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.