As participation in library publishing grows, the development of a strong evidence base to inform best practices and demonstrate impact is essential. To encourage research and theoretical work about library publishing services, the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) gives an annual Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing. The award recognizes significant and timely contributions to library publishing theory and practice.
The LPC Research Committee is delighted to announce that this year’s award recipients are Katrina Fenlon, Megan Senseney, Maria Bonn, and Janet Swatscheno for their article “Humanities scholars and library-based digital publishing: New forms of publication, new audiences, new publishing roles.” Library publishing programs need to constantly adapt to the ever-changing needs of their publishing partners, and this article provides rich survey data for practitioners to use to inform their own strategies for addressing the needs of their humanities scholar partners. The results of the survey conducted by Katrina, Megan, Maria, and Janet will provide invaluable data for publishing programs looking to expand their services to support the advancement of digital scholarship projects in the humanities , increase the diversity of supported scholarly outputs, support new modes of authorship, and increase the reach and impact of that scholarship through interdisciplinary and openly accessible publishing. The survey instrument itself will also be a useful tool for institutions interested in tailoring these results for their own particular communities.
The authors will receive a cash award of $250 and travel support to attend a future in-person Forum. They would also normally be formally recognized at the 2020 LPC conference reception, but in this time of decreased physical contact let’s all celebrate this achievement virtually just as robustly!
In addition, the LPC Research Committee would also like to award an honorable mention to Kate Shuttleworth, Kevin Stranack, and Alison Moore for their article “Course Journals: Leveraging Library Publishing to Engage Students at the Intersection of Open Pedagogy, Scholarly Communications, and Information Literacy.” The committee felt that the intersection of pedagogy and journal publishing explored in this article was an exciting new avenue for Library Publishing programs to explore, and looks forward to continued growth of partnerships such as these across the LPC community.
Please join us in congratulating the Katrina, Megan, Maria, and Janet, as well as all the other nominees on their valuable contributions to our shared body of knowledge.