Forum

March 21, 2023

Keynote: Deborah Poff

Day/time: May 11, 2023, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. ETD

Title: to come

Description: to come

March 21, 2023

Panel: May 10 2:45

Day/time: May 10, 2023, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. ETD

Title: Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing at the Big Ten Academic Alliance

Presenter: Kate McCready, BTAA Visiting Program Officer for Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing, Big Ten Academic Alliance + University of Minnesota Libraries

Description: Collective action between University-based publishing programs is rare. Library publishing programs often make-do with shallow budgets and generally focus on serving internal affiliate needs. University presses cross institutional boundaries with their authors, but the presses themselves are in direct competition with one another. They also have complex financial structures that can constrain them from working on multi-institutional efforts beyond outsourceable production work. At the same time, many university-based publishing programs desire to eliminate, or severely limit, the influence of commercial publishers in the scholarly publishing arena. They also desire to bring their work to a scale that greatly expands academy-owned open access publishing capacity. This landscape is ripe for exploration.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance’s [BTAA] Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing initiative is striving to understand the common challenges and shared strengths of university-based publishing with the goal of identifying avenues for collective action. This initiative is part of the work to advance the BTAA’s BIG Collection’s work to unite the collections of the Big Ten university libraries and to achieve the primary goal of: “Within the Big Ten: Any content, from anywhere, to anyone ….now and into the future.” This initiative has the goal of participating in the transformation of academic publishing and scholarly communication through investigating and outlining a multifaceted, sustainable course of action to strengthen academy-owned publishing within the BTAA.

This presentation will showcase the initial work of the initiative which began with an inventory of publishing activity across the Big Ten that both examined the processes being employed and the publications being produced, and also asked publishing experts where there were common challenges and opportunities for collaboration. The presenter will share the main themes that were identified through the survey, interviews, and focus groups, and will also explore the possibilities for collaboration that have surfaced.

Title: The Role of Library Publishing in Making Non-Traditional Research Outputs Count

Presenters:

• Christie Hurrell, Director, Lab NEXT, University of Calgary
• Robyn Hall, Scholarly Communications Librarian, MacEwan University

Description: Researchers across disciplines are increasingly expected by institutions and funders to engage in knowledge mobilization activities and to openly share a variety of research outputs for the benefit of both researchers and knowledge users in a wide range of contexts. Researchers engaged in knowledge mobilization efforts often create non-traditional outputs that may not easily find a home with established scholarly publishers, who largely remain focused on traditional forms such as journal articles, monographs, and textbooks. As such, researchers may face barriers to openly disseminate, preserve, and track the impact of non-traditional outputs.

Library publishing services are well-placed to support researchers producing non-traditional outputs such as reports, policy briefs, data sets, podcasts, digital multimedia projects, and infographics. Research repositories can typically host and preserve a wide variety of content and format types, make these works widely discoverable, and track downloads and other measures of impact. In addition, librarians and library publishing staff have expertise in copyright, research metrics, and digital preservation. By leveraging this infrastructure and expertise, libraries have the opportunity to more broadly disseminate non-traditional outputs, package them in a professional fashion, and assist researchers in more precisely articulating their impact. As such, exploring the ways in which libraries can support this growing area is important as publishing teams expand their scope to include a diverse range of research outputs. It may also help libraries support new research impact evaluation practices and bolster the knowledge mobilization goals of their institutions and researchers.

This presentation will outline preliminary research results focused on researcher perspectives and library practices in Canada and the United Kingdom concerning the role and function of non-traditional research outputs. Attendees will be encouraged to consider ways that library publishing services, including but not limited to research repositories, can make these works more discoverable, visible, and measurable.

Title: Ethics, Epistemology, and Scholarly Communication: How Epistemic Injustice Emerges throughout the Scholarly Communication Lifecycle

Presenter: Emily Cox, Collections & Research Librarian for Humanities, Social Sciences, & Digital Media, NC State University

Description: This presentation will discuss how recent work in the area of epistemic injustice can help us better understand the inequities in the scholarly communication lifecycle. Broadly speaking, epistemic injustice is when a person is not recognized as a knower. More specifically, there are two types of epistemic injustice particularly relevant to scholarly communication: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when a speaker suffers a credibility deficit due to prejudice. Exploring this injustice can shed light on barriers marginalized scholars face in scholarly publishing that are potentially unjust and harmful. Hermeneutical injustice is related to a lack of shared social understandings between communities. This kind of injustice can help to clarify the injustices marginalized scholars encounter at professional developments events, such as conferences. By examining some aspects of scholarly communication through the lens of epistemic injustice, we can more clearly examine practices which are inequitable and develop an understanding of how scholars are impacted by these practices.

March 21, 2023

Full Session: Practice What You Preach: A Conversation about Transparent Publishing with the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education

Day/time: May 10, 2023, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. ETD

Title: Practice What You Preach: A Conversation about Transparent Publishing with the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education

Presenters:

• Kristina Clement, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (Student Outreach & Sponsored Programs Librarian, Kennesaw State University)
• Hilary Baribeau, Managing Editor of the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (Scholarly Communication Librarian at-Large)
• Casey McCoy-Simmons, author of “OER State Policy Discourse: Adding Equity to the Cost Savings Conversation” from the first issue of the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (PhD Candidate in Higher Education at the University of Denver)
• (Moderator) Chelsee Dickson, Associate Editor for Innovative Practices, Columns, & Reviews for the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (Scholarly Communications Librarian, Kennesaw State University)

Description: Transparent publishing practices in academic publishing is becoming a major topic of conversation as authors navigate an increasingly complex scholarly communications landscape. However, it is still rare to see journal publishers, rather than scholars and librarians, engage meaningfully in this conversation. This presentation will be an open conversation between editor-in-chief, Kristina Clement, the managing editor, Hilary Baribeau (both of the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (JOERHE)), and first-issue author, Casey McCoy-Simmons, a doctoral student at the University of Denver. JOERHE is a new, diamond open access journal for higher education practitioners to feature, discuss, and share information related to open educational resources. A large portion of the conversation will focus on the mission of the journal, which is to practice what it preaches: transparency and openness for its authors, readers, reviewers, editorial staff, and editorial board. JOERHE practices transparency in its publishing practices by openly peer reviewing research articles. Authors know the identities of their reviewers and reviewers know the identity of the authors whose articles they are reviewing. Authors and reviewers can converse through the journal platform throughout the review process, and all reviews are published alongside successful articles. This process provides visibility and transparency in the progress of the articles from submitted drafts to final publications. Additionally, the editors and the author will discuss the reasons why it is important for library publishers to practice openness and transparency in our contributions to scholarly conversation. The panel will be moderated by Chelsee Dickson, Associate Editor for Innovative Practices, Columns, & Reviews for JOERHE, who will ask a series of prepared questions. We will also solicit questions ahead of the conference and presentation and select a few questions to be featured in the presentation. There will be a sizable portion of the session dedicated to audience Q&A so that an authentic conversation can take place in addition to the prepared conversation.

March 21, 2023

Full Session: New Data Sharing Mandates and the Role of Academic Libraries

Day/time: May 10, 2023, 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. ETD

Title: New Data Sharing Mandates and the Role of Academic Libraries

Presenters:

• Michael Casp, J&J Editorial
• Emma Molls, Publishing Services Librarian, University of Minnesota Libraries
• Sarah Lippincott, Head of Community Engagement, Dryad
• Alberto Pepe, Authorea

Description: Academic libraries have longstanding and important roles in supporting and sustaining the scholarly ecosystem and its researchers. Data sharing has traditionally not been a function associated with academic libraries, yet new funder and government regulations spanning across the world may change that. The recent OSTP memo, for example, puts a strong emphasis on the sharing of scientific data. Implementing these data mandates is going to be costly and difficult. Moreover, who exactly will be in charge of providing a framework for processing and hosting scientific data “behind” and “beyond” funded research articles? These data sharing mandates may impact first and foremost researchers who need funding to operate and need to comply without delay. Hence, similar to the way that academic libraries have helped their researchers with data management plans and similar existing mandates, it is conceivable that libraries may play a crucial role in supporting this next generation of data sharing provisions. This library support might include advising researchers on data formats and data sharing best practices, developing and delivering training on data management and storage, and facilitating access to research data. In this panel, we invite a discussion on the potential of libraries to become repositories of research data to support their researchers’ compliance with funder mandates. We will present challenges and opportunities from three different perspectives: a funder, a librarian, and a publisher.

March 21, 2023

Panel: May 10 1:15

Day/time: May 10, 2023, 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. ETD

Title: Staffing and Services in Library Publishing Programs: A Data-Driven Report

Presenters:

• Johanna Meetz, Publishing & Repository Services Librarian, Ohio State University
• Jeff Story, Senior Software Engineer, Intel Corporation

Description: This presentation uses the Library Publishing Coalition’s directory dataset to glean how publishing programs have evolved in terms number of publications, staff members (both category and amount), and services. This information will help inform broader conclusions about issues of sustainability and scalability, which are key challenges to library publishing in general.

Title: Creating a Publishing Preservation Policy

Presenter: Corinne Guimont, Digital Scholarship Coordinator, Virginia Tech

Description: After working with the NASIG Digital Preservation Model Policy group to create a model preservation policy for publishers, I used the document to create a policy for Virginia Tech Publishing. In this presentation I will discuss how I approached this process, issues I ran into, and the resulting document. The policy will cover preservation for journals, books, OER, and non-traditional publications. Each of these formats requires some similar and some different strategies which I will share and discuss why we chose each strategy. I will also cover who I reached out to for assistance and information in this process. This presentation may help participants see a way that they can use the NASIG Model Policy to create their own Publishing Preservation Policy.

Title: Connecting Institutional Repositories and University Presses to Open and Preserve Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarship

Presenters:

• Annie Johnson, Associate University Librarian, University of Delaware
• Alicia Pucci, Scholarly Communications Associate, Temple University

Description: University presses play a crucial role when it comes to advancing scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Yet despite their considerable contributions, university press content is largely missing from institutional repositories. Presenters will discuss their recent research on the existing relationships between North American university presses and institutional repositories and explore what these might look like in the future. In considering the main types of press-produced content that can currently be found in institutional repositories, one crucial role that will be examined is how institutional repositories can help presses preserve born-digital scholarship, a rapidly developing area of university press publishing. Recommendations will be presented for how academic libraries with institutional repositories can and should partner with university presses to increase access to important scholarship as well as potentially help to normalize openness among humanities and social science scholars. Suggestions will also be offered for how libraries without their own university press can still contribute to this effort.

March 21, 2023

Panel: May 10 12:00

Day/time: May 10, 2023, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. ETD

Title: Stronger Together: The Growth of Open Access Library Hosting in Scotland

Presenter: Rebecca Wojturska, Open Access Publishing Officer, University of Edinburgh

Description: Library hosting services are growing across the UK. In 2018, the University of Edinburgh submitted a proposal to create a shared service governed by the Scottish Confederation of University & Research Libraries (SCURL). The aim of the service was to equip member institutions with a hosting solution to fulfil their Open Access publishing activities, with the development time charged to the University of Edinburgh (which covers costs and is invested back into the service). The service launched with three members – Heriot Watt University, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh – and four years later has grown to include ten partners, with more members interested in signing up.

Although the shared service caters to members engaged in both publishing and hosting activities, we have seen a growth in library partners requesting to join so they can launch their own diamond Open Access library-based hosting initiatives. These initiatives – similar to the one at Edinburgh which is called Edinburgh Diamond – aim to support academics, staff and students in their publishing endeavours by providing a free publishing workflow system, as well as a hosting platform for journal and book content. The University of Edinburgh sets partners up with an Open Journal System (OJS) or Open Monograph Press (OMP) installation and provides full technical support as well as system training and publishing advice and guidance, which the member institution can use to mould their service. The shared service members meet three times a year to shape the service according to user needs and requirements.

This presentation will explain how the shared service grew, explore how and why hosting services are developing within Scottish libraries, and provide conclusions and recommendations for institutions considering creating similar initiatives.

Title: Canada’s Library Publishers: Low-Key Load-Bearing

Presenters:

• Mike Nason, Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian, UNB Libraries
• Sonya Betz, Head, Library Publishing and Digital Production Services, University of Alberta
• Emma Uhl, Publishing Support Specialist, Public Knowledge Project

Description: In Canada, academic libraries occupy a critical role in scholarly journal publishing. Commercial journal publishers rely on institutional subscriptions as a primary revenue source, and Canada’s research libraries expend significant percentages of their budgets to license packages of journals from major publishers. In 2021 alone, CRKN spent $143,083,913 on licensing fees, with a substantial portion of these funds directed to major international commercial journal publishers. It is unsurprising, then, that much of the discourse regarding open access has happened from the perspective of libraries as customers. Through negotiations, they express justifiable concerns regarding unsustainable price increases, lack of ownership and control of the digital content we purchase, and the ever-increasing oligopoly of major publishing companies.

However, recent research has demonstrated a near absence of commercial publishers in the Canadian context – almost all of the journals published here in Canada are affiliated with organizations such as universities, scholarly associations, not-for-profit presses, and academic libraries.

This presentation will explore the critical role occupied by library publishing and hosting programs in supporting the Canadian independent scholarly journals that comprise our national research literature. We’ll quantify the number and nature of journals our libraries support, describe the services and support we’re collectively offering, and position these programs within the broader Canadian journal publishing ecosystem. We hope attendees will leave this presentation with an improved understanding of our journal hosting/publishing programs’ critical role within our broader efforts to ensure that Canada’s research publishing landscape is open, equitable, and sustainable.

Title: Scottish Universities Press: Collaborating across Scotland to Develop a Library-Led Open Access Press

Presenter: Dominique Walker, Publishing Officer, Scottish Universities Press

Description: 18 academic libraries across Scotland, through SCURL (Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries), are collaborating to develop a not-for-profit open access publishing platform that is owned and managed by the participating libraries. The aim of the Scottish Universities Press (SUP) is to provide a straightforward and cost-effective OA publication route for academics across Scottish HEIs, in response to changes in funder policies and Plan S. The Press also wishes to explore alternative approaches to academic publishing that have the needs of the academic community at the core.

In this talk, Dominique Walker will set out the background to the project, discussing how SCURL’s experience of delivering cooperative developments for Scottish HEIs provided the foundation and the framework for creating a collaborative OA press. She will provide an overview of the development of the Press throughout 2022, including how the governance structure of the Press fosters a sense of collaboration and common good across all 18 institutions, our open call for Editorial Board members and how we aim to keep costs as low as possible for our institutions by using the skills available across the SCURL network. She will also discuss next steps, such as plans to help Early Career Researchers publish their work OA and to help smaller Scottish institutions publish content OA where previously they may not have had a budget to do so.

Overall, we wish to demonstrate how SUP’s collaborative model can help the development of good and equitable OA practices both in the UK and internationally. The talk will be of particular interest to Institutions or Consortia who may wish to start their own collaborative OA Press

March 21, 2023

Active Session: Book Usage Metric Sharing and Use Guardrails: Developing Ethical Principles and System Requirements to Protect Reader Privacy and Automate Multi-Publisher and Platform OA Book Usage Data Exchange and Aggregation

Day/time: May 10, 2023, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. ETD

Title: Book Usage Metric Sharing and Use Guardrails: Developing Ethical Principles and System Requirements to Protect Reader Privacy and Automate Multi-Publisher and Platform OA Book Usage Data Exchange and Aggregation

Presenter: Ursula Rabar, OA Book Usage Data Trust Community Manager, OPERAS (Open Scholarly Communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities)

Description: While COUNTER standards and APIs help library publishers access book usage data from multiple platforms and services, substantial staff time is often needed to interpret and aggregate data into a single report for a book, author, or funder. Anticipating increasing demand for holistic and contextual OA publishing impact reporting, the OA Book Usage Data Trust (OAeBUDT) effort has been bringing together stakeholders to improve cross-platform usage data exchange and aggregation.

In this session, the library publishing community will have an opportunity to provide feedback on draft ethical principles, community governance structures, and data trust participation requirements drafted by stakeholders for community review. Participants will explore the importance of book usage data stewardship practices and policies, and why high quality, granular OA book usage analytics and reports may require detailed usage data to be exchanged in controlled environments as opposed to aggregate data harvested from the public web. Issues of privacy, transparency, community governance, security will be explored while considering whether specific use and reuse limitations should exist for book usage data shared across the book publishing ecosystem.

About the OA Book Usage Data Trust

Since 2015, stakeholders have worked through the global OAEBUDT effort to foster the secure, multi-party exchange, aggregation and benchmarking of book usage related data, to increase trust in usage metrics, improve data quality, and reduce reporting and compliance resource-burdens related to OA usage data. Prior work documented library publisher needs for OA usage data reporting and analytics. Now this community is developing secure data exchange cyberinfrastructure to simplify cross-platform usage data aggregation. With Mellon Foundation support, the project is developing ethical data use guidelines to inform OA book usage data sharing agreements and technical requirements to support data exchange between public and commercial OA book usage data creators.

March 21, 2023

Full Session: Building a Publishing Platform Crosswalk: A Documentation Month Case Study

Day/time: May 9, 2023, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. ETD

Title: Building a Publishing Platform Crosswalk: A Documentation Month Case Study

Presenters:

• Corinne Guimont, Digital Scholarship Coordinator, Virginia Tech
• Cheryl E. Ball, Independent Consultant
• Matthew Vaughn, Indiana University

Description: One of the challenges library publishers face is, with so many new academy-owned publishing platforms available, which one is right for their services or their author needs? We identified several common publishing/digital scholarship platforms — Fulcrum, Manifold, Scalar, OJS, Janeway, and a few others — and researched basic documentation on each of them across a specific set of user-needs criteria. Criteria included publication and content types, what’s possible to ingest or embed, hosting services, preservation and export options, and a few others. We also identified, when possible, what makes one platform stand out from another when they fell into similar publishing realms (i.e., books vs. journals vs. collections). Our presentation covers which platforms we chose, what documentation we looked for for each and why, and how we decided to design the final crosswalk. It also highlights how much we were able to accomplish with one hour a week during LPC’s documentation month. This presentation will include time for interactive user testing of the platform crosswalk.

March 21, 2023

Panel: May 9 2:45

Day/time: May 9, 2023, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. ETD

Title: Listening to Our Community: What Does DEI in Library Publishing Look Like to You?

Presenter: Shannon Kipphut-Smith, Scholarly Communications Liaison, Rice University

Description: This session will share initial reflections on a project intended to identify ways the library can center diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the library’s publishing services. Although library staff are knowledgeable about the current state of scholarly communications, we acknowledge that, often, members of the University community better understand–and experience–the numerous challenges faced by authors in today’s scholarly publishing environment. So, rather than develop a set of services and resources informed by what library staff perceived to be user needs, this project was intended to take a step back and ask participants, generally, what DEI in library publishing services looks like to them. This session will provide an overview of participant feedback, challenges, and next steps.

Title: The Gender Gap in Job Status and Career Development of Chinese Publishing Practitioners

Presenter: Yawen Li, School of Journalism and Communication, Beijing Normal University

Description: Among Chinese publishing practitioners, there is a significant difference between the number of males and females. To investigate the gender gap among Chinese publishing practitioners, we surveyed 3372 valid questionnaires from April 30 in 2020 to December 31 in 2020. This research mainly adopts the Chi-square test and the T-test to analyze the gender gap in publishing practitioners’ career choices, career plans, career promotions, etc. The results show that although females occupy nearly 70% of the samples in the data, males perform more competitively in multiple indicators such as salary and career development. There is also a significant gender gap in terms of career plans and career perception. However, our research shows that the gender gap is not obvious in terms of workload and willingness to change jobs. This research provides a strong factual basis and data support for the current gender status in the Chinese publishing industry and discusses the possible healthy development of gender structure.

Title: Reintroducing the Ethical Framework for Library Publishing, V2.0

Presenter: Joshua Neds-Fox, Coordinator for Library Publishing, Wayne State University Library System

Description: Conceived at the Library Publishing Forum in 2017, the Ethical Framework for Library Publishing was a first-of-its-kind document for the LPC and the library publishing community. But remarkable social upheaval in the ensuing years, along with the continued maturation of our discipline, prompted the LPC to convene a task force to update the Framework for our current environment. What the task force developed, to our surprise, looks very little like the original document. This session will introduce the Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Version 2.0, a true framework to help library publishers set an ethical baseline for their programs and activities. Consisting of four basic Frames, each with their own set of Statements and Guidance, the Framework gives the reader a scaffolding for ethical thinking in library publishing. Attendees should expect a basic overview of the Framework, insight into the people and processes that produced it, and a provocative approach to professional ethical development.

March 21, 2023

Full Session: Consortium Models for Open Education Resource Publishing

Day/time: May 9, 2023, 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. ETD

Title: Consortium Models for Open Education Resource Publishing

Presenters:

• John D. Morgenstern, Copyright and Scholarly Communications Librarian, Emory University
• Jeff Gallant, Program Director, Affordable Learning Georgia
• Ellan Jenkinson, Member Engagement & Training Librarian, Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries
• BJ Robinson, Director, University of North Georgia Press
• Yang Wu, Open Education Resources Librarian, Clemson University

Description: Academic libraries play a key role in publishing open education resources (OER), but limitations on budget, staffing, and publishing expertise threaten the sustainability of efforts at any single institution. This panel showcases two trailblazing collaborations between statewide library consortia and university presses that leverage inter-institutional resources to publish high-impact, professional-quality OER sustainably.

A decade ago, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia launched Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) with a mandate to reduce the cost of course materials for students and enhance the discovery of library materials through GALILEO, Georgia’s virtual library. A grant program through ALG underwrites the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER. The University of North Georgia Press partners with this program, offering grantees such services as peer review, project management, and production.

Inspired by Georgia’s pioneering approach to sustainable OER publishing, Clemson University Press recently established an imprint to publish open textbooks in collaboration with the Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries (PASCAL), the statewide library consortium. Named after PASCAL’s affordable-learning program, SCALE (South Carolina Affordable Learning), the imprint provides an avenue for authors from any of the consortium’s fifty-six member institutions to publish open textbooks through Clemson.

This panel brings together representatives from both sides of the Georgia and South Carolina OER publishing initiatives, who will recount how the collaborations came to fruition, identify the challenges they encountered (in areas such as getting initial buy-in, advocating for funding, and maintaining sustainability), and offer practical guidance for overcoming them. Ultimately, these partnerships offer replicable models for open textbook publishing in states lacking dedicated OER funding based around engaging a larger community of librarians and university presses in collaboration.