Day/Time/Room
May 15, 2024 | 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. | Ski-U-Mah Room
Title: Flipping to Diamond Open Access: Interviews with LIS Journal Editors
Presenters:
- DeDe Dawson (she/her), Science & Scholarly Communication Librarian, University of Saskatchewan
- Rachel Borchardt (she/her), Scholarly Communications Librarian, American University
- Teresa Schultz (she/her), Scholarly Communications & Social Sciences Librarian, University of Nevada, Reno
Description: Librarians are often at the forefront of advocacy for a transition to an equitable open access (OA) publishing system, but many of our own journals remain behind paywalls or charge inequitable author fees to publish OA. About half of Library and Information Science (LIS) journals use such hybrid models or do not offer OA publishing at all. We recently conducted a survey of editors of LIS journals that have not transitioned to a diamond OA model (without fees for authors) and learned that a journal’s financial situation is a barrier and many editors indicated a lack of awareness of their journal’s budget. It was also apparent that editors may not be fully aware of the diversity of diamond OA funding options available to support this transition.
To further investigate these financial and other perceived barriers preventing LIS journals from transitioning to a more equitable diamond OA model, we interviewed 15 lead editors of LIS journals: eight from journals that remain behind a paywall and seven from journals that have successfully transitioned from subscription to a fully diamond OA model. In this session we will discuss preliminary results from this qualitative research, including dominant themes emerging from the initial coding of interview transcripts and our early interpretation of these themes. Ultimately, we hope the results from this research will assist in the development of solutions and supports for LIS journals in making this transition to an equitable diamond OA publishing model. And we anticipate that members of the Library Publishing Coalition may be critical partners in the success of such potential solutions and supports in the future.
Title: Subscribe to Open (S2O) as a DEIA-Friendly Open Access Model
Presenter: Elizabeth W. Brown, Publisher Relations Manager, Project MUSE, Project MUSE, Johns Hopkins University Press
Description: Publishers and authors should seek more equitable and inclusive business models for publishing open access content. Subscribe to Open (S2O) is one such model that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a library subscription model, S2O has no APCs or other costs to authors or publishers and no limits on authors due to institutional affiliation or geographical location. While not limited to any particular kind of publisher, S2O certainly has been a boon for non-profit scholarly publishing, which plays a vital role in ensuring diversity in scholarly publishers. Some S2O offerings have also given a much-needed impetus for journals in humanities, which often do not have the funding streams of other fields such as STEM, to embrace open access.
I will dig further into the DEIA implications of S2O, providing a general overview of the model and current offerings available as well as drawing from Project MUSE’s experience in preparing to launch what is the largest S2O offer of its kind. As one of the first to offer S2O through an aggregation, Project MUSE is not just providing convenience for libraries; through Project MUSE, university presses, societies, academic departments, and other non-profit publishers can now sustainably publish open access journal content, which they could not have done on their own.
Title: Analyzing the Publishing Output of an R1 Research Institution: The First Four Years
Presenter: Elaine Walker (she/her), Scholarly Communications Librarian, The University of Alabama
Description: In 2018, The University of Alabama earned the status of Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity, formerly known as R1, from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education framework. This session will provide an update on the findings of analyzing the institutional publishing output using data from Web of Science, with a focus on open access publishing, in the first four years after achieving this highly regarded status. Open Access publishing allows research findings to be available and accessible to all while advancing the growth of its relative discipline to drive innovation. Some of the key findings included are the top journals and publishers, percentage of publications published under an OA model, and an annual average of funds spent on Gold Open Access publishing. Conclusions drawn from the data indicate the departments where open access publishing is being practiced and identifies areas that would benefit from increased open access publishing. This research will inform the foundation for developing targeted open access awareness campaigns, backing a potential publishing fund, and supporting a campus-wide open access initiative to utilize the institutional repository that will not only benefit individual faculty’s research citations and impact, but will also enhance the university’s overall standing, building upon its current reputation and research output.