Forum

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.

March 10, 2022

Full Session: Inclusive Approaches to Open Access monograph funding: beyond the book processing charge

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

Presenters

• Professor Martin Paul Eve, COPIM Opening the Future lead, & Birkbeck (University of London)
• Dr Judith Fathallah, COPIM Open Book Collective, & Lancaster University
• Rupert Gatti, Open Book Publishers
• Lidia Uziel, COPIM & Associate University Librarian for Research Resources and Scholarly Communication, UC Santa Barbara

Description

This session explores alternative funding models for Open Access books that seek to maximise diversity and inclusion, by moving beyond the standard BPC-based approaches. Book Processing Charges favour wealthier institutions and academics and those whose research funding is already secure. This defeats the goal of Open Access to maximise access and contribution to academic research, and it stultifies academic fields. Alternative approaches are needed to broaden the ability of scholars from less privileged institutions to access research, and to publish books Open Access.

This session will showcase the COPIM Project’s work in making these alternative approaches a reality. Speakers will present on three strands of our work, beginning with an overview of the Open Book Collective (OBC) – a non-profit, community-governed platform and organisation that will facilitate the exchange of information and funding between OA book publishers, infrastructure providers, and libraries. The OBC embodies the benefits and values of collaboration over competition in OA publishing.

We’ll also highlight Thoth, an open metadata management and dissemination system tailored to tackle the problems of getting Open Access works into the (closed) book supply chain and library catalogues.

Finally, we’ll discuss our innovative funding model Opening the Future as an example of how mutually supportive collaborations between publishers and libraries can unlock OA for books to the benefit of all.

The presentations will be followed by audience discussion of the different funding models that libraries and library publishers have explored, collective or otherwise, including benefits and drawbacks. As more schemes and partnerships emerge, libraries will increasingly need to be able to navigate and assess OA options more simply, and with policy changes on the horizon, publishers will need to explore their OA choices. Our session promises to tease out these important discussions from all stakeholders in the library and publishing communities.