Forum

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Context, not checklists! Workshopping a collaborative, context-driven approach to evaluating journals

Day/Time: Friday, May 14, 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM

Presenters

• Matt Ruen, Grand Valley State University
• Brianne Selman, University of Winnipeg
• Stephanie Towery, Texas State University
• Leila Sterman, Montana State University
• Joshua Neds-Fox, Wayne State University
• Teresa Schultz, University of Nevada, Reno

Description

Attendees of this workshop will get the most out of it if they preview the project at https://vimeo.com/543381147

Concerns about “predatory” or questionable journals have led many academics to seek out simple checklists of good or bad journals, but this obscures the contextual and constructed nature of authority in information.

A group of librarians has banded together to try to address this problem through the creation of the journal Reviews: the Journal of Journal Reviews (RJJR) that would invite peer reviewed evaluations of all journals, both open and paywalled, from across the world, no matter the language. The idea is to create an open rubric for thoughtfully evaluating a journal, as well as a platform for sharing those evaluations as resources. Authors interested in a potential journal could look to RJJR for evaluations already completed on the journal, while the reviews themselves would model the practice of nuanced, contextual evaluation. This aims to be an iterative process that can be updated and allows for open feedback.

The values which shape this project include: taking a critical approach to prestige, supporting labor not traditionally seen as scholarly work, ensuring an environment inclusive of diverse voices, being transparent about the process, emphasizing nuance in journal evaluation, and accepting that change happens.

Prior to the Forum, we will share our rubric and a video overview of this project so that the session can focus on deeper engagement with the idea of context-centered journal reviews as a form of scholarly publication.  The heart of this session will be a facilitated conversation using Mentimeter to gather and discuss recommendations, critiques, and other feedback from participants.

We invite participants to help us revise and reflect on our project, specifically considering these questions:

• For authors, does the context-centric rubric make sense when evaluating an unfamiliar journal, and how can we improve the tool for your future use?
• For editors, is our framework appropriate to evaluate your journal?
• For librarians, does this publication structure adequately recognize that the labor of librarians supporting scholarly communications is itself scholarship, especially for promotion and advancement?
• For everyone, how can the practice of contextual evaluation critically reflect on racial, gender, and global biases that shape perceptions of publication venues?

“Read the Rubric: https://tinyurl.com/rjjrrubric

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Advancing Open Access Book Analytics for Library Publishing: Moving from use cases and case studies to next steps

Day/Time: Friday, May 14, 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM

Presenters

• Christina Drummond, Data Trust Program Officer, Educopia Institute / OA Ebook Usage Data Trust
• Lara Speicher, Head of Publishing, UCL Press
• Charles Watkinson Associate University Librarian for Publishing / Director, University of Michigan Press
• Andrew Joseph, Digital Publisher, Wits University Press
• Cameron Neylon, Professor of Research Communication, Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University

Description

This session will explore the opportunities and challenges library publishers face when looking to leverage OA book usage data for reporting and operational decision-making. The session will begin with an overview of the data flows, stakeholders, and metadata standards that enable OA book analytics, noting the role of a usage data trust in supporting library publishers’ use cases for OA book usage data. Three representatives will then share their experiences developing and piloting OA ebook usage dashboards to collate and visualize cross-platform usage and impact statistics. Each will share information about their organization’s OA book data dashboards to then describe how the addition of these dashboards has impacted their press operations.

After the case-study presentations, a member of the OA eBook Usage Data Trust’s technical team will provide a brief overview of the infrastructure that enables the cross-platform visualizations and then address the importance of privacy, security, and community governance mechanisms for such a public/private multi-stakeholder effort. The session will conclude with participants being invited to brainstorm needs, concerns, and questions to inform future development of this and other tools for library-publishers.

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Long-Term Preservation of Digital Library Publishing Content

Day/Time: Thursday, May 13, 4:00 PM to 5 PM

Presenters

• Craig Van Dyck, outgoing Executive Director, CLOCKSS Archive
• Jasmine Mulliken, Stanford University Press
• Alicia Wise, incoming Executive Director, CLOCKSS Archive

Description

Library Publishers are aware of the importance of long-term digital presentation. In fact, librarians are the primary champions of preservation. However, many library publishers have not yet established a formal solution for preserving their content, including new forms of content that present preservation challenges.

This session will speak in general terms about digital preservation options that may be appropriate for library publishers. And the session will use Stanford University Press’s digital publishing program as a case study of the challenges faced by academy-led publishing, and how to think about preservation of these new types of interactive scholarly works that include multi-modal, dynamic, user-driven elements. A contributor to Educopia’s 2018 Library Publishing Curriculum, SUP’s digital program has advocated for the inclusion of preservation considerations early in a publication’s development. Their experiences identifying and applying preservation solutions before, during, and after a project’s publication shed light on the real challenges that publishers of complex digital content face.

Each presentation will be 20 minutes, leaving 20 minutes for Q&A. The presentations will include interactive polls to get input from the audience, which can be used to seed the Q&A session.

CLOCKSS is a robust and stable digital preservation system that serves the scholarly community. The CLOCKSS presentation will cover the basics of long-term preservation of digital scholarly content, and will survey the landscape of appropriate preservation options – not only CLOCKSS, but the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP PN) and others.

The Stanford University Press presentation will describe the Press’s Mellon-funded digital publishing initiative and the challenges faced, as well as the Press’s experiences as a participant in a follow-on Mellon-funded project that focuses on the preservation of enhanced e-books.

March 19, 2021

Full Session: LPC Fellows Forum 2021

Day/Time: Thursday, May 13, 4:00 PM to 5 PM

Presenters

• Jody Bailey, LPC Board President (2020-2021) and Head of Scholarly Communications Office, Emory University
• Talea Anderson, LPC Fellow (2019-2021) and Scholarly Communication Librarian, Washington State University
• A.J. Boston, LPC Fellow (2019-2021) and Scholarly Communication Librarian, Murray State University

Description

In this session, Talea Anderson and A.J. Boston, LPC Fellows for 2019-2021, will reflect on their two-year terms as LPC Fellows and provide an update on their latest research activities related to library publishing. A.J. will discuss three writing projects (including a flip on David Lewis’ 2.5% proposal, a concept for a visual peer-review overlay service, and a potential alternative to the transformative agreement), while Talea will discuss accessibility in library publishing. After these presentations, all attendees will be invited to participate in a discussion of these topics moderated by LPC Board President Jody Bailey.

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Presenting Preprints: Are Library Publishers the New Facebook?

Day/Time: Thursday, May 13, 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM

Presenters

• Lisa Schiff, Associate Director, Publishing, Archives, and Digitization, California Digital Library, University of California
• Juan Pablo Alperin, Co-director of the ScholCommLab; Associate Director of Research of the Public Knowledge Project; Assistant Professor in the School of Publishing at Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Bruce Caron, Co-Founder, EarthArXiv; Founder, New Media Studio and the New Media Research Institute, Santa Barbara
• Martin Paul Eve, Project Lead for Janeway; Co-Director, Open Library of the Humanities; Project Lead for Janeway; Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London
• Alex Mendonça, Online Submission & Preprints Coordinator, SciELO Brazil

Description

Preprints are an increasingly important component of the scholarly record and preprint platforms have correspondingly grown in number. Academic communities value preprints for the opportunity to share early findings with peers and receive immediate feedback on not-yet-reviewed works. With the COVID pandemic, a broader audience is turning to preprints, as political leaders, journalists, and the public seek new information about the virus. Complications arise, however, when the unvetted nature of these works is not clearly signaled alongside discussions of their findings. In late 2020, Rick Anderson captured these concerns, highlighting cases where discredited preprints remained available to read, presenting a potential for misinformation. Anderson posited that preprint platform providers, not just editors, should ensure adequate preprint vetting and be willing to retract them.

With the availability of two new open-source preprint platforms–PKP’s Open Preprint Systems (OPS) and Birkback’s Janeway preprint server–library publishers now have familiar, robust infrastructure for entering this space and are a logical home for such services, especially given a strong commitment to a specific research community. But what additional responsibilities must we accept–if any–as publishers of this genre? Should we establish terms for vetting of submissions? Without adequate domain knowledge, how would we enforce, or even audit, such terms? How do we indicate that a specific preprint’s findings have not yet been formally accepted? What about obligations regarding debunked publications? What are the responsibilities of platform providers, publishers, and editors? Should library publishers, as a community of practice, expand on the proposed best practices related to preprint metadata to ensure we are responsible actors in providing access to early research?

Panelists will explore these questions during the session’s first half, and invite attendee participation for the second. Registered attendees will receive an advance survey regarding current/planned preprint publishing, in order to identify additional discussion topics.

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Journal Seeks Publisher: How JLSC Imagined, Sought, and Found Its Next Partner

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 12, 4:00 PM to 5 PM

Presenters

• Jill Cirasella, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
• Rebekah Kati, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Wendy C. Robertson, University of Iowa
• David Lewis, Emeritus, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis
• Daniel Bangert, Digital Repository of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy
• Harrison W. Inefuku, Iowa State University

Description

The Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication (JLSC) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal with no article processing charges for authors. It has been published by Pacific University Libraries (PUL) since its inception in 2012, with all costs covered by PUL. In April 2020, PUL notified JLSC that it was refocusing its publishing program and would not be able to publish JLSC beyond June 2021.

The news hit hard, but the editorial team and editorial board also saw opportunity. What additional best practices might we be able to adopt? What new technologies or modalities might we be able to embrace? What kind of financial sponsorship program might we develop to sustain the journal for years to come? We created a committee to bring our needs and hopes into focus and develop a request for proposals.

In September 2020, we issued the call for proposals and crossed our fingers. We knew our expectations were high, but we also knew that there exist numerous open access publishers with missions aligned with ours. And, indeed, we received six proposals, including a standout proposal from Iowa State University Digital Press (ISUDP). With excitement, hope, and gratitude, we selected ISUDP as JLSC’s next publisher.

In this presentation, members of JLSC’s editorial team and editorial board will detail our search, from initial panic to ultimate partnership. Additionally, the manager of ISUDP will discuss the decision to submit a proposal and the questions that arose while developing it. Attendees will have ample opportunity to ask the panel about our hopes, fears, priorities, and processes.

March 19, 2021

Full Session: The Power of No: Building a Sustainable Publishing Program

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 12, 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM

Presenters

• Karen Bjork, Portland State University
• Johanna Meetz, The Ohio State University

Description

We are passionate about our work, and it can be difficult to say “no.” Each project also has the potential to move our program or initiative forward. However, sometimes saying “no” is the more strategic choice; particularly now that Libraries are facing additional budgetary and staffing constraints due to COVID-19 pandemic.

In this session, the panelists will facilitate a collaborative conversation about how saying “no” can be difficult, and what happens when limited resources (staff or budgetary) mean you can’t say “yes” anymore. We will focus on publishing programs that are ready to make a transition from saying “yes” to all (or most) publishing opportunities to being more selective and saying “no” using a business plan for library publishing as a model (McCready, K.; Molls, E. Developing a Business Plan for a Library Publishing Program. Publications 2018, 6, 42. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6040042).

As initiatives grow and evolve, it becomes increasingly important to evaluate new projects in the context of ongoing commitments and capacity to take on additional work. Making these kinds of choices allows us to maintain the program’s sustainability.

The session leaders will provide real-life scenarios where they have said “no” to projects, the reasons why, and the consequences (if any) of saying “no.” We have a group discussion around:

• The pros and cons of different solutions that might allow some flexibility as resources are running low
• Convincing other stakeholders that saying “no” is necessary
• Choosing to say “no” when you’d really like to say “yes,” as well as the joy that can be found in saying “no” to something that you’re happy to turn down
• Overcoming the difficulties of saying “no, we can’t keep working together,” to a longtime partner
• The challenges of juggling other non-publishing related duties, such as traditional scholarly communication librarianship responsibilities

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Advancing Library Publishing Infrastructure: An Update on the Next Gen Library Publishing (NGLP) project

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 12, 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM

Moderator

• Catherine Mitchell (CDL)

Presenters

• Paul Walk (COAR)
• Katherine Skinner (Educopia)
• Zach Davis (Cast Iron Coding)
• Kristen Ratan (Stratos)

Description

Following the “Next Gen Library Publishing (NGLP) Infrastructure” workshop at LP Forum 2020, which focused on community requirements gathering, this session will provide an update on the NGLP project’s substantial progress in the past year and offer attendees another opportunity to engage directly with this effort to develop community-led, values-based, flexible open infrastructure to support the growing publishing and repository needs of the library community.

The project update will focus on the following deliverables:

• A values & principles framework for the evaluation of vendors and technology partners
• A new catalog of open source tools and platforms available for scholarly publishing
• Two ambitious technology development projects to fill gaps and share data between existing open source platforms (Janeway, OJS and DSpace) for more robust, multi-stakeholder library publishing
• The establishment of mission-aligned service providers to host and manage this open infrastructure for library publishers

Attendees will have the opportunity to participate through polls throughout the presentations. 

March 19, 2021

Full Session: WordPress Wizardry: Building Publications in WordPress

Day/Time: Tuesday, May 11, 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM

Presenters

• Laureen Boutang, University of Minnesota Libraries
• John Barneson, University of Minnesota Libraries
• Shane Nackerud, University of Minnesota Libraries
• Emma Molls, University of Minnesota Libraries

Description

University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing creates and maintains WordPress sites for law publications, journals, and scholarly websites. We’ll walk through our process of building a WordPress publication, and how we decide when WordPress is the right tool for the job. We’ll describe the work and tools associated with WordPress: hosting and maintenance, plug-ins and security issues, design and build work, analytics and what additional work is required of the journal’s staff. Using our WordPress-based journals and sites as examples we’ll highlight how different tools and designs have been implemented. 20-30 minutes of the presentation time will be allocated to Q&A from attendees. Our developer will be on the call, so please bring detailed questions, and we can demonstrate portions of the work live as needed.

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Promoting justice-forward language in publications: Policies and actions at your press

Day/Time: Tuesday, May 11, 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM

Presenters

• Press 1: Sarah Muncy, University of Cincinnati Press, Managing Editor; Liz Scarpelli, University of Cincinnati Press, Director
• Press 2: Amanda Krause, University of Arizona Press, Editorial, Design, and Production Manager; Kristen Buckles, University of Arizona Press, Editor-in-Chief
• Press 3: Kristen Elias Rowley, Editor in Chief, The Ohio State University Press

Description

Recognizing and adjusting language to be inclusive and justice-forward in publications is not a small task nor one that should be taken lightly. In many cases, it is not solely an issue of terminology, though that certainly plays a part, but a concern regarding general tone—how non-White groups or other minorities are discussed and in what context. Antiquated and offensive terminology and descriptions representing whitewashed views of minority populations and historical events may not be immediately obvious, nor easy to spot initially—they can be found in scholarly as well as regional manuscripts. Knowing how to recognize errors and create a game plan to edit and promote justice-forward publications can seem daunting and difficult to make into tangible, actionable steps.

Solutions and game plans for justice-forward language are rooted in the workflow process. This is a group concern and one that involves a publisher policy and culture; not one dictated to a particular department or based on an individual editor’s ability to spot racially charged language.  The panel will involve a pair of presenters from 3 presses who will discuss how to move the dialogue from abstract language to specific tasks and methods publishers can take and how to address push back from authors which can lead to production delays and problems from author relations to poor reviews. The discussions will be rooted in real-world case studies that highlight the concerns, where in the process the concerns were identified, and how (and if) the concerns were resolved, as well as workflow changes to educate and encourage authors to write inclusively and internal procedures to help the press manage these manuscripts. In a Q&A, panel attendees will be invited to share their own experiences as a part of creating sustainable workflows which promote inclusive publications and open space for continual learning at the press and between the press and authors.

March 19, 2021

Full Session: Working through the Pain: How Library Publishers are Learning from Workflow Documentation

Day/Time: Monday, May 10, 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM

Presenters

• Jennifer Beamer, Claremont Colleges Library
• Sonya Betz, University of Alberta Library
• Brandon Locke, Educopia Institute
• Joshua Neds-Fox, Wayne State University Libraries

Description

Library Publishing Workflows (LPW) is an IMLS-funded research project of Educopia Institute, Library Publishing Coalition, and 12 partner libraries to investigate, synchronize, and model a range of library publishing workflows. Through the first year and a half of the project, library publishers conducted interviews with Educopia Institute staff regarding their workflows and pain points, reviewed multiple forms of documentation stemming from the interviews, and participated in several focused group discussions.

In this panel conversation, library publishers will share how the experience of developing workflow documentation and discussing pain points and gaps as a community has impacted their programs. Panelists will present the varied insights into their practice that participation in the project has revealed, including ah-ha moments made possible by in-depth workflow interviews and documentation reviews, ideas generated in community conversations around shared platforms, and discussions about pain points and gaps.

We will also invite participants to share their own experiences from similar documentation projects, including LPC’s Documentation Month (Feb 2021).