Day/Time/Room
June 18, 2026 |9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. | HUB 250
Title: From Practice to Profession: Advancing Open Education’s Place in Scholarly Publishing and Academic Recognition
Presenters:
- Amanda Larson, AERI Program Coordinator, She, Her, Hers, The Ohio State University
- Chelsee Dickson, Assistant Director of Academic Engagement and Instruction, Scholarly Publishing & Research, Kennesaw State University, she, her, hers
Description: Open education work—particularly where it intersects with library publishing, open access, OER creation, and open pedagogy—plays an increasingly visible role in how libraries support teaching, learning, and scholarly communication. While this work is widely valued, approaches to describing, supporting, and recognizing open education roles and contributions vary across institutions and contexts.
This Birds-of-a-Feather session will bring together library publishers, open education practitioners, scholars, and collaborators for an informal, facilitated conversation about how open education work is understood, supported, and sustained within library publishing ecosystems. The first portion of the session will focus on surfacing how participants currently navigate recognition and legitimacy for open education work within existing institutional and professional structures, drawing on lived experience in their professional roles.
The second half of the session will turn toward collective reflection and possibility. Participants will discuss what it could look like for professional communities and groups like the emerging Open Education Association to serve as convening spaces for shared learning, visibility, and coordination. Rather than proposing fixed frameworks, the conversation will center on identifying common values, open questions, and areas where collaboration could help professionalize the field of open education in relation to open publishing.
The session will be guided by structured prompts, group discussion, and a Padlet facilitating collective note-taking to highlight themes, tensions, and opportunities. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how peers across the library publishing and open education communities are approaching professional recognition in open publishing, as well as a shared set of questions, considerations, and conversation starters that can inform future collaboration at local, regional, and national levels.