Past Forum Info

March 10, 2022

Full Session: A library publisher, library consortium and library journal walk into a bar: A case study of adopting collaborative funding infrastructure to support library publishing

Day/Time: Thursday, May 19,  3:45pm – 4:45pm

Presenters

  • Curtis Brundy, Iowa State University
  • Harrison W. Inefuku, Iowa State University
  • Sharla Lair, LYRASIS

Description

In July 2021, the Iowa State University (ISU) Digital Press became the publisher of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. ISU Digital Press committed to fully fund JLSC for the first year, but only up to half of the funding after that. The Digital Press and the JLSC Editorial Board were faced with the task that so many journals must take on—fundraising. In order to maintain JLSC as a OA publication with no charges to authors, and the financial constraints that resulted from the change in publisher, JLSC sought a broader network of support. They believed that broad and diverse community funding support would strengthen the reputation of the journal in the field and ensure long-term sustainability if they highlighted its inclusive organization and the support by multiple organizations. So, in late 2021, JLSC and the ISU Digital Press formed a partnership with the LYRASIS Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP). OACIP is a community-driven framework that enables all stakeholders to strategically evaluate and fund OA publications with the goal to help match prospective funders with non-profit publishers and journal editorial boards seeking funding for OA publishing. Given the nature of the journal, we think it is an excellent example to showcase a non-profit approach to OA without article processing fees, supported by a multiple stakeholder funding community.

In this presentation, we will share what we are learning through this unique partnership by outlining what is working and what needs improvement. We will discuss if this case study is replicable and scalable for the library publishing community, and then, together, consider emerging opportunities for sustaining library publishing and further bolstering the Library Publishing Coalition’s commitment to anti-racism, diversity, equity, opportunity, and inclusion.


March 10, 2022

Panel and Lightning Talks: VT-230

Day/Time: Thursday, May 19, 2:30pm – 3:30pm


The BCcampus Open Publishing Suite: Guides for Your Open Publishing Initiative

Presenters

  • Arianna Cheveldave, BCcampus
  • Kaitlyn Zheng, BCcampus

Description

Since 2012, BCcampus Open Education has funded and published open educational resources for the post-secondary system in British Columbia, Canada. Over the years, BCcampus has developed a suite of support resources for open access publishing, including the Getting Started Guide; a publishing style guide; the Accessibility Toolkit; and the Self-Publishing Guide.

In this session, we will discuss some of the publishing tasks that are simplified by these guides, such as communication of author responsibilities, stylistic consistency, and technical accessibility. We will give a brief overview of each of these guides and demonstrate how they may be used by publishers and authors.

In a nutshell:
-The Getting Started Guide includes timelines, workflows, and best practices for OER authors.
-The BCcampus publishing style guide defines style guidelines, standard CSS workarounds, and templates for front and back matter.
-The Accessibility Toolkit contains practical information on making web content accessible.
-The Self-Publishing Guide provides details on the preparation, planning, writing, publication, and maintenance of an open textbook.

The open licenses on our support guides allow anyone to use, modify, and share them. We encourage other publishing initiatives to adopt and adapt these guides.


Introducing Lantern: A Multiformat OER Publishing Toolkit

Presenters

  • Chris Diaz, Digital Publishing Librarian, Northwestern University
  • Lauren McKeen McDonald, Open Education Librarian, Northwestern University

Description

Lantern is a free and open-source digital publishing toolkit that applies minimal computing principles to the production and maintenance of open educational resources (OER). Librarians play an essential role in the publishing of OER at colleges and universities, often providing technology services for the production, hosting, and archiving of OER. Lantern provides workflows, templates, and instructions for publishing OER without the cost and sustainability concerns associated with repository systems and publishing platforms that are typically used. We use minimal computing as a lens for reducing software dependencies and vendor reliance in order to provide a methodology for using open infrastructure for OER publishing. At its core, Lantern uses Pandoc to produce OER in HTML, PDF, and EPUB formats by providing extensible document templates and shell scripts to fit a variety of common OER publishing use cases. More importantly, Lantern provides an entry point for new users of open source software. No programming or command line knowledge is assumed. Lantern includes step-by-step instructions on taking an OER manuscript in Microsoft Word format and producing a static HTML website with multiple OER output formats on your computer (some software installation required) or entirely online (no software installation required). Lantern was developed with support from the Association of Research Libraries that provided funding for a multi-institutional Librarian Review Panel, whose feedback was incorporated in the toolkit’s initial release. This presentation will provide a high-level overview of Lantern, introduce minimal computing concepts, and invite the library publishing community to use Lantern on their next OER project.


Lightning Talks

Can a Monthly Newsletter Increase Journal Publishing Best Practices?

Presenters

  • Kate Cawthorn, Digital Projects Librarian, University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources

Description

This presentation will explore the impact of a monthly newsletter on the adoption of publishing best practices by library hosted journals. As part of the shift from a journal hosting service to a library publishing service, we are promoting the adoption of journal publishing best practices by our hosted journals. A key tool to promote these practices is a monthly newsletter to journal teams that includes at least one best practice in a “quick tip” format that a journal manager could implement within a few minutes. Prior to sending these newsletters, we assessed each journal’s current implementation or lack of implementation of that month’s best practice, and then checked again one month later to see if the level of adoption has increased. The goal of this project is to determine if a library publishing services newsletter is an effective way of increasing journal level adoption of publishing best practices and we hope that this information is useful for other small library publishers with limited resources.


Success, Failures, and the In-Between: Reflecting on a medical-student operated open access journal as it passes its third year in operation

Presenters

  • Benjamin Saracco, Research and Digital Services Faculty Librarian, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University
  • Amanda Adams MLS, Reference & Instruction Faculty Librarian, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University

Description

The Cooper Rowan Medical Journal, established in November 2018 by a team of eager undergraduate medical students, clinical faculty, and faculty librarians, with little to no back-end scholarly publishing experience, is now approaching the publication of its third volume. The publication is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals with over 106 submissions internationally, yet currently faces some key challenges. From the point-of-view of the librarians involved, this lightning talk will reflect on initial hurdles in getting this project off the ground, establishing consistent workflows, and bumps in the road the team experienced along the way. Senior editorial board staffing, training of early career researchers, and quirks in the publication’s software platform lead to issues around the speed of publication. As medical school operated journals increase in frequency, this lightning talk will help others interested in carrying out similar endeavors learn from our project’s successes and challenges.


Synchronizing the Asynchronous: Working through the Library Publishing Workshop as a Cohort

Presenters

  • Jill Cirasella, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
  • Gail Steinhart, Cornell University

Description

Building on an idea hatched at the 2021 Library Publishing Forum, we created an informal learning community and professional development opportunity centered on the Library Publishing Curriculum Virtual Workshop Series. Our plan was for participants to work through one unit per month, asynchronously, and to meet in groups to synchronize our experiences, discussing and reviewing each unit. We report on the logistics of organizing such a group, the benefits and challenges experienced by both participants and organizers, and recommendations for a successful learning experience.


Inclusive Language in NIST Technical Series Publications

Presenters

  • Kathryn Miller, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Description

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Research Library occupies the unique position of serving NIST both as publisher of the NIST Technical Series, and in an archival capacity, responsible for collecting and preserving copies of NIST’s publications. In June 2020, NIST received comments from the public about biased and exclusionary language in our NIST Technical Series publications (e.g., master/slave and blacklist/whitelist). While the authors responsible for the publications in question discussed how they were going to address the comments, the Research Library decided to update our author instructions with a new section on using inclusive language. After researching and developing an internal draft, we solicited feedback from NIST colleagues in July 2020, including those in our DEI offices and groups, and from the public after external release in February 2021. The guidance changed dramatically over this 7-month period, as we pivoted from a table of words to avoid and their preferred alternatives to contextual examples taken directly from historical NIST publications. During this project we learned that there is no template or standard process for developing inclusive language guidelines that will work for all library publishers. However, it is important to recognize that this activity will feel personal, as the words, idioms, and phrases we use are woven into our personalities and experiences. The only way to succeed in providing an inclusive, welcoming space in technical publications is to solicit feedback from as many under-represented groups as possible, and approach conversations about inclusive language with respect and humility. Future plans for this project include reviewing and updating the guidance on a yearly basis, creating a disclaimer for historical publications, and updating our procedures to include editing biased language as a reason for publishing a revision.


March 10, 2022

Full Session: Inclusion and Representation in the Scholarly Ecosystem

Day/Time: Thursday, May 19,  2:30pm – 3:30pm

Presenters

  • Caitlin Tyler-Richards, Michigan State
  • Lea Johnston, Editorial, Getty Research Institute (GRI) Publications
  • Elizabeth Scarpelli, University of Cincinnati Press (Moderator)

Description

What roles can scholarly publishers play in the work of anti-racism within the scholarly ecosystem? While publishers serve as intermediaries between scholars and libraries, greater transparency can help us discover areas within that ecosystem that could benefit from greater collaboration. Scholarly publishers are finding new approaches that are thoughtful and inclusive in all stages of their work. This will be an opportunity for people in library publishing programs to pick the brains of specialists from university presses, discussing topics such as inclusive approaches to peer review, representation in design decisions, and strategies for making texts widely available, accessible, and discoverable.


March 10, 2022

Panel: VT-115

Day/Time: Thursday, May 19, 1:15pm – 2:15pm


Out in the Open: Launching a Diamond Open Access Book Hosting Service

Presenters

  • Rebecca Wojturska, University of Edinburgh

Description

With developing guidance and policies around Open Access publishing for academic books, and with relatively high book processing charges (BPCs) from publishers, it is more important than ever for libraries to engage with open access book publishing to provide support for their academics and students. It is even more important to be transparent about the process, so that we can foster an open community between libraries, providing viable alternative publishing solutions for the research community.

Edinburgh University Library offers a Diamond Open Access journal hosting service, and recently launched a complimentary book hosting platform, bringing both services under the rebranded name of Edinburgh Diamond. Edinburgh Diamond is free of charge to Edinburgh staff and students, and enables them to publish journals, textbooks, monographs and edited collections with full library support in the areas of hosting (via OJS & OMP), technical support, indexing, policy development, best-practice guidance and workflow training. The rebranded service launched in October 2021 and we are keen to document and share our journey with the library community throughout the world.

During the presentation I will reflect on the timeline, successes and learning points of launching the book hosting service and of the rebrand, and provide recommendations and conclusions to attendees. I will also discuss how to sustainably grow a books hosting service and how it is useful in supporting teaching and learning. Finally, I will consider the technical requirements of the project, and gather anecdotal evidence from academic and student users to document the successes of the project and launch.

The primary audience for this presentation is the librarian who is beginning their own book hosting service, or who is considering it, as well as those interested in open book publishing.

Learning objectives
· Learn about the tools required for launching a books hosting service from scratch
· Find out more about Diamond Open Access publishing in the library landscape
· Hear about lessons learned along the way, as well as advice and tips if anyone is considering launching their own book hosting service


Swift: A Case Study in Publishing Fiction

Presenters

  • Maria Aghazarian, Scholarly Communications Librarian, Swarthmore College (she/her)
  • Braulio Muñoz, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Swarthmore College (he/him)

Description

Braulio Munoz is both a scholar and a Professor Emeritus Braulio Muñoz is both a scholar and a novelist; his latest work, The Always Already, is a magical realism epic focusing on indigenous characters and cultures from Peru. Traditional publishing wasn’t a good fit for his latest novel–the epic length and mixed format with bilingual songs made it difficult to market–so we worked together to publish it as a print-on-demand book and as an ebook. Within six months, we brought a book into the world that’s been in the making for the past decade.

This presentation will be a case study of how an early publishing program at a small library with limited staff explored publishing fiction. Scholarly Communications Librarian Maria Aghazarian will provide a timeline of the project, associated costs, campus collaborations, unexpected roadblocks, lessons learned, and proposed next steps for our publishing program. Braulio Muñoz will speak about how this process compared with his experience in traditional publishing.

The audience will leave with: a model timeline and checklist for the publishing process; suggestions for skill building with limited resources; and a renewed sense of publishing opportunities in their communities.


Book Publishing by University Libraries in Brazil

Presenters

  • Lucas dos Santos Souza da Silva, Bachelor’s degree on Library Science, Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO)
  • Dayanne da Silva Prudencio. Professor of the Library Science Department, Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro

Description

The presentation will show the experiences of Brazilian university libraries with publishing services, especially of materials such as books, theses, dissertations, textbooks, and other alternatives. This study rethinks the contribution of the university library regarding scientific communication, with the premise around librarians leading execution of publishing services of knowledge products made by the university staff and/or academic community in general, considering a transparent, accessible, inclusive system. For better comprehension around this subject, a bibliographic study was executed. Through literature review, it verified that the subject in Brazil has scarce approach compared to international background, not existing such scope regarding the production of books and alternative materials beyond serials publications. Therefore, decision was to execute a field research with qualitative and quantitative approaches, using semi structured questionnaire as data collecting instrument about the experience in such projects at the Brazilian university libraries population. It got 36 responses representing 25 per cent of feedback, finding five university libraries with experience in editorial production of books, against 31 that do not offer such a service, but presenting their reasons and challenges. It concludes that editorial practices in Brazilian university libraries are still not mature, due to some gaps that each information unit needs to fill, but it develops the potential of librarians in the development of such projects and recommends reading materials to encourage the emergence of these initiatives in National territory.


March 10, 2022

Full Session: Openness is not enough: Dismantling structural inequities on our quest for public knowledge

Day/Time: Thursday, May 19,  1:15pm – 2:15pm

Presenters

  • Kate Shuttleworth, Public Knowledge Project and Simon Fraser University
  • Amanda Stevens, Public Knowledge Project
  • Patricia Mangahis, Public Knowledge Project

Description

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) was started in 1998 to equalize access to scholarly research and has since succeeded in enabling the publication of over 25,000 journals worldwide, most of which are open access and many of which are located in the global south. However, when anti-black racism came to the forefront of public discourse in 2020, PKP looked internally and realized that in other ways it reproduces and enforces the structural inequities of the Canadian scholarly publishing community and IT industry.

PKP immediately formed an internal Equity and Inclusion Team (EI Team) to reflect on our practices and drive changes that address inequities and racial injustice. Our goal is to improve organizational transparency and prioritize the inclusion and experiences of members of equity-deserving groups within PKP, its decision-making processes and leadership, and its community.

We will present on the Team’s various initiatives, including a staff survey to assess demographics and experiences, recommendations to increase employment equity and organizational transparency, a community Code of Conduct, and hiring practices to increase diversity. We’ll discuss the outcomes of our work so far, our goals for the future, challenges encountered, and how we can direct this work to increase PKP’s accountability and strengthen our contribution to the global scholarly publishing community.

We’ll call on other presenters and perspective to generate a discussion around

+ the ways our individual lived experiences and positionalities intersect with and impact our approach to this work
+ opportunities for further engagement with this work and future initiatives to undertake
+ challenges of assessing the impact of of our efforts to measure structural change
+ barriers encountered and gaps that remain to be addressed through ongoing commitments to dismantling structural inequities

Attendees will be invited to share their own initiatives, success, experiences, and challenges in these areas via polls, the chat box, and online brainstorming tools.


March 10, 2022

Panel-VW-4

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 18, 4:00pm – 5:00pm


Houghton St Press: Student-led publishing at the London School of Economics

Presenters

  • Lucy Lambe, Scholarly Communications Officer, LSE Library, London School of Economics and Political Science

Description

LSE Library launched Houghton St Press in 2019 as the first university press imprint dedicated to publishing student work. We now have 15 journals on the platform, all publishing student work in a variety of ways. This short session will talk through some of the challenges of the past 2 years and the benefits to the students, library and the university.


Leveraging the flexibility of library publishing to deliver an accessible, media-rich ultrasound field guide to the world

Presenters

  • Michael Schick DO, UC Davis Health
  • Rebecca Stein-Wexler MD, UC Davis Health
  • Yamilé Blain, University of Miami Health System
  • Justin Gonder California Digital Library

Description

The faculty at UC Davis Health in collaboration with the California Digital Library (CDL) and Blaisdell Medical Library recently released Ultrasound in Resource-Limited Settings: A Case Based, Open Access Text. This interactive online text aims to provide an open access clinical resource for radiologists and clinicians who practice ultrasound in low and limited resourced healthcare settings. The project’s lead editors have been teaching and using ultrasound for many years in some of the least resourced healthcare settings in the world. In these regions, most people have no access to diagnostic imaging.  Ultrasound is particularly positioned to help fill this gap as the most portable, inexpensive, and versatile form of diagnostic imaging.

While standard, Western texts offer ample education about diseases that are common throughout the world, the project editors noticed that diseases that are common in resource-limited and tropical regions are often left out of guides and texts because the conditions are no longer common in the Western world. Ultrasound in Resource-Limited Settings: A Case Based, Open Access Text, aims to close that gap.

The team paired with the California Digital Library’s eScholarship Publishing Program to identify a platform to best showcase the project – one that could combine text, images and videos in a meaningful way, and could deliver the material efficiently over low-bandwidth connections. Manifold was identified as a perfect fit for the project, and members of the Manifold team at University of Minnesota assisted in getting the project off the ground.

In this brief project case study, attendees will learn how the combination of campus-based subject expertise, library publishing services and open source tools enabled the creation and global dissemination of this important work. Attendees will also have an opportunity to engage with the presenters during Q&A.


Can THAT have an ISSN? A guide to the wide range of resources covered by ISSN

Presenters

  • Regina Romano Reynolds, director of the U.S. ISSN Center, Library of Congress

Description

Although the ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) is often associated in the library world with scholarly journals, ISSN can be applied to such diverse ongoing publications that libraries might issue such as blogs, institutional repositories, newsletters, databases, conference proceedings, serial zines as well as popular publications such as magazine sold on Amazon. This presentation will be a tour of the wide world of ISSN and provide information on how libraries can apply for ISSN whether prior to publication, during publication, and even after publication has ceased. Benefits include exposure for your publication by high quality bibliographic records in the LC OPAC, LC MARC Distribution Service, OCLC WorldCat, and open data in the international ISSN Portal.


March 10, 2022

Full Session: NGLP: Pilot implementations have launched!

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 18,  4:00pm – 5:00pm

Presenters

  • Kate Herman, NGLP
  • Dave Pcolar, NGLP
  • Andy Byers, Janeway
  • Catherine Mitchell, CDL
  • Clay Farr, Longleaf Services

Description

The Next Generation Library Publishing (NGLP) project is an Arcadia-funded collaborative effort to improve publishing pathways and choices for authors, editors, and readers through strengthening, integrating, and scaling up scholarly publishing infrastructure to support library publishers. Now in its third year, the Next Generation Library Publishing project has completed the first development phase of its two open source components, the Web Delivery Platform (WDP) and the Analytics Dashboard (AD). The current phase of the project seeks to implement the components to address specific use cases for library publishers through a series of projects and pilots.

This presentation will highlight the recently-launched NGLP pilots, allowing each of the three service provider partners (California Digital Library, Janeway, and Longleaf Services) to describe their service offering and how it is tailored to their pilot partners’ needs. These presentations will take the form of case studies, outlining the different context and priorities of each pilot (a consortial publishing solution, a unified journal and IR solution, and a scalable journal publishing solution) before jumping into the specifics of timeline, resourcing, business modeling, and pilot evaluation plans. Service provider panelists will then discuss the potential for service models following the pilot phase – in particular, engaging with the challenges of implementing values-aligned service models.


March 10, 2022

Panel: VW-245

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 18, 2:45pm – 3:45pm


Our first publishing project: Lessons learned about ourselves and our work

Presenters

  • Donna Langille, Community Engagement and Open Education Librarian, University of British Columbia Okanagan
  • Amanda Brobbel, Senior Manager, Writing & Language Learning Services, University of British Columbia Okanagan

Description

In summer 2021, while our campus was still fully remote, two library employees (one a writing center director, the other a community engagement and open education librarian) were asked to collaborate with a team of researchers (faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students), who were setting out to bring fresh life to an institutionally supported press. Building on the press’s previous focus on social justice, EDI, and community collaboration, the press sought new collaborations with community, the library, and the writing centre to centre Open Access and accessibility of multimodal materials.

Through this talk we would like to highlight some of our significant learning moments as partners in the iterative process of developing the press’s new Open Access directions/foundations. First, we would like to feature how the lead researcher established a working environment that centred care and support for the team. This process helped us, a librarian and writing centre director, feel included as partners on the editorial team rather than ancillary service providers.

A second lesson is largely a result of the first: both of us expanded our vision of our own work. The press, which is committed to supporting multiple modalities of knowledge creation and community engaged-research, caused us to consider aspects of our own intersected and supported non-traditional formats of scholarship including but not limited to podcasting, digital exhibits, ceremony, and graphic novels. As a result, taking the time to explore and collect information was integral to this project. The student editorial assistants, with support from the rest of the editorial team, were instrumental in writing environmental scans on many aspects of the project which informed the mission, values, and commitments of the press.

Finally, we experienced working on a project that centered social justice in its mission and values. From author agreements to open access licensing, the press centred Indigenous knowledges and consistently considered its relationality to the Indigenous peoples and their territory on which the press is situated.


Identifying Smaller Publishers with Values-Aligned Practices through Library Partnership Certification

Presenters

  • Rachel Caldwell, Scholarly Communication Librarian, University of Tennessee
  • Robin N. Sinn, Director of Collections and Open Strategies, Iowa State University

Description

Library presses and publishing programs have experts with skills and infrastructure to support discoverability and metadata creation that many smaller publishers lack. Many of these publishers, including both academic-owned publishers in low- and middle-income countries and many independent scholarly/learned society publishers, are at the same time concerned about visibility, transitioning to open access, and their future as an independent publishing organization. There is a definite need for technological expertise among smaller independent publishers. Library presses could reach out to such publishers and provide support with infrastructure, metadata, and other aspects of discoverability and preservation, but how can libraries and presses identify publishers with similar values who would be strong partners?

The Library Partnership (LP) certification is one approach; it updates and improves the former Publishers Acting as Partners with Public Institutions (PAPPI) evaluation system. LP certification includes a rubric that scores publishers’ practices in four areas: Access, Rights, Community, and Discoverability. Publishers earn credits or points for each practice that meets library values. Similar to LEED certification for architecture, LP certification determines how well a publisher’s practices align with professional values of librarianship. For library presses, LP certification scores can help identify strong potential publishing partners that need support with metadata, discoverability, preservation, and so on. Entering into such partnerships may help libraries meet goals related to supporting and maintaining a diverse publishing ecosystem and encouraging openness.

Presenters will introduce the LP certification rubric, discuss the scores earned by several publishers selected in a sample, and suggest potential next steps a library press might consider with each publisher in the sample. Presenters encourage and invite questions and ideas on the rubric criteria, the overall utility to library presses, the strengths and limitations of a scoring system, and the possibilities and challenges in actualizing such a certification.


Critique of “Transformative” Reasons

Presenters

  • Brianne Selman, University of Winnipeg

Description

This session will summarize some of the major categories of the critiques of “transformative” agreements. Perspectives that critique negotiation approaches, the continued bundling of costs into large agreements, market concentrations, decline in scholarly standards, analysis of whether OA goals are even being met by TAs, as well as major equity and diversity concerns will be summarized and discussed.


March 10, 2022

Full Session: Where are all the books? Why OA ebook authors don’t get the recognition they deserve and how we can fix the situation

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 18, 2:45pm – 3:45pm

Presenters

  • Rebecca Bryant, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research Library Partnership
  • Terri Geitgey, Program Manager, Lever Press
  • Jeff Edmunds, Digital Access Coordinator, Penn State University Libraries

Description

Research information management (RIM) systems support the aggregation of an institutional bibliography to support use cases as diverse as expertise discovery, strategic reporting, and faculty activity reviews. RIM is a rapidly growing investment area in North American research institutions, as documented in a recent OCLC Research report, oc.lc/us-rim-report.

RIM systems take advantage of metadata harvesting at scale from sources like Web of Science and Scopus to collect this institutional bibliography. However, while the ability to harvest and reuse publications metadata is good for STEM journal articles, it is poor for scholarly monographs, disproportionately impacting humanities content. In fact, metadata about scholarly monographs and their chapters rarely makes it through the academic publishing supply chain to populate the RIM profiles of their creators, even at the same institution!

This presentation will examine the leaky pipeline from publisher to numerous other systems, and ultimately to readers, where metadata is lost, garbled, and sometimes added to in unpredictable and nonstandard ways. Using examples from library-based OA book publishers, the presenters will document the problems with the publishing supply chain. They will trace this from metadata creation in a title management system, to the assignment (or not!) of persistent identifiers, on to its distribution to vendors via ONIX, then on to its collection (or not!) in integrated library systems, publication indexes, and RIM systems.

We will also discuss the imperative for persistent identifiers in scholarly publishing, both for disambiguation and machine readability. We will also engage participants in reflection about the metadata journey within their own publishing operations and seek to collectively discuss solutions that will better serve libraries, universities, and, most importantly, scholars.


March 10, 2022

Full Session: Assessing Library Publishing Programs

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 18,  1:30pm – 2:30pm

Presenters

  • Johanna Meetz, The Ohio State University
  • Ellen Dubinsky, University of Arizona

Description

Assessment of library publishing programs can take many forms. It can be formal or informal, internally motivated or externally requested. In our presentation we share our experience with two different approaches to the assessment of library publishing programs at Ohio State University and the University of Arizona.

At Ohio State University, our assessment was internally motivated. In 2020, the department was fully staffed for the first time in many years, so it was a good time to gather information and reflect on our current practices in order to move forward in an informed and purposeful way. We talked with some of our journal editors, with our internal collaborators (IT department, subject librarians, and copyright services department), and internally among the staff of our department. This assessment enforced the importance of communication, highlighted the services stakeholders value the most, and allowed us to rethink our workflows to create more standardized and sustainable practices. It also resulted in additional collaboration and created new connections across the Libraries.

Library publishing at the University of Arizona had grown haphazardly over the years since the service began in 1994. The 2019 assessment was driven by an immediate need to identify alternative hosting options to replace a locally hosted, though out-of-date, version of OJS. However, as the service had never been formally evaluated, we took the opportunity to look at the history and scope of the service, with the intention to identify a sustainable service plan. The evaluation process resulted in a major restructuring of the service, migration of content to two hosting platforms, alignment of the publishing service goals with those of the Libraries, and an articulated plan of action to remedy gaps in best practices for library publishing.