human touch. Kudos!

A few comments from Program Committee members:

It was a challenging time to be on a committee planning a conference, but with a group of people this dedicated to getting it done and getting it done well, it turned out to be an incredibly rewarding experience. I can’t wait to see all these incredible humans in person next year.

—Robin Bedenbaugh

I’m proud of the two virtual programs our committee put together and am thankful for the opportunity to connect with the community in this way. We love to see it. Five out of five bloody stars. Would attend again.

—A.J. Boston

It was an honor for me to be involved in the organization of this international Virtual Forum, to be part of the dynamic Program team, and to have had the opportunity to attend the great range of inspiring presentations.

—Jane Buggle

It was exciting to leverage the online nature of this year’s Forum to include a broader, more diverse set of presenters and attendees, and to experiment with new ways of connecting our global library publishing community!

—Justin Gonder

I have been working and collaborating with the LPC Program Planning Committee and Educopia since Spring 2019 and by far it has been the most rewarding committee experience I’ve had in my career! The collegiality, innovation, and dedication to creating the best conference experience for attendees is unparalleled – and I’m proud to be a part of this team.

—Regina Raboin

The committee has much more to say about the Forum: to support other organizations that are interested in hosting thought-provoking, humane events on a shoestring, the Program Committee (and Educopia staff) are working on a series of blog posts that pull back the curtain on how and what it was like to plan and run the virtual Forum. Watch for the series later this month! 

This Kudos was submitted by Melanie Schlosser.

June 22, 2021

Publishing Practice Award: University of Cape Town Libraries

Diversity, equity, and inclusion driving UCT Libraries publishing

by Jill Claasen, Manager, Scholarly Communication & Research, UCT Libraries, and Reggie Raju, Director, Research & Learning, UCT Libraries

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge the LPC Publishing Practice Award Committee for recognizing the contribution of the University of Cape Town’s library publishing programme to the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusivity. Drawing from the University’s social responsiveness goal, the Library shaped its publishing programme on social justice imperatives in an attempt to deconstruct decades of legislated inequalities entrenched in the system of apartheid.

South Africa is a fledgling democracy that has endured decades of apartheid which compartmentalized higher education, with the historically disadvantaged black institutions being dramatically under resourced (Raju et al., 2020). UCT Libraries has taken the stance that historically advantaged institutions should have a moral obligation to share scholarly content for the advancement of research in the country as a whole and for the greater good of the public. The view held is that the sharing of scholarly output will have a domino effect of accelerating the growth of research in South Africa and Africa. Hence, UCT Libraries’ roll-out of a social justice[1] driven library publishing service to further diversity, equity and inclusivity.

(more…)

June 22, 2021

Publishing Practice Award: University of Texas at Arlington Libraries – Mavs Open Press

Growing Together: Implementing Accessibility Practices into OER Workflows

by Michelle Reed, Assistant Professor and Head of the Scholarly Commons, University Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (@LibrariansReed); Brittany Griffiths, Publishing Specialist, UTA Libraries; Alexandra Pirkle, Editorial Services Coordinator, UTA Libraries, Katie Willeford, Interim Directory of OER and Learning Resources Librarian (@utalibraries)

Mavs Open Press, operated by the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries (UTA Libraries), offers no-cost services for UTA faculty, staff, and students who wish to openly publish their scholarship. The Libraries’ program provides human and technological resources that empower our communities to create or adapt open educational resources (OER). Course materials published by Mavs Open Press are openly licensed using Creative Commons licenses to allow for revision and reuse and are offered in various digital formats free of charge.

Mavs Open Press has proactively addressed accessibility and inclusion in our work through our OER training program, implementation of accessibility checks throughout the publishing process, and development of an accessibility statement and workflow. The Applied Fluid Mechanics Lab Manual was the first grant-funded OER published by Mavs Open Press and was instrumental in informing how accessibility is integrated into OER publishing at UTA.

(more…)

June 22, 2021

Announcing the 2021 Publishing Practice Award Recipients

The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) is excited to announce the recipients of the 2021 Publishing Practice Awards! Congratulations to the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries – Mavs Open Press for exemplary work in the category of Accessibility, and to the University of Cape Town Libraries for exemplary work in the category of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

The Publishing Practice Awards are designed to recognize and raise awareness of effective and sustainable library publishing practices. They highlight library publishing programs that exemplify concepts advanced in LPC’s An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing and in LPC’s Values statement. While a representative publication is acknowledged, the focus of these awards is not on the publication’s content, but rather on the process of publishing the piece. The inaugural award categories for 2021 are Accessibility and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

(more…)

June 14, 2021

LPC welcomes a new member: the University of Oklahoma

Please join us in welcoming the University of Oklahoma as a new member of the Library Publishing Coalition. The voting rep is Jen Waller, jenwaller@ou.edu.

A statement from the University of Oklahoma:

University of Oklahoma (OU) Libraries offers journal hosting for faculty-driven, open access publications. Their scholarly publishing services team – Jen Waller, Nicholas Wojcik, Sara Huber, and Catherine Byrd – works with OU-affiliated stakeholders to create new journals or migrate existing journals to their library-hosted OJS platform. OU Libraries provides a suite of services to seven (very soon to be nine) journals and are committed to hosting journals that cover diverse, unique, and underrepresented fields and topics. The team also works on OER publishing and supporting OU’s institutional repository, SHAREOK.

June 10, 2021

LPC welcomes a new strategic affiliate: ARL

The Library Publishing Coalition is delighted to welcome the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) as a new strategic affiliate!

About ARL:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in Canada and the US whose mission is to advance research, learning, and scholarly communication. The Association fosters the open exchange of ideas and expertise; advances diversity, equity, and inclusion; and pursues advocacy and public policy efforts that reflect the values of the library, scholarly, and higher education communities. ARL forges partnerships and catalyzes the collective efforts of research libraries to enable knowledge creation and to achieve enduring and barrier-free access to information. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.

Strategic affiliates are peer membership associations who have a focal area in scholarly communications and substantial engagement with libraries, publishers, or both. See our list of strategic affiliates or learn more about the program.