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.
It’s time to nominate yourself or a colleague for the 2020 LPC Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing! LPC’s Research Committee is accepting nominations for the award until January 19th. Nominated publications must present original research, theory, or practice, and must have been published during the 2019 calendar year.
The Library Publishing Coalition was originally founded as a membership organization for North American libraries involved in publishing. After a couple of years, when we had our feet firmly under us, we opened up membership to libraries around the world. Since then, we have welcomed a handful of members from Europe and Australia, and have been thrilled to include them in the community. However, given our small size, lean staffing and infrastructure, and our continued geographical center of gravity in the U.S. (where the staff and the majority of our member libraries can be found), we remain primarily a North American community.
We are also deeply committed to participating in the growing international community of library publishers. [1] Over the last couple of years, LPC’s Board has carefully considered various strategies for international engagement. In a typically strategic move, the Board has decided to focus our efforts on supporting and participating in the new Library Publishing Special Interest Group (SIG) within the International Federation of Library Associations. Over the next two years, we will be partnering with the new SIG on two projects:
To support this partnership, LPC has joined IFLA as a library membership organization and has committed to sending representatives to international library publishing-related events (including the annual IFLA conference and any mid-term meetings organized by the SIG). We have also invited the SIG to appoint an official liaison to our community, who will help ensure regular communication and coordination between our two organizations. We are delighted to welcome former LPC Fellow Reggie Raju as the first IFLA SIG liaison to LPC. Melanie Schlosser will serve as the primary liaison to the SIG from LPC. Interested in supporting any of these efforts? Please reach out to Melanie (melanie@educopia.org) to find out where volunteers are needed.
We are very excited to have this opportunity to participate in the important work of building the international community of library publishers!
1. See Objective 2.4 of our 5-year strategic plan: https://librarypublishing.org/about/#strategic-plan
The LPC Program Committee is pleased to announce that our keynote speaker for the 2020 Library Publishing Forum is Claire Redhead, Executive Director of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
About Claire: Claire has an editorial background and 20 years experience of the scholarly publishing industry, beginning with a series of positions in UK publishing houses covering all aspects of academic journal and book publishing. Claire joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2012, initially responsible for managing membership and communications for the organisation. Quickly taking the lead to develop and grow OASPA during this time, Claire was appointed Executive Director in 2016. Claire is responsible for overseeing OASPA’s annual conference and program of webinars, works closely with the OASPA board and its members, and sits on a number of industry working groups and committees to represent the views of the open access publishing community. OASPA is an international association with over 140 member organisations that focus on open access publishing or provide supporting services and infrastructure in this space.
The Library Publishing Coalition seeks to collaboratively approach major scholarly communications challenges and implement solutions for the community. OASPA is a strategic affiliate of the LPC in this work, and we welcome the opportunity to learn from Claire about the mission of the association and new policy developments in scholarly publishing and open access. The international perspective and diversity of views represented by OASPA will be critical to our conversations and our goals for the 2020 Forum.
Check out our latest Quarterly Update! It includes:
By Kate McCready & Melanie Schlosser
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“It’s one of the strengths of the field that its aspirational reach is grounded by the day-to-day work of publishing, and that its day-to-day activities are clearly linked to such transformative goals. The field’s combination of the two threads, vision and practicality, creates the potential for success.”
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The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) Membership Meeting isn’t a typical business meeting. It is held annually at the Library Publishing Forum, but instead of sharing information about the Coalition’s work or conducting organizational business, we gather as a community to discuss timely, relevant topics. All conference attendees—both members and nonmembers—are invited and encouraged to participate, giving voice to different perspectives.
On May 10, 2019, Forum attendees took advantage of this unique framework to explore a fundamental, and timely, question about the field of library publishing: “What’s our end game?” We explored why we engage in this work. As expected, our deeper dive below the surface of library publishing identified a wide variety of motivations and goals for our work as scholarly publishers and got us thinking about what that means for our organization and for our field.
It was a transformative year for the broader scholarly communications landscape. Individual institutions and consortia made news with collection development negotiations that produced transformative agreements or big deal cancellations (e.g., University of California’s termination of negotiations with Elsevier, and the “read and publish” deal between MIT and the Royal Society of Chemistry). Funders proposed bold requirements in Plan S to make content openly available. Many organizations focused on scholarly communications, such as SPARC, set agendas and spoke out about the need for change. Faculty and campus administrators turned out in record numbers to debate the sustainability of the current scholarly communications model, and the higher ed media was paying attention. Those activities inspired conversations throughout academia and library publishing emerged as a possible (though nascent) alternative to current models.
Against this backdrop, it felt more important than ever to articulate the motivations for, and ultimate purposes of, our shared work.
This post is part of a running series on the Library Publishing Workflows (LPW) project, which is investigating and modeling journal publishing workflows in libraries. LPW is a collaboration between the Library Publishing Coalition, Educopia Institute, and twelve partner libraries, and is generously funded by an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant. See all posts in the series.
One of the key goals of Library Publishing Workflows is capturing a diversity of workflows from different types of institutions with different goals and methods. We want to introduce each of the libraries and their project representatives, who will be working with us over the next two years to document, analyze, and share the publishing workflow(s) they are employing.
Based in Edmonton, Canada, the University of Alberta Library supports open, sustainable, and responsible models for ensuring a healthy and robust scholarly communications ecosystem. We hope that our participation in this project will enable us to contribute meaningfully to a shared understanding of common workflows, best practices, and documentation to help libraries demonstrate viable models for community owned, scholar-driven academic publishing.
Sonya Betz, Head of Library Publishing and Digital Production Services, has been working with the UofA’s open publishing program since 2015.
Established in 1982, the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library serves the nation’s largest consortium of historically black colleges and universities, which includes Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College, and Spelman College. AUC Woodruff Library is involved in this project to capture and refine our current workflow(s) and learn how we can improve our library publishing services as we grow and adopt new publishing platforms.
The main library representative for this project is Josh Hogan, Assistant Head of Digital Services, who is heavily involved with assisting current journal editors and staff as well as reaching out to potential new journals in the AUC community.
Our project advisory board bring diverse expertise and experience in library publishing, scholarly communication, and library infrastructure. The advisors will provide advice and feedback at all phases of the project. We are excited to introduce our awesome advisors!
Cheryl is Director of the Digital Publishing Collaborative at Wayne State University Libraries, where she is building a digital publishing pedagogy based on open-access and multimedia-driven work. She is the Project Director for Vega, an open-source academic publishing platform, and serves as the executive director of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Since 2006, Ball has been lead editor of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, which exclusively publishes scholarly multimedia, from which she founded KairosCamp, a series of institutes to teach scholars, editors, and publishers how to produce and publish digital (humanities) projects.
Cheryl brings extensive experience in diverse publishing roles and initiatives to support this project. She will draw upon her experience in these areas to assist project partners to develop research strategies relevant to library publishers and bring these much-needed insights to the library publishing ecosystem.
Rachel is Executive Director, Research Library Partnership, OCLC, overseeing OCLC’s work and engagement with the Research Library Partnership, a venue for research libraries to undertake significant, innovative, collective action to benefit libraries, scholars and researchers everywhere.
Rachel has nearly 20 years of broad-based library experience, including senior positions at the Digital Public Library of America, the Digital Library Federation at the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the University of Richmond.
At a time when commercial publishers are seeking control of the entire research lifecycle, this scaffolding for open publishing is increasingly important and potentially transformative.
This proposed work comes at a strategic moment for OCLC, as we investigate ways to best leverage our collections infrastructure to support libraries’ investment in open content. It is a great opportunity to be involved in this project as an advisory board member project.”
Kari is the Institute Archivist and Program Head, Digital Archives at the MIT Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kari works to collect, make accessible and preserve for the future the Research output, Faculty papers, and Administrative records that document MIT’s engagement with the world and it’s academic and research missions. Kari previously served as the BitCurator Consortium President and member of the Executive Committee, and on the ArchivesSpace Technical Advisory Committee, and she serves on the SAA Research Forum Program Committee. She teaches on the Digital Preservation Management Workshops series and researches how creating durable documents and information forms can lead to a more complete historical record.
As a project advisor, Kari’s extensive experience in developing archives and library workflows and infrastructure will help inform the cohort creation and development of the project. She was also a partner participant in Educopia Institute’s OSSArcFlow Project, and brings valuable insights from that process.
The Library Publishing Forum is an annual conference bringing together representatives from libraries engaged in (or considering) publishing initiatives to define and address major questions and challenges; to identify and document collaborative opportunities; and to strengthen and promote this community of practice. The Forum is sponsored by the Library Publishing Coalition, but you do not need to be a member of the LPC to attend. The 2020 Forum will be held in Worcester, MA, May 4-6, hosted by the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
This year we are moving away from the format of a one-day preconference followed by a two-day Forum and instead having a single, three-day Forum. Adding a third day to the Forum will allow us to encourage deeper, continuing conversations, and to make space for different types of community activities.
A call for proposals is now open! In addition to the full sessions and individual presentations formats we have used for the last couple of years, we are also welcoming two new proposal formats: poster talks and experimental sessions. We warmly encourage proposals from first-time presenters and representatives of small and emerging publishing programs. Proposals may address any topic of interest to the library publishing community and all disciplines. However, with the conference being hosted by the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), we extend a special invitation to sessions exploring projects or topics related to STEM publishing and the Open Science Movement. The proposal deadline is November 15th.
Learn more and submit a proposal
The Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to offer the third annual Library Publishing Forum Award. This year, we will offer up to three awards to aid individuals from diverse backgrounds in attending and contributing at the Forum. Applications for the Forum Award are due by November 15.
The Library Publishing Forum is an annual conference bringing together representatives from libraries engaged in (or considering) publishing initiatives to define and address major questions and challenges; to identify and document collaborative opportunities; and to strengthen and promote this community of practice. The Forum includes representatives from a broad, international spectrum of academic library backgrounds, as well as groups that collaborate with libraries to publish scholarly works, including publishing vendors, university presses, and scholars. The Forum is sponsored by the Library Publishing Coalition, but you do not need to be a member of the LPC to attend.
We are very excited to announce our cohort of 2019-2021 LPC Fellows: Talea Anderson (Washington State University), and Arthur “AJ” Boston (Murray State University). The Fellowship Program is intended to encourage participation in the LPC community by important voices who are not at a member institution, to broaden access to library publishing to underrepresented groups, and to mentor new library publishers. For the next two years, Talea and AJ will be participating in the LPC community through service, writing for the LPC Blog, and presenting at the Library Publishing Forum. We look forward to learning from them and working with them to advance library publishing practice!
About Talea: Talea Anderson is the Scholarly Communication Librarian at Washington State University, where she manages the university’s institutional repository and supports open education initiatives. She has research interests in open pedagogy and web accessibility, especially as these pertain to library publishing and library-based open initiatives. Talea received a Library Publishing Forum First-Time Attendee Scholarship in 2018.
About AJ: Arthur “AJ” Boston is an assistant professor and scholarly communication librarian at Murray State University Libraries, where he administers the institutional repository and coordinates the Office of Research and Creative Activity. Research interests include hip-hop and scholarly communications; research assessment reform; Creative Commons for studio art students; machine learning applications in publishing; citizen science, podcasting, and other tools with potential for engaging the public with the academy. [Twitter: @AJ_Boston / ORCID: 0000-0001-8590-4663]
This post is part of a running series on the Library Publishing Workflows (LPW) project, which is investigating and modeling journal publishing workflows in libraries. LPW is a collaboration between the Library Publishing Coalition, Educopia Institute, and twelve partner libraries, and is generously funded by an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant. See all posts in the series.
We will be regularly publishing blog updates as this project advances—we are leading off this series with an introduction to the project team!
Melanie Schlosser (Scholarly Communications Program Leader, Educopia Institute and Community Facilitator, Library Publishing Coalition) is the lead Principal Investigator for the project.
Brandon Locke (Project Manager, Library Publishing Workflows, Educopia Institute) will oversee much of the day to day work of the project, including coordinating between partner institutions and the project team, conducting research and documenting workflows, logistics and planning for the LPW in-person meeting, and preparing and presenting research outcomes from the project.
Dr. Katherine Skinner (Executive Director, Educopia Institute) is a co-principal investigator. She will ensure the project and its deliverables adhere to open access and community frameworks, and that they are both built and sustained by a range of committed partners.
Hannah Ballard (Communications Manager, Educopia Institute) will oversee the project’s communications strategy and presence. Hannah will help share project stories and deliverables via a series of digital campaigns that will correspond with major moments and milestones in the project’s two-year timeframe.
Follow us on Twitter, or at #LibPubWorkflows, to keep current on project news!