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.

June 22, 2021

Publishing Practice Award: University of Cape Town Libraries

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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.

Image of UCT Publishing Programme Staff. Emma de Doncker, Tamzyn Suliaman, Bonga Siyothula, Reggie Raju, Faaediel Latief, Jill Claassen
Pictured top left to bottom right: Emma de Doncker, Tamzyn Suliaman, Bonga Siyothula, Reggie Raju, Faadiel Latief, and Jill Claassen

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.

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June 22, 2021

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

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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

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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.

Publishing Practice Award sealThe 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 21, 2021

2021 Library Publishing Forum videos and slides

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Did you miss a session at the virtual 2021 Library Publishing Forum? Maybe want to see one again? Here’s your chance!

We’ve been busy in the past few weeks gathering videos, slides, etc., from our second virtual Forum and linking to them from the Forum page on our website.  Though not all sessions are available, an incredible number are, so this is a great time to watch.

Our thanks to presenters for allowing us to share and to all attendees and presenters for making this a successful online event!

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June 16, 2021

Transitions: standing on the shoulders of librarians

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Transitions is an occasional series where community members reflect on the things they have learned while moving from one institution to another or one role to another. 

By Monica Westin, Google Scholar partnerships lead / technical program manager

In the spring of 2014, I left a PhD program in classical rhetoric to try out a career in scholarly communication. I was immediately hooked by what I saw as unsolved problems in the ecosystem and the potential impact of making academic research easier to access. Except for a brief stint at HighWire Press, I spent the following four years in the institutional repository and library publishing space, first at bepress and then at CDL’s eScholarship, the University of California’s system-wide repository and publishing platform. 

One Monday in November 2018, three days after leaving my job as publications manager for the library publishing program at the CDL, I started a new role as the program manager for partnerships at Google Scholar. The past two and a half years have been eye-opening.

I have three strong memories from my first week. The first is knowing I had made the right decision to take the job when my new boss, Google Scholar co-founder and director Anurag Acharya, described the mission of Scholar to me in our first meeting: that “no matter the accident of your birth,” he told me, you should be able to know about all the papers written in any research field you might want to enter. What you did with that knowledge was up to you. 

My second memory is the expression on Anurag’s face when I admitted I didn’t really understand what robots.txt instructions did. “Goal: be more technical!” I wrote in my notebook that afternoon after spending hours looking up basic web indexing protocol information on Wikipedia. I don’t think he looked quite as disappointed as I remember, but I knew that I could no longer get away with not knowing how things worked. 

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June 15, 2021

Call for applications for 2021-2023 LPC Fellowship Program

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We’re excited to announce a call for applications for the third round of the LPC Fellowship Program. The fellowship program is intended to broaden access to library publishing to underrepresented groups, to develop research capacity in the field, and to bring new voices into the LPC community. This round of the fellowship program is centered around research, and it is aimed at library publishers who are interested in learning to do research that advances the field of library publishing. Fellowship benefits and responsibilities are scoped accordingly. Fellowships span 2 years, beginning in October 2021 and ending in September 2023. Up to two fellows will be selected. Applications are due by Monday, August 9, 2021.

LPC Fellows receive numerous benefits, including access to LPC member resources, travel support to attend the Library Publishing Forum each year of the fellowship, mentorship, and regular meetings with LPC staff and leadership. To support their research activities, this round of fellows will be provided with targeted mentorship relationships and professional development and peer support around research through LPC’s Research Committee.

Fellows are expected to undertake a research project in the field of library publishing, which they will work on throughout their fellowship. Applicants are not expected to have a research project in mind or experience doing research prior to starting the program. Fellows will serve as members of the LPC Research Committee, where they will both contribute to and benefit from that committee’s work. Fellows will write 2 to 3 blog posts per year for the LPC blog (previous posts can be found in the Fellows Journal category on the blog) and present at the 2022 and 2023 Library Publishing Forums. For more details about the fellowship, visit the program webpage or email contact@librarypublishing.org. 

Eligibility

Candidates should be:

  • Currently employed in a library that is not a member of the Library Publishing Coalition
  • Able to dedicate 1 to 2 hours per week to the fellowship throughout the 2 years
  • Interested in developing research skills
  • Able to attend meetings during North American business hours

Selection Process

Fellows will be selected by the Board based on the following criteria:

  • Strong candidates will have professional responsibilities related to library publishing in their current position, which could include running a publishing program or developing a new program. 
  • Strong candidates will have a demonstrated commitment to professional development in library publishing or scholarly communication. Candidates who are interested in sharing the knowledge and experience they gain during their fellowship with other professional communities will be prioritized.
  • Strong candidates will bring new perspectives to the LPC community. Candidates from underrepresented groups or regions that do not yet have professional communities related to library publishing will be especially competitive. 
  • Fellows will be expected to communicate with the LPC community through writing and presenting. Strong communication skills are required. 

Applications are due Monday, August 9, 2021, and all applicants will be notified by September 30th. Applications will include:

  • An application form (demographic info, etc.)
  • A C.V.
  • A writing sample
  • A letter of support from library dean or supervisor (as appropriate)

Learn more and apply at: https://librarypublishing.org/get-involved/lpc-fellowship-program/

June 14, 2021

LPC welcomes a new member: the University of Oklahoma

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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

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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.

LPC Strategic Affiliates icon

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June 8, 2021

Intersections: Connecting and Collaborating – Reflections of a Consortial Library Publisher

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Intersections is an occasional series where community members reflect on what they are seeing in other parts of their professional world and what library publishers can learn from it. 

By Amanda Hurford, Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI)

A conference icebreaker recently posed the question: How do you describe your job to someone who has no idea what it is that you do? For me, this can be a difficult question to answer since working for a library consortium falls outside the boundaries of traditional librarianship.  So, when I describe what I do to someone who knows nothing of the world of library consortia, I typically say something like: “I work for a non-profit organization that connects people and works together to develop services at private college libraries across Indiana.” 

My actual job title is Scholarly Communications Director for the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI). For the last four years, I’ve been working to develop a scholarly communications community of practice by connecting with a group of engaged librarians across the 24 PALNI-supported institutions.  We created a Schol Comm advisory group, led by a steering committee, and driven with the efforts of several work-focused teams administering programs for the consortium.  Some specific projects have been developing an open source consortial institutional repository (Hyku for Consortia), establishing our group affordable learning program (PALSave), statewide digitization of scarcely held resources (PALNI Last Copies), and finally, operationalizing publishing services for the PALNI Press.

When I started this position, I was excited for a change of pace and to work at a statewide scale.  As a former metadata and digital collections librarian, the concepts of consortia and scholarly communication were generally familiar to me.  But it’s been a whirlwind of learning about the growing consortial involvement in that space, and a significant shift, for me, working so collaboratively in every phase of a project.

For library publishers, here are some important things to know about consortia:

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June 2, 2021

Intersections: Library Publishing and Scholarly Societies

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Intersections is an occasional series where community members reflect on what they are seeing in other parts of their professional world and what library publishers can learn from it. 

By Lauren B. Collister, Director, Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, University of Pittsburgh Library System, lbcollister@pitt.edu, @parnopaeus

Many people who come to librarianship have a background in a particular discipline of scholarship. In my case, this disciplinary experience is not just in the past, but rather an ongoing engagement with a scholarly discipline through work for a scholarly society. This work not only gives me insight into the lived experiences of scholars in my discipline who are attempting to carry out the open scholarship and publishing practices that we in the Library Publishing community often advocate for, but also presents opportunities for me to share resources and knowledge that can help the society and its members with their work. I hope that by sharing my experience with one scholarly society, I can inspire other people in our field to consider engaging with a disciplinary scholarly society as a way to not only develop and hone your own skills, but also to bring the practices and values of the library publishing community to the disciplines.

In my case, my scholarly background is in linguistics, and the scholarly society for linguists in the United States is the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). I was a student member during my PhD days; not only was I involved as a local host for the conference when it was in Pittsburgh, but I also took advantage of several of the training workshops as well as the job listings. When I transitioned to library work in 2013 with a new position in the library publishing program at the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, my membership in the society lapsed for a few years because I was very busy learning about my new job. However, when I heard that the LSA was planning its 2016 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., and that part of the conference would include an Advocacy Day at the Capitol and meetings with Senators and Representatives, I was excited to sign up again to go back to the LSA conference.

The opportunity to advocate for linguistics, the discipline where I first felt like a scholar, was what drew me back to the Society, and while at the Annual Meeting I discovered another opportunity: the newly-formed Committee on Scholarly Communication in Linguistics. I attended the first meeting and immediately signed up. As a Scholarly Communications Librarian with a PhD in Linguistics, what more perfect service opportunity could there be?

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