Day/time: May 9, 2023, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. ETD
Title: A Fresh Take on JATS: Book Reviews as a Simple, Immediate, and Accessible Gateway to Full-Text Publishing
Presenters:
- Matthew Vaughn, Open Publishing Librarian, Indiana University
- Richard Higgins, Software Engineer, Indiana University
Description: Even as JATS XML has become the standard format for academic publishing, the challenges involved in implementing a JATS XML-based publishing workflow have prevented many library publishers from moving beyond PDF-based publishing. The complicated apparatus of even the most basic scholarly articles complicates XML production considerably. In addition, most existing workflows are reliant on XML conversion tools or paid vendors to convert author submission documents into JATS XML. In either case, these XML documents are time-consuming to produce and often require additional editing and correction before publication. Book reviews, on the other hand, provide a less burdensome format for library publishers who wish to transition to XML publishing. With minimal training, editorial teams can format JATS XML book reviews in-house without resorting to paid vendors or conversion tools. This presentation outlines the successful onboarding of a JATS-only book review journal to the Open Journal Systems platform. To facilitate this, we created a simplified JATS XML template using the DAR tag subset specification to optimize machine readability, avoid redundancy, and ensure reusability. The onboarding process also required customization of the OJS interface and the creation of detailed documentation and training materials for the editorial team. Although the editorial team had no prior experience with OJS or JATS XML, they are now publishing full-text, machine-readable books reviews. As the result of our work, these book reviews will now be more easily indexed and permanently stored as markup in a digital preservation archive. The semantically tagged content will facilitate keyword searches and increase discoverability over the long term. Finally, as a machine-readable format, JATS XML is inherently accessible and includes elements that allow for accessibility tagging and for the creation of interfaces that are both Section 508 and WCAG compliant.
Title: Curing Law Review Link Rot with DOIs
Presenter: Valeri Craigle, Head of Technical Services, James E. Faust Law Library, University of Utah
Description: An accessibility crisis is looming for one of the most vital sources of legal scholarship in the world. Law reviews are the primary vehicle for scholarly communication in the legal academy, but the URLs to law review articles are generating more 404 messages than ever due to shoddy publishing practices and an absence of digital asset management policies for online law review content.
The use of persistent URLs, specifically Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), offer a low cost, easy to implement remedy. DOIs are ubiquitously deployed in the publications of almost every other discipline in the sciences and humanities, with law being one of the only exceptions. Absent any guidance from the legal academy, law librarians are taking the lead in raising awareness of this important issue and are in the process of developing DOI implementation strategies in partnership with their own law review societies.
In this short presentation the current problem, its significance to law review publishing, and an easily implementable solution will be provided. Though the focus in on law review publishing, the takeaways will benefit any librarian working in library and/or academic publishing.
Title: Thoth: Open and Trusted Metadata for Open Access Books and Book Chapters
Presenter: Rupert Gatti, Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge
Description: This presentation will showcase Thoth Open Metadata (https://thoth.pub/), a non-profit open metadata management and dissemination service for OA books and book chapters. Using detailed case studies, it will demonstrate how library publishers may benefit from utilising Thoth for their own publishing programs.
The difficulties associated with book and chapter metadata are well recognised. Each distribution platform/service maintains its own metadata, which is not – or is only partially – shared between platforms, and is often not well equipped to incorporate metadata for open access content. This is particularly problematic for small publishers, who are required to submit metadata in multiple different formats, containing different information, to an array of different parties. Publishers then find that the transmission of this data across the book distribution system results in metadata being overwritten and/or degraded in the process. This is also problematic for third parties interested in creating services for users that rely on metadata records maintained across multiple platforms or publishers.
Several publishers have now adopted Thoth as their metadata manager to create and distribute metadata in multiple formats including ONIX and MARC, submit books and chapter metadata to CrossRef for DOI registration and archive content in university repositories. Third-party applications are also beginning to utilise Thoth’s open APIs as a trusted and open source of book metadata to create novel content and services.
In this presentation we propose to showcase several users and use cases for Thoth, outline planned developments for the service over the coming three years, and demonstrate the advantages of utilising and supporting open source, non-profit and community owned infrastructures over commercial alternatives. This session will give attendees at the Library Publishing Coalition conference valuable insight into the growth and development of an important and trustworthy new player in the field of OA book metadata.