LPC News

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.

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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.

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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.

April 19, 2021

LPC welcomes a new strategic affiliate: CLOCKSS

The Library Publishing Coalition is delighted to welcome CLOCKSS as a new strategic affiliate! A statement from CLOCKSS:

We are looking forward to working with LPC and the LPC community!

A collaboration of the world’s leading academic publishers and research libraries, CLOCKSS provides a sustainable dark archive to ensure the long-term survival of Web-based scholarly content.

CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS) employs a unique approach to archiving (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) that was initiated by Stanford University librarians in 1999. Digital content is stored in the CLOCKSS archive with no user access unless a “trigger” event occurs. The LOCKSS technology regularly checks the validity of the stored data and preserves it for the long term. CLOCKSS operates 12 archive nodes at leading academic institutions worldwide, preserving the authoritative versions of 43 million journal articles, over 25,000 serial and 240,000 book titles, and a growing collection of supplementary materials and metadata information. As of March 2020, 64 titles have been triggered and made available from our archive via open access. CLOCKSS participants include 300 libraries and 400 publishers.

This secure, robust, and decentralized infrastructure can withstand threats from technological, economic, environmental, and political failures. A destructive event in one location won’t jeopardize the survival of preserved digital content because the 11 other locations serve as mirror sites to back-up and repair the disrupted location’s archive.

CLOCKSS is governed by and for its stakeholders. Our operations are governed by a Board of Directors with an equal number of librarians and publishers making decisions together about policies, procedures, priorities, and when to trigger content. As an independent, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization, CLOCKSS is committed to keeping its fees affordable, for libraries and publishers of all sizes and budgets to participate in CLOCKSS. Low operating costs make it possible to keep this commitment. As a long-term preservation organization, CLOCKSS believes that a robust Succession Plan is required. In the unlikely event of the demise of CLOCKSS, four of our twelve library nodes have committed to continuing the preservation of the content in the Archive.

As the only dark archive that assigns a Creative Commons license to all triggered digital content, CLOCKSS benefits the greater global scholarly community by enabling permanent Open Access to abandoned and orphaned publications. As a result, recovered content becomes perpetually available to anyone with Internet access.

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.

April 7, 2021

Participate in this year’s Research Interests Match Program!

LPC’s annual Research Interests Match Program connects individuals interested in finding collaborators for research projects, conference proposals, and more. After filling out a short form, participants are matched based on research interests and given an initial introduction. 

If you are interested in being matched with someone who shares your research interests, fill out the Library Publishing Research Interests Match Form by May 17, 2021. Looking to get involved in research but don’t have a specific topic in mind? There’s a question that allows you to choose a topic from the Library Publishing Research Agenda!

In June, the LPC Research Committee will match participants based on their research interests and provide an initial email introduction for matches. The Program encourages matched participants to connect and discuss shared research interests, but participants are under no obligation to start a collaboration or project. All form responses will be made publicly available to enable further connections. 

This is a new annual program organized around the Library Publishing Forum, so a new form will be issued each spring, and the previous year’s responses will be retired when the new year’s are released. 

This resource was developed by the LPC Research Committee, and modeled on the Research Interests Match for Residents and Early Career Librarians, developed by the ACRL Residency Interest Group. Email contact@librarypublishing.org with questions. 

March 22, 2021

LPC Statement Supporting Asian Americans and Asians

The Library Publishing Coalition stands together with the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), the American Library Association’s Executive Board, the Black Caucus of ALA, and other librarians, library institutions, and library users in recognizing and condemning anti-Asian hate crimes in the US and elsewhere. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in discrimination, hate speech and rhetoric, and violence towards Asian Americans, continuing a long history of violence, scapegoating, stereotyping, and exclusion of Asian Americans and Asians in the US. As noted in the statement from ALA, library and information workers must combat cultural bias and bigotry in their work, and in this vein LPC has recently published a roadmap to taking accountable actions for the LPC itself and its member organizations. LPC pledges to combat hate and ignorance and to take anti-racist action in its own community and in collaboration with other information and publishing professionals. In this instance, we direct colleagues looking to take action to resources to combat Anti-Asian violence.

Library Publishing Coalition Diversity and Inclusion Task Force

Library Publishing Coalition Board of Directors

March 3, 2021

New LPC Board members elected

The nine-member Library Publishing Coalition Board oversees the governance, organizational structure, bylaws, and the review and direction of the membership of the Library Publishing Coalition. We have three newly elected Board members, with terms running from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2024:

• Justin Gonder, California Digital Library (2021-2024)
• Willa Tavernier, Indiana University (2021-2024)
• Sarah Wipperman, Villanova University (2021-2024)

They will join the returning Board members:

• Karen Bjork, Portland State University (2019-2022)
• Christine Fruin, Atla (2019-2022)
• Jessica Kirschner, Virginia Commonwealth University (2020-2023)
• Ally Laird, Penn State University (2020-2023)
• Emma Molls, University of Minnesota (2020-2023)
• Jody Bailey, Emory University, jody.bailey@emory.edu (ex officio Past President)
• Melanie Schlosser, Educopia Institute, melanie@educopia.org (ex officio Community Facilitator)

Note: Sarah Hare is stepping down from the Board a year early. We will fill her spot as usual next year. 

Many thanks to outgoing Board members Vanessa Gabler, Scott Warren, and Sarah Hare for their service!