Day/Time/Room
June 18, 2026 | 9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. | North Ballroom
Title: From Vulnerabilities to Verification: Implementing Multi-Factor Authentication in OJS
Presenters:
- Brianna Calomino (she/her) Digital Projects Librarian, Scholarly Publishing, University of Calgary
- Gabriela Mircea (she/her), Digital Projects Librarian, University of Calgary
Description: This short presentation will share how our institution enabled Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for Open Journal Systems (OJS) to improve the security of editorial and administrative accounts. After a joint review with central IT, we addressed common vulnerabilities, outdated accounts, shared logins, and weak password practices through a careful cleanup and role reassignment to protect the integrity of our hosted journals.
With an upgrade, staged testing, and steady collaboration across departments, we introduced MFA through the PKP OpenID Connect plugin and supported users through a smooth transition. The result is a more secure publishing environment with stronger protection for privileged accounts in line with institutional standards and a more dependable editorial publishing process. The talk will share the steps we followed, the problems we encountered, and the lessons that helped guide the process, offering practical direction and valuable guidance for libraries planning similar improvements.
Title: Understanding the Labor Behind Library-Published Scholarly Journals in the United States
Presenters:
- Karen Bjork (she/her) Head of Digital Libraries and Publishing, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)
- Annie Johnson (she/her) Associate University Librarian for Research, Teaching, and Technology, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press
- Johanna Meetz (she/her), Publishing & Repository Services Librarian, The Ohio State University
Description: University libraries in the United States play a critical and growing role in supporting open access (OA) scholarly journals, yet the labor required to sustain these publications—who performs it, how much time it demands, and how it is compensated—remains underexamined.
Recent research by Lange & Severson examined labor in Canadian open access journals, providing valuable insights into editorial structures and compensation models in that national context. However, their study did not include journals hosted or published by U.S. university libraries. To expand this conversation and develop evidence to support local decision-making, the presenters conducted a complementary research study focused specifically on U.S. members of the Library Publishing Coalition. Our study mirrors Lange & Severson’s methodological approach to allow for direct comparison between the two countries.
This presentation will share early findings from the U.S. survey and highlight noteworthy similarities and differences between U.S. and Canadian journal labor structures. By offering concrete data about how editorial labor is distributed and supported, our goal is to equip library publishers with evidence they can use to shape their service models, advocate for staffing and funding, and better understand the sustainability needs of the journals they support.
Title: Books & More: An update from PKP on bibliodiversity and OMP
Presenter: Zoe Wake Hyde (she/her), OMP Coordinator, Public Knowledge Project
Description: This presentation shares an update on the Public Knowledge Project’s research into the needs of open publishing programs oriented towards books and other standalone content. It will summarise the findings of the Open Monograph Press (OMP) Under the Spotlight report, including the technical roadmap for OMP, an evaluation of publication type metadata that is informing efforts to better support more formats in scholarly communication, and highlight partnerships advocating for bibliodiversity across the global publishing ecosystem. Finally, it will outline the path forward for further exploration of the unique needs, technical and otherwise, of institutional publishers seeking to support long form content.
Title: Making the Invisible Visible: Using Open Data to Surface Diamond Journals in Canada
Presenter: Jeanette Hatherill, she/her, Senior Coordinator, Coalition Publica
Description: This presentation will introduce participants to an open, community-maintained dataset that inventories active and historical Canadian scholarly journals, compiled and stewarded by the Érudit research team as part of Coalition Publica. The dataset documents various characteristics of over a thousand Canadian peer-reviewed journals, including ownership, access models, language, and indexing status among others, and offers rich insight into a national publishing ecosystem. Designed as an open resource, the dataset is continuously improved through community contributions, ensuring it remains accurate, current, and responsive to evolving library and publishing needs.
The presentation will briefly outline key characteristics of the journals represented in the dataset and discuss how libraries are already incorporating this open data into local tools to surface diamond open access journals alongside APC-based titles in read-and-publish agreements. By positioning non-commercial journals within the same decision-making and discovery contexts as commercial titles, this information helps libraries present a more values-aligned and complete picture of publishing options available to their research communities.
The presentation concludes by reflecting on lessons learned from community engagement, opportunities for further collaboration, and the broader implications for library publishing in Canada and beyond.
Title: Leveraging consortial infrastructure to sustain open publishing: The STORK case study at the University of Ottawa
Presenters:
- Leigh-Ann Butler (elle | she/her), University of Ottawa
- Bart Kawula, Web and Discovery Services Librarian, Scholars Portal
Description: In 2025, the University of Ottawa Library was approached by an affiliated professor whose academic society, the Society for Transparency, Openness, and Replication in Kinesiology (STORK), was about to lose funding for hosting its publishing activities on Open Monograph Press (OMP), Open Journal Systems (OMP), and Open Preprint Systems (OPS). Initially, the professor asked if the library could provide financial support. However, since the library already hosted journals on OJS, it made more sense to migrate over the journal. The problem, though, was that at the time, the uOttawa Library did not operate instances of OMP or OPS, and with a constrained budget, setting up new platforms with additional costs seemed uncertain.
To the rescue comes the consortia model! Leveraging the library’s membership with Scholars Portal and its shared infrastructure approach, the library was able to implement new instances of OMP and OPS at no additional cost and begin migrating STORK’s publishing activities.
Sounds simple, right? In reality, it was doable but not seamless. We encountered technical hurdles, it required additional staff time to sort out and develop new internal workflows as well as devote time to training, and we learned valuable lessons along the way. In this session, we will provide an overview of the project, share lessons learned, and discuss the partnership between the library and the consortium, including the roles we each played.
For this project, the shared infrastructure model proved essential to sustaining STORK’s three open publishing activities using the Public Knowledge Project’s software and highlights how consortia models can support sustainability for openness, with benefits like reducing costs, distributing workload across the teams, minimizing technical burden, and enabling knowledge sharing across teams.