Forum

April 3, 2024

HANDS-ON SESSION: Dive into Open Infrastructure with IOI’s New Discovery Tool

Day/Time/Room
May 16, 2024 | 8:45 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. | Heritage Gallery

Title: Dive into Open Infrastructure with IOI’s New Discovery Tool

Presenters:

  • Lauren Collister (she/they), Engagement Coordinator, Infrastructure, Invest in Open Infrastructure
  • Katherine Skinner, Research Lead, Invest in Open Infrastructure

Description: Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) has launched a new tool to facilitate discovery, adoption, and investment in open infrastructure. Debuting with 50 infrastructure services in January 2024, IOI’s new tool allows users to search, filter, and compare services that complement their service offerings. In this session, we will describe the creation of this tool and the research behind it, then demonstrate the new tool. A key component of this session will be feedback from participants, centering around the following questions:

  • What use cases can you envision for this tool in your contexts?
  • What information in these entries do you find most helpful, and why?
  • Is there any information that you would like to see but cannot find?
  • What tools or services in the open infrastructure landscape would you suggest for inclusion in this tool?

An optional exercise will be available for participants to explore, putting themselves in the shoes of a librarian who is searching for an open infrastructure tool to support a new multimedia student journal. Using a format inspired by ethnographic research, participants will document their search strategies for navigating the tool and their reactions to its options and interface. Participants’ feedback in the questions/discussion as well as the exercise will be used to evaluate the user experience of the tool and investigate next steps in expanding its inclusion.

Participants should bring their devices (laptops or tablets ideally).

April 3, 2024

FULL SESSION: Growing OER Publishing Programs: Watershed Decisions that Drive Impact

Day/Time/Room
May 16, 2024 | 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 a.m. | Heritage Gallery

Title: Growing OER Publishing Programs: Watershed Decisions that Drive Impact

Presenters:

  • Shane Nackerud (he/him), Director, Affordable Learning and Open Education (ALOE), University of Minnesota Libraries
  • Kathy Essmiller (she/hers), Coordinator, OpenOKState | OER Librarian, Oklahoma State University Libraries
  • Ryan Otto (he/him), Scholarly Communication and Digital Scholarship Librarian, Kansas State University Libraries
  • Julie Curtis (she/her), VP Growth & Strategy, Pressbooks

Description: When institutions embark on OER publishing programs, they navigate challenges and leverage opportunities that drive towards their desired impact. They encounter inflection points for overcoming obstacles and building momentum. This session invites attendees to join in conversation with OER publishing practitioners about key, “watershed” decisions that have shaped the course of their work implementing OER publishing programs as they seek impact, scale, and sustainability.

Libraries and OER publishing programs are frequently at the forefront of promoting open educational resources (OER). Often rooted in common goals for improving textbook affordability, increasing access, supporting equitable student success, and advancing scholarship, strategic “watershed” decisions around OER publishing programs have the power to establish policy and infrastructure, influence practice, and inspire culture change.

This session will facilitate organic dialogue between panelists and audience members using a modified, participatory “fishbowl” format that taps into the rich experience represented in LPF attendees. The session will surface insights about essential decision points and success factors that have been most effective helping OER publishing programs achieve impact. Key themes include:

  • What was a “watershed” decision that shifted the trajectory of what you could accomplish (around policy, infrastructure, practice, culture, support, etc.), and why was that moment so impactful?
  • What single thing has been most impactful in your program’s success?
  • What have you learned about measuring impact and demonstrating the value of your initiative?
  • How have diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility figured into goals, key decisions, and/or evolution of your program and the impact you’re trying to make?
  • How have you linked your program to broader strategic goals of your institution?
  • What do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out in this work?
  • What watershed decisions do you see ahead?

April 3, 2024

PANEL: Collaboration

Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. | Ski-U-Mah Room

Title: A Library + University Press Collaboration: Big Ten Open Books

Presenters:

  • Jason Colman (he/him), Director of Publishing Services, University of Michigan Library
  • Kate McCready (she/her), Librarian and Visiting Program Officer for Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing, University of Minnesota & Big Ten Academic Alliance

Description: A collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Big Ten Open Books [http://bigtenopenbooks.org] connects readers everywhere to fully accessible, open access, trusted books from leading university presses. The first collection, 100 books published in August of 2023, on the subject of Gender and Sexuality studies, required bringing together experts from both libraries and presses to create a mutually agreed-to plan of action. In both the processes and necessary expertise, deep collaboration is occurring between presses and libraries in areas such as copyright, discovery, accessibility, metrics, and preservation.

The Big Ten Open Books project is now building on the initial undertaking in scholarly publishing collective action – creating open content, on open infrastructure, using open distribution models – to envision a robust programmatic future for open monograph publishing. At the core of this work is the partnership between libraries and presses to create a sustainable business and service model for open access editions of previously published scholarly monographs. Information shared during the session about this case study will include timelines, costs and metrics for success.

Additionally, the established best practices and lessons learned will also be covered along with the issues that surfaced during the building of the first collection that require further study. Those include identifying a more standardized method of processing copyright permissions, determining methods for ensuring accessibility, discoverability, and preservation of works published through collective action, and establishing a sustainable financial structure that supports the values of both the libraries who contribute financially and the presses and library publishers that are facilitating the work.

Title: The Great Migration: A New Home for the Searchable Ornithological Research Archive

Presenters:

  • Jason Boczar (he/him), Digital Scholarship and Publishing Librarian, University of South Florida
  • Paul “Alex” Onac, Institutional Repository Manager, University of South Florida

Description: Upon learning from a local partner that the Searchable Ornithological Research Archive (SORA), a collection of open access ornithological publications hosted by the University of New Mexico, hadn’t been uploading new materials for a few years and was thinking about shutting down the project, the University of South Florida (USF) libraries reached out to be the new home of SORA. In addition to its commitment to open access journals, USF is also the home to a robust Florida Environment and Natural History collection with an emphasis on ornithological archives.

This individual session will look at the migration from the USF point of view, including partnering with UNM to contact journal editors, creating new memorandums of understanding for journal editors, getting new journal pages set up with bepress, and the technical aspects of content migration into the USF system. Building upon the already highly renowned SORA collection, USF’s migration seeks to add value into the project by improving accessibility features and ensuring all collections have OCR optimization for keyword searching, the search-engine optimization of bepress’ Digital Commons, and an editorial system for the contributors. Finally, with USF’s interest and capacity to grow the journal archive, the SORA migration will provide a roadmap for universities to collaborate through shifting priorities to ensure digital publishing projects have an extended shelf-life, as well as provide valuable tools for cross-walking systems to complete migrations in timely and efficient ways.

Title: The Power of Partnership: Reflections on Ten Years of Publishing a Novel Interdisciplinary Journal

Presenters:

  • Elizabeth Weinfurter, MLIS (she/her), Liaison and Instruction Librarian; Production Editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies; Health Sciences Library, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
  • Teddie Potter, PhD, RN, FAAN, FNAP (she/her), Clinical Professor, Director Center for Planetary Health and Environmental Justice; Executive Editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies; School of Nursing, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities

Description: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies (IJPS) is a unique open access journal that blends global academic, community, and artistic voices into a single, collaborative entity that follows the format of a scholarly journal. IJPS was launched in November 2014 as a mechanism to share new knowledge and successful applications of Riane Eisler’s partnership paradigm, and these partnership theories drive the journal at every level. IJPS is published as a shared effort between multiple institutions, and the lessons learned over the ten years of publishing the journal are instructive for others considering similarly collaborative publications. The presentation, given by two of the journal’s founding editors (one a faculty member in the School of Nursing, and one a librarian) will cover the philosophical aspects of publishing an open interdisciplinary journal, as well as practical knowledge relevant to the realm of library publishing.

April 3, 2024

PANEL: Multimedia

Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. | Heritage Gallery

Title: Beyond the Written Word: Fostering Inclusivity and Expression for Veteran Students with JIVE

Presenters:

  • Kristin Van Diest (she/her), Digital Publishing Librarian, Texas State University
  • Dr. Heriberto Arambula (he/him), Texas State University

Description: In a groundbreaking exploration of academic and digital storytelling, the Journal of Interactive Veteran Experiences (JIVE) unveils a mission that transcends traditional publishing norms.

JIVE, a pioneering space for student veterans at Texas State University, recognizes the power of diverse storytelling modes in fostering healing, understanding, and connection. Our aim is to push the boundaries of scholarly publishing norms by incorporating scholarly writing, creative expression, and digital storytelling with a peer-review structure that meets student veterans where they are. JIVE recognizes the value and intellectual richness of storytelling outside of the traditional journal publishing system and hopes to redefine the landscape of veteran narratives. The interactive media featured in JIVE goes beyond conventional scholarly articles, embracing forms such as artwork, poetry, creative writing, video recording, audio recording, and more.

Through this diverse range of mediums, the journal aims to capture the full spectrum of veteran experiences, providing a platform for expression that aligns with each contributor’s unique preferences and talents. Our commitment to inclusivity strives to bridge the civilian-military gap by presenting narratives in accessible ways for both audiences and creators.

Titled “Beyond the Written Word,” this session aims to showcase the integration of various media formats within the JIVE platform. Attendees will embark on a journey through the process and challenges of creating JIVE: developing theory and policies, garnering campus support, marketing for submissions, supporting students through the submission process, and designing a platform that is large enough to support our vision. Engaging with interactive displays, participants will experience the palpable impact of visual art and the resonance of personal narratives captured in audio and video formats.

Join us in this dynamic session as we push the boundaries of academic storytelling. “Beyond the Written Word” is a testament to the transformative potential of narrative diversity within academia.

Title: What Does It Mean to Publish Digital Scholarship? (And How Do I Do It?): Case Studies in Publishing Services from Columbia Libraries’ Digital Scholarship

Presenter: Michelle Wilson (she/her), Head, Open Scholarship Services, University of Maryland

Description: Sustainability and preservation are (or should be) central to any library publishing program. When we think about preservation from the vantage-point of a Digital Scholarship department, which has traditionally been an incubator of “alternative” scholarly research outputs, we are considering both the research object as a whole (e.g., digital humanities project website), and as its parts (e.g., individual podcast episodes). Any preservation tools and methods we employ must consider both of these project attributes, and different projects require different, tailored solutions. In an established publishing ecosystem built around digital but primarily text-based scholarship such as journals and monographs, it is also necessary to outline a set of standards and practical tactics to provide the a slate of essential publishing services to nontraditional forms of scholarly communication.

Nested within the Digital Scholarship unit, Columbia University Libraries’ publishing program provides education, development support, and publishing services for a range of scholarly forms that have included, over the years, podcasts, digital exhibitions and editions, encyclopedic projects, maps, and other dynamic digital humanities projects. Through longstanding stewardship of this digital scholarship program, the Libraries have come to recognize a set of common challenges for novel forms of digital scholarship and the need to envision how these scholarly products will fit into current systems of dissemination, evaluation, and long-term storage. This presentation will outline the menu of services offered to digital scholarship projects by the Columbia Libraries’ digital publishing program between 2018-2022. It will present the policies, standards, and technological solutions we developed to provide those services to a range of partners, balancing the need to support creativity and novelty in digital scholarship with concerns about sustainability and the ability for these projects to interact with existing systems for managing and promoting scholarship.

April 3, 2024

FULL SESSION: Developing an Open Education Resource focused on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice

Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. | Heritage Gallery

Title: Developing an Open Education Resource focused on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice

Presenters:

  • Allison Brown (she/her), Digital Publishing Services Manager, SUNY Geneseo
  • Cailyn Green Ph.D., CASAC-M (she/her/hers), Assistant Professor of Addiction Studies, Empire State University

Description: This presentation provides insight into the process of developing a social justice-focused open educational resource (OER). Two authors and an editor/publisher share their experiences developing an OER in social justice and diversity as a part of developing a human services course aligned with the new State University of New York (SUNY) general education requirement for diversity. The outline and contents of the OER will be shared with the audience to crowdsource feedback and comments. The presenters will explain the stages of development of the OER, including accessing funding for development and working with students from underrepresented populations to distribute power in the curriculum development process. Challenges and barriers to the process will also be discussed.

April 3, 2024

FULL SESSION: Library Publishing Collective Action at the Big Ten Academic Alliance

Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. | Memorial Hall

Title: Library Publishing Collective Action at the Big Ten Academic Alliance

Presenters:

  • Kate McCready (she/her), Visiting Program Officer for Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing, Big Ten Academic Alliance
  • Jason Colman (he/him), Director of Publishing Services, University of Michigan Library
  • Catherine Mitchell (she/her), Director of Publishing, Archives, and Digitization, California Digital Library
  • Ally Laird (she/her), Open Publishing Program Coordinator, Penn State University Libraries

Description: The Big Ten Academic Alliance is charting a course for collective action for their affiliated University-based publishing programs, focused on community engagement, shared services, and an aggregated BTAA publication collection.

Beginning in June 2022, the BTAA Library Initiatives appointed a visiting program officer to examine the scholarly publishing landscape across the Alliance in order to identify opportunities for both strengthening individual operations and finding common solutions to shared problems. The research conducted on the BTAA library publishing operations included surveys of the publishing community, follow-up interviews with practitioners, and community feedback sessions on the data and proposed recommendations. This information, originally shared in the BTAA’s 2023 Library Publishing Landscape Assessment Report, will be outlined and expanded on during this panel presentation to highlight the most common challenges and the related opportunities for collective action.

Within this context, this panel will provide a case study of how the BTAA is working to create a community of practice to build trust, establish shared values, and set shared priorities for strategic directions. Beyond strengthening awareness among the BTAA’s community of publishers of each others’ services, there are two specific courses of action planned for exploration through pilot projects. The first involves working collectively to extend local capacity by determining how to efficiently outsource work (e.g., typesetting, copyediting, indexing, hosting, etc.) to trusted, vended services. The second envisions creating an aggregated collection of publications and metadata from across the BTAA institutions, enabling better access to, as well as discovery and preservation of, these works.

April 3, 2024

FULL SESSION: Implementing DEIA in Library Publishing Practices

Day/Time/Room
May 16, 2024 | 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. | Memorial Hall

Title: Implementing DEIA in Library Publishing Practices

Presenters: 

  • Charlotte Roh (she/her), Publications Manager, California Digital Library
  • Allegra Swift, Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of California San Diego
  • Annie Carter (they/them), Digital Publishing Coordinator, University of Michigan Press – Michigan Publishing Services
  • Harrison W. Inefuku (he/him), Scholarly Publishing Services Librarian, Iowa State University
  • Sarah Frankel (she/her), Open Access & Repository Coordinator, University of Louisville

Description: This panel will feature library publishers who have integrated DEIA initiatives and practices into their workflows, including:

  • The Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) at the University of California has launched a new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication resource intended to support the UC community (and beyond) in gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges of achieving and maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion in scholarly publishing. The creation of this resource included extensive research, stakeholder community review, academic senate engagement, systemwide outreach efforts, and the implementation of educational modules for journal editors. This new resource includes concrete actions for authors, peer reviewers, journal editors, editorial boards, and librarians to create a more equitable scholarly communication environment in alignment with UC’s values as an academic institution.
  • At Michigan Publishing, the collective team in each of the subsidiary departments have brought DEIA initiatives to our hiring practices. Recognizing that much of the publishing industry identifies as predominantly white, female, heterosexual, and without disability (Roberts, 2021), (C4DISC, n.d.), Michigan Publishing has taken strides to meet DEIA initiatives through required bias interruption training for hiring committee members, providing applicants with questions in advance, and staff-wide communal norming discussions and improvements on a monthly basis.
  • At the University of Louisville, The Collective was created to uplift BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) faculty and staff by highlighting their research and providing open-access to BIPOC-produced scholarship through our institutional repository. By featuring this collection, UofL hopes to encourage scholars of all disciplines to intentionally seek out the research and scholarship of their colleagues of color and raise awareness about citation bias and help to reduce it.

April 3, 2024

BOAF: Scaling OER Publishing: Supporting Authors

Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. | Memorial Hall

Title: Scaling OER Publishing: Supporting Authors while Prioritizing Staff Well-being

Presenter: Abbey K. Elder (she/they), Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian, Iowa State University

Description: In this session, Abbey K. Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian at Iowa State University, will discuss with participants how they can scale their OER publishing efforts to meet the needs of faculty authors while prioritizing the needs of their staff. Whether publishing efforts are supported by an individual or a team, scaling support can be a daunting endeavor. Aspects to consider might include: staffing, budgets, grant support, and publishing infrastructure. In addition to sharing her own lessons learned navigating this space, Abbey will facilitate open sharing, discussion, and problem-solving among participants who share a common goal: supporting authors without overloading themselves.

April 3, 2024

FULL SESSION: Stronger Together: Diamond OA in North America

Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. | Memorial Hall

Title: Stronger Together: Diamond OA in North America

Presenters:

  • Brad Hemminger (he/his), Associate Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Jessica Clark (she/her), Senior Coordinator, Open Access Development, Érudit / Coalition Publica
  • Sharla Lair (she/her), Senior Strategist, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Initiatives, Lyrasis
  • Stacy Lavin (she/her), Journals Manager, University of North Carolina Press
  • Kate McCready (she/her), Visiting Program Officer for Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing, Big Ten Academic Alliance
  • Catherine Mitchell (she/her), Director of Publishing, Archives, and Digitization, California Digital Library, University of California

Description: An impressive number of institutions in both the United States and Canada directly support academic publishing through library publishing programs and other publishing services. Despite often limited resources, this work is frequently in alignment with the principles of Diamond Open Access, a scholarly publishing model that does not require payment from either readers or authors to participate in the exchange of knowledge. While library publishers have built significant networks through grassroots initiatives and with the help of leading organizations such as the Library Publishing Coalition, networking at the national and international level remains a challenge. Collective action and the pooling of resources at this scale may prove to be an important part of developing a robust Diamond OA publishing system.

A group of representatives from American and Canadian organizations (Big Ten Academic Alliance, Coalition Publica, Érudit, Lyrasis, University of California, University of Michigan) recently met in Toluca, Mexico at the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access and began discussing how to support North American “capacity centers” for Diamond OA, in line with the recommendations of the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access published in 2022. This panel of representatives of those organizations will share their perspectives on international action around Diamond OA, present some of our early discussions, and welcome ideas on how to expand collective action on Diamond OA in Canada and the US. Engaging across sectors, building understanding of common challenges, and identifying problems that can be solved through collaboration are essential ingredients for supporting Diamond OA long-term.

April 3, 2024

PANEL: Policies and Student Engagement

Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. | Ski-U-Mah Room

Title: Library Publishing Policy Writing: A Case Study of Challenges, Successes, and Student Engagement

Presenters:

  • Ally Laird (she/her/hers), Open Publishing Program Coordinator, Penn State University
  • Angel Peterson (she/her/hers), Open Publishing Production Specialist, Penn State University

Description: In Fall 2021, the Penn State Libraries Open Publishing Program began the process to draft and adopt formal policies to govern our work. We treated this process as a student engagement and learning opportunity and began by hiring a student intern to review the values from our university, the Penn State Libraires, and the Library Publishing Coalition to help inform the values we wanted to adopt for our program. Our intern reviewed additional resources before drafting our policy document, including sample policy documents from peer institutions, the Policy Module from the LPC Curriculum, various COPE guidelines, the DOAJ indexing guide, and more. After reviewing these documents, our intern reviewed our Journal Publishing Service Agreement and worked to map the outlined services and requirements for editors to our needed policy sections. Of note, the “Accessibility and User Accommodations” and “Copyright, Permission, and Open Access” sections were important as they support editor requirements in our journal agreement, while the DEIA sections proved tricky as we cannot make assurances for content we do have editorial control over.

Once an outline of needed policies was created, the full Open Publishing unit came together and worked collaboratively to flesh out the policies and ensure it would govern the whole of the Open Publishing program. We also drafted our first set of publication-type specific policies to support our scholarly bibliographies, as they are our most unique publication. Both documents were reviewed by our Publishing Advisory Board and members of our department prior to being formally adopted. This presentation will serve as an example of how one library publisher went about creating policies for our program, how we engaged our students in this work, the lessons we learned along the way, and the aspects of our policy design that present questions not yet fully resolved.

Title: My First Rodeo: Developing Publisher-Level Policy in an Emerging Library Publishing Program

Presenter: Miranda Phair, Publishing & Open Scholarship Librarian, Towson University

Description: Libraries play an increasingly important role in scholarly communication as publishing practices evolve. This shift results in a growing number of publishing programs managed by librarians who, while knowledgeable about information access and scholarly communication practices, may not have prior experience in academic publishing on the publisher’s side. Besides technical considerations such as selecting, implementing, and maintaining a publishing platform and journal-level considerations like mission and vision, publication frequency, and journal policy, managers of a library publishing program must also consider policies at a publisher level, a task some librarian-journal managers may not have undertaken before. Transparent and accessible publisher guidelines are not only recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), but they can also help libraries address questions of copyright, open access, and diverse representation as these programs expand. Clear policy is also crucial for promoting a set of values related to access, diversity, and equity in attracting and onboarding new and existing journals that fit with these values. In this presentation, I present some of my experiences as a new scholarly communications librarian at a mid-sized M1 university in the mid-Atlantic region, including challenges, triumphs, and lessons learned as a policy novice who has managed to establish publisher-level policy for our library journal program through collaboration with colleagues and guidance from university-level policy. I will share how I identified the need for publisher level policy and how I met that need and how I decided which policies to leave up to the journal editors.

Title: Top 10 Reasons for and against Student-Based Press Operations: What We Learned in our First Seven Years at the Press at Cal Poly Humboldt

Presenter: Kyle Morgan (he/him), Scholarly Communications and Digital Scholarship Librarian, Cal Poly Humboldt

Description: The Press at Cal Poly Humboldt launched as a full-service press in 2015. In 2016, the first two students joined and so started what has become a student training ground in publishing. Early on, we had little time for training and let students operate with an abundance of independence. Relying on students in this way had drawbacks that will be no surprise to anyone, but also benefits, many unanticipated. Kyle Morgan, the Scholarly Communications and Digital Scholarship Librarian and head of the Press, will talk about how students have been added and integrated into workflows, how the Press has adapted, and the top ten drawbacks and benefits of relying on student employment for professional work.