Forum Info

March 27, 2019

Full Session: Fellows Forum

Thursday, May 9, 1:15-2:15pm
Room: Canfor Policy Room (1600)

Presenters: Kate McCready, University of Minnesota Libraries/2018-19 LPC Board President; Reggie Raju, University of Cape Town, 2017-19 LPC Fellow; Charlotte Roh, University of San Francisco, 2017-19 LPC Fellow

Description: Since July of 2017, Library Publishing Coalition Fellows Reggie Raju and Charlotte Roh have been participating in the LPC community, making important service contributions to task forces and bringing critical issues to the community’s attention on the LPC blog at https://librarypublishing.org/category/blog/fellows-journal/. As they move towards the end of their two year-long fellowships, their work will culminate with this hour-long session at the Library Publishing Forum. They will each give a 15-minute presentation on aspects of library publishing that have become priorities for them. Reggie will explore ‘Library publishing as an agent for inclusion’ to provoke broader thinking and commitment among our LPC colleagues. Charlotte will be discussing the work of Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC), founded by 10 trade and professional associations that represent organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications. The Coalition was formed to discuss and address issues of diversity and inclusion within our industry. The latter part of the session will engage all attendees in a discussion of these topics, moderated by LPC Board President Kate McCready.

Would you like a chance to hear from Reggie and Charlotte about their fellowship experiences over the past year? Are you interested in further exploration of the topics they have raised on the blog? Do you want to get our fellows’ perspectives on a topic that’s important to you? Don’t miss what is sure to be a thought-provoking session!

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March 27, 2019

Panel: Improving Journal Publishing

Thursday, May 9, 11:15am-12:15pm
Room: Canfor Policy Room (1600)

What We Can Learn from the Online Graveyard of Inactive Undergraduate Student Journals

Robyn Hall, MacEwan University

Description: Undergraduate open access journals provide a valuable opportunity for students to disseminate their work online and begin to establish an academic footprint, while learning about academic peer-review and publishing processes first-hand. At the same time that these publications give direct benefit to students, however, many of these venues have come and gone over the last two decades, raising questions as to what it takes to keep a student journal going consistently long-term, as well as what to do with these publications once they have ceased production. Drawing on findings from an analysis of student journals that have been inactive for at least two years and that are hosted by North American university publishing services, this presentation investigates common reasons why student journals become defunct. In light of these findings, it provides insights into how current university journal hosting service providers and publishers can help ensure the continued existence of student publications moving forward. It also discusses best practices around what to do when a student journal is discontinued in terms of communicating to users that the journal is no longer accepting submissions, and strategies for providing long-term access and digital preservation of these works.

Journal Interface Design: How Does It Impact the User Experience?

Israel Cefrin, Public Knowledge Project

Description: If “every book has a reader”, it is reasonable to say that every journal has a reader/user. Customizing, and assessing, a digital interface is a simple movement towards improving user experience and the content using, reusing and sharing as well. Furthermore, Open Access journals should also consider the following question: how friendly is my content to be reused?

Nowadays there are a variety of platforms to publish scientific content. Likewise, there is a large number of journals available, especially in Open Access mode. A simple search with tools like Google Scholar may list Journals, however, be listed in Google resulting page is the very first part of the user experience process concerning digital products.

According to the customization level, and the journal manager awareness, it is possible to offer a unique experience with a customized user interface. Hence, personal computers, tablets and, even more, mobile devices are able to access the public front-end without restrictions and with a possible better sense of it.

Giving attention to a Journal interface complies with recommendations from Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science. A well organized, easy to use, recognizable and reliable interface may bring and keep users and foster the reuse of the Journal content as well.

The Weaknesses of Automated Taxonomy, A Case Study

Alexa Colella, Marketing Manager for Journals, University of Illinois Press; Steffanie Cain, Strategic Taxonomy Lead, University of Illinois Press

Description: We recently discovered that the automated technology used by a major content hosting and subscription platform was inappropriately categorizing our journal articles. After some investigation and collaboration with the platform, we were able to identify some solutions to fixing this problem. However, it illuminated a rather major shortfall of automated taxonomy; automated taxonomy systems do not possess the discursive nuance of the academy (or humans in general), nor do they have the ability to learn it.

We discovered that this weakness exists on a spectrum. Though this observation is fairly anecdotal, the technology seemed to perform well in scientific articles (ones with fewer uses of creative, colloquial, or metaphorical use of language) and performed poorly in the humanities.

In this presentation we will present our case study detailing the discovery, methodology, challenges, and solutions in correcting inappropriately placed topics in a major content hosting platform. We will also discuss what this study illuminated for us about the use of automation in scholarly communication on a larger scale: its strengths, weaknesses, and the challenges it poses for us in the future.

 

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March 27, 2019

Panel: Models of University Press and Library Publishing

Thursday, May 9, 11:15am-12:15pm
Room: RBC Dominion Securities Executive Meeting Room (2200)

Aperio: UVA’s Open Publishing Partnership—Shared Values, Not Reporting Lines

Dave S. Ghamandi, Open Publishing Librarian and Aperio Journals Managing Editor, University of Virginia Library; Hanni Nabahe, Resident Librarian, University of Virginia Library; Chip German, Senior Director for Scholarly Communication, University of Virginia Library

Description: Aperio, the new open publishing collaboration at the University of Virginia, was unveiled to the academic community in the spring of 2018, with the publication of its first scholarly journal articles this January and its first open monograph published last November. So, did the venerable University of Virginia Press expand into open journal publishing, or did the University Library subsume the Press in a new wider-ranging publishing enterprise? Neither.

Aperio is a strong partnership between the Press, which was founded in 1963 and has a reputation as a high-quality academic publisher of between 50 and 60 new titles each year, and a start-up unit in the University Library where success will only come to its open journal publishing if discernible academic rigor establishes the new operation’s credibility. The two units both report to the provost, albeit with different reporting lines, funding streams, and business models.  So exactly how is that the formula for a successful partnership?

The key, of course, is how the people involved make the relationship work. That starts with a sense of common mission, mutual respect, and reasonable flexibility. Then there is the happy discovery that the different motivations that drive each partner’s desire to make the partnership a success can flourish together.

Our presentation will sketch our process of partnership building, identifying the success factors that have enabled our progress to date and that are essential for our shared future.

Launching HSU Press: The First Three Years

Kyle Morgan, Humboldt State University

Description: So you want to start a library-based press? Humboldt State University Press recently launched as an open-access service of the HSU Library. Scholarly Communications Librarian Kyle Morgan will discuss the mission of the press, the publishing model, and the trajectory of the press from 2016-2019, including:

Year 1: Chaos

• Open-access textbooks
• Yes to everything
• Mistakes, failures, and politics

Year 2: Laying a foundation

• Experiential learning
• Community building
• Limits of time and resources

Year 3: Knowing who you are

• Open pedagogy
• Professionalization
• Student agency

Ideas in Open Access: A Case Study on a Series Collaboration Between the MIT Press and the MIT Libraries

Catherine Ahearn, Knowledge Futures Group

Description: Publishing open access texts toward the efficient and equitable dissemination of research has long been part of the mission of the MIT Press. The MIT Libraries consistently provides support for open access in publishing, including a fund for MIT authors who want to publish in fully open access journals, and arrangements with publishers. Recently, the MITP and MIT Libraries came together to jointly publish the open access <strong>Ideas series.

We believe that universities must assert greater ownership and influence over the ecosystems for sharing knowledge given how critical it is to their core mission. It is with this in mind that the Libraries provided financial support for the series to be published in two formats—traditional print copies for sale in bookstores and complete digital open access editions available on the PubPub platform. This presentation will outline the nature of our collaboration, from the shared mission of the Press and Libraries to the experiments conducted, issues encountered, and lessons learned along the way. The purpose of the talk is to provide transparent insight into this process and provide attendees with a potential model for implementing similar or related collaborations at their own institutions.

Key themes include: UP/Libraries collaboration, open access publishing, experimentation, community review, and reader engagement.

 

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March 27, 2019

Full Session: Beyond the Book: Libraries as Music Publishers

Thursday, May 9, 11:15am-12:15pm
Room: Barrick Gold Lecture Room (1520)

Presenters: Kathleen DeLaurenti, Open Access Editor, Music Library Association and Head Librarian, Friedheim Library, Peabody Institute; Zane Forshee, Guitar Faculty and Interim Director, LAUCHPad, Peabody Institute; Matthew Vest, Lead for Outreach and Music Inquiry and Research Librarian, University of California, Los Angeles

Description: This session will present three case studies of music publishing: a library commissioning program, an open pedagogy project, and a library publishing curriculum for composers. Presenters will also debut and seek input on a new guide to best practices for publishing musical scores in libraries.

Matthew Vest recently launched UCLA Music Library, Hugo Davise Fund’s Contemporary Score Edition. This publication is a hybrid edition: digital scores are hosted by UC’s digital repository, eScholarship, and physical scores and parts are offered for sale by Theodore Front Music Publishers. The Edition includes student scores that win Davise Prizes, UCLA faculty scores created for Davise musician and ensemble residencies, and scores created for Davise sponsored commissions or projects.

Instructors at Peabody re-developed a required graduate level information literacy course to meet the needs of the performance majors enrolled. The redesign included an open pedagogy project that founded a new open edition series highlighting unpublished and underrepresented works in the wester musical canon.

Zane Forshee is collaborating with the library to build a publishing curriculum into an existing composition course. Composition students are course exposed to the business of publishing, copyright issues, and open licensing options in music. They are asked to make real-world decisions about open publishing with the library or commercial publishing of their work. This authentic assessment asks students to consider their goals with these compositions, benefits to open publishing, and how to strategize a long-term plan for disseminating their music.

Finally, DeLaurenti and Vest will share the best practices for building your own library music publishing program. Attendees will have an opportunity to view the recommendations prior to the program and provide feedback at the session. After review, this resource will be published by the Music Library Association Open Access Editions for use by other library publishing programs.

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March 27, 2019

Full Session: Community Builds Solutions with Open Source: Editoria—Online Books Production

Day: Thursday, May 9, 11:15am-12:15pm
Room: Joseph & Rosalie Segal Centre (1400-1430)

Presenters: Alison McGonagle-O’Connell, Coko Foundation; Christine Fruin, Atla; Jason Colman, M Publishing/Fulcrum; John Sherer, UNC Press/Longleaf Services; Catherine Mitchell, California Digital Library (moderator)

Description: It sounds too good to be true… There is an open source, web-based, community-led production tool that facilitates both collaboration and rapid digitization? A tool that enables modern web-based workflows, at last? One which is evolved by the community, to which you add the features your organization needs? And even for smaller presses and library publishers?

Editoria is a streamlined online production tool for monograph publishing, created for the use of publishers of all sizes. Its first iteration was envisioned by University of California Press and California Digital Library, who engaged Coko Foundation as technology partner. This open source platform continues to develop in partnership with other organizations, also know as the community.

In this session, we will discuss the current state of Editoria directly with Library Publishers, including Michigan Publishing and Fulcrum; and University of North Carolina with Longleaf, and ATLA Press.

Through this panel session, we will consider how library publishers are using Editoria, and how they can contribute to this community-owned solution. The presenters will provide details about how they are working with Coko and each other to develop Editoria. There will be ample time for discussion and audience Q/A.

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March 27, 2019

Panel: Supporting Student Publishing with Events

Thursday, May 9, 10:00-11:00am
Room: RBC Dominion Securities Executive Meeting Room (2200)

Lessons from Teaching Publishing: The Digital Publishing Workshop @ Columbia University Libraries

Michelle Wilson, Columbia University

Description: Columbia University Libraries publishes twenty two journals managed by undergraduate, graduate, and faculty editorial boards and representing disciplines from law to musicology to medicine. Although many of the journals have been in press for years, the frequent turnover of editorial boards means that there is variation in the quality and timeliness of publications and their adherence to guidance provided by the Libraries. In the hope of introducing and promoting an ethical framework for open access scholarship and providing practical, on the ground skills for students and scholars working as producers of digital publications, a Digital Publishing Workshop was developed. A six week in-person classroom series provided simultaneous instruction in the essentials of scholarly journal publishing for our diverse population of editors.

The workshop series also became an opportunity to learn what kinds of tools and information our editors needed most and to produce these resources and learning opportunities. To meet the needs of such a diverse group, the “Workshop” evolved into a website, a longer, half-day format, wider-reaching educational offerings on a variety of publishing topics for the general university audience, and into proposals for specialized workshops and resources for students in medicine and law. This presentation will provide an overview of the structure and content of the digital publishing workshops and the remote resources created to support this educational model – including video tutorials, templates, and the ‘Editorial Workbook’ – and will suggest how these building blocks can be used in publishing education and tailored to suit the many populations we work with at our university libraries.

Student Journal Publishing 101 Workshop

Jessica Lange, McGill University

Description: Supporting student journals on campus can be challenging. Editorial board turnover occurs frequently and students may be less familiar with the publishing process generally than faculty. Furthermore, transition planning is often weak or non-existent within student journals. Often when the editorial board graduates, their experience and collective knowledge is lost and incoming editors must recreate policies and workflows from scratch.

In order to address these issues and provide greater support to student journals on McGill’s campus, three librarians worked together in coordination with the Arts Undergraduate Student Society to develop a workshop and plan to better aid student journals.

This presentation will cover the content of the workshop Student Journal Publishing 101 as well as the strategies employed to promote the workshop, develop contacts with a student society as well as plans for the future. This presentation will also discuss feedback obtained from the workshop.

Supporting Student Publishing: Sustaining Networks and Responding to Student Feedback

Graeme Slaght, University of Toronto Libraries; Mariya Maistrovskaya, University of Toronto Libraries

Description: Student journal publishing is an active and growing area at the University of Toronto, with over 50 print and electronic journals published by undergraduates and graduates across U of T’s three campuses. Launching, producing, and sustaining a journal provides students with valuable experience with editorial workflows, publishing within their discipline, peer review, copyright, design, and financial planning.

In the absence of a single support point for student publishing activities, a cross-departmental group of librarians came together to help connect students to the research lifecycle, publishing resources, and to each other. In this presentation we will share our strategies, including the hosting of an annual Student Journal Forum, a popular event that will celebrate its 4th iteration in 2019, journal production support on the local instance of Open Journal Systems (OJS) that currently hosts 15 graduate and undergraduate journals, copyright support via Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office, and more. We will plot the evolution of the Journal Forum event, from its inaugural focus on the delivery of faculty and librarian-led lecture-style literacy sessions to students, to its current composition as a student-centered, peer-led and participatory learning session focused on knowledge exchange and community-building.

We will discuss our planning, outreach, and assessment strategies as well as the feedback we have received that has informed this support over time, and will explore potential future directions in which the library could support student journal publishing.

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March 27, 2019

Full Session: Lever Press and Fulcrum: Sustaining a Commons Model of Library Publishing

Thursday, May 9, 10:00-11:00am
Room: Canfor Policy Room (1600)

Presenters: Jason Colman, University of Michigan Library; Emma DiPasquale, University of Michigan Library; Michael D. Roy, Middlebury College Library; Beth Bouloukos, Amherst College Library

Description: Lever Press represents a collaborative open access library publishing initiative, supported by over 50 liberal arts colleges and maintained by a production partnership between Amherst College Library (editorial leads) and University of Michigan Library (production leads). Over the last several years the Press has built a transparent governance and financing model, set in place editorial and selection guidelines that rethink well-worn publishing practices such as peer review and the publishing contract, and has shaped the development of Fulcrum — a multimodal open source publishing platform. As titles begin to flow, the Press’s sponsors and organizers are taking stock of challenges and accomplishments and looking to the future. In this session, Lever’s partners report on work so far, seek feedback from the community, and describe future plans for keeping the Press resilient and relevant in a changing open access publishing environment.

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March 27, 2019

Panel: Perspectives on Book Publishing

Thursday, May 9, 10:00-11:00am
Room: Barrick Gold Lecture Room (1520)

Publishing an Open Access Monograph

Ally Laird, Open Publishing Program Specialist, Penn State University Libraries

Description: In 2017, the Penn State Libraries Open Publishing Program received a publishing proposal from the Penn State Press for a fully digital Open Access edited collection. The editor’s criteria for the monograph-length publication didn’t meet the Press’ publishing requirements, so they passed this project onto our Open Publishing Program, which is organized under the University Libraries, as is our Press. The monograph, which is a work of collected stories and experiences from past and current students in the Law School Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, was to be published digitally and without restrictions, to facilitate use and access by as many readers as possible. As the first monograph publication for our Libraries Open Publishing unit, it raised questions about best practices for publishing OA monograph content within the library, such as should we provide an ePub version, use an ISBN vs. DOI, preservation, indexing, and cataloging questions, and what platform to use. Through our planning process, we decided to publish the content in Drupal, using a platform that we already support for our bibliography publications, instead of searching for a new platform to host. This presentation will share the ways this process has been successful for us and reflect on the questions that it has raised regarding how the field of library publishing should engage in providing monograph and other book type publication services.

Creating an Open Anthology: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Emma Molls, University of Minnesota

Description: In the summer of 2016, a sociology professor approached UMN Libraries Publishing searching for a publisher to publish an anthology of works authored by a lesser-known scholar. The book would contain previously published and unpublished works that spanned the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s’ and ’70s. This presentation will address the challenges of locating works from defunct publishers, working to secure rights for a digital publication with unlimited uses, and creating digital copies of hard to find print-only works. This session will also present opportunities for working with library administration to publish orphan works. In addition to mapping out workflows for an open anthology, Finally, the presenter will argue for libraries to publish more orphan works by authors whose voices have been marginalized throughout publishing history.

Additionally, there are multiple high quality, digital book publishing tools available to library publishers, this session will also touch on how libraries can use a single project to assess the usability and technology of different platforms.

Library Press as a Partner: Publishing an OER on OER

Johanna Meetz, Pacific University

Description: This presentation is a case study in library scholarship published by a library-born press. We explore the development of Pacific University Press, its strategies for sustainability, and institutional investments in its success. The exploration of the press is framed around the framework of the development and publication of the recently published book, OER: A Field Guide for Academic Librarians. In addition to learning strategies for developing and maintaining a university press, participants will gain insights into how to conceptualize and manage the process of editing a monograph.

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March 27, 2019

Full Session: How Library Publishers and Open-Source Tools Can Reshape Academic Publishing

Thursday, May 9, 10:00-11:00am
Room: Joseph & Rosalie Segal Centre (1400-1430)

Presenters: Steel Wagstaff, Educational Client Manager, Pressbook; Michelle Reed, Open Education Librarian, University of Texas at Arlington [Mavs Open Press]; Heather Staines, Director of Partnerships, Hypothesis; Hugh McGuire, Executive Director, Rebus Foundation

Description: For over 500 years, book publishing has meant the coordinated production of a physical object which required significant capital investment. Book publishers have historically provided value in three broad ways: 1) seeking, developing, and preparing new material (acquisition & editing); 2) providing capital and overseeing production; 3) bringing publications to market (publicity, advertising, distribution).

The value proposition offered by traditional publishers has been particularly disrupted in academic publishing. Professional organizations and learned societies often perform much of the acquisition and editing labor (e.g. peer review); digital tools and print-on-demand services have dramatically reduced the capital requirements of production and provided new distribution opportunities; and the emergence of internet mega-platforms has radically altered the global advertising industry. In an environment where most authors (and many publishers) of scholarly monographs do not expect their work to have much commercial value, traditional publication models make little sense. Despite new possibilities for creating and distributing knowledge, scholarly publishers have been slow to respond.

Our panel brings together representatives from open-source digital publishing toolmakers, an organization dedicated to building more egalitarian publishing communities and processes, and a library publisher to discuss promising new approaches to the three roles historically filled by traditional academic publishers. We will describe recent partnerships and share specific ideas related to book production, web annotation, licensing, and distribution that can help reshape academic publishing in service of the public good.

The format will be a lightning round of use cases followed by discussion between the presenters on best practices, challenges, and opportunities brought about by new developments in scholarly communications and higher education. Ample time will be reserved for attendees to ask questions and share examples.

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