Category Archives: oa.libpub

2023 Library Publishing Forum Proposal Submission Form | deadline December 16, 2022

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“The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) is now accepting proposals for the 2023 Library Publishing Forum! We are thrilled to offer a virtual forum during the week of May 8 to May 11 (times TBD).  We warmly encourage proposals from first-time presenters and representatives of small and emerging publishing programs. Proposals may address any topic of interest to the library publishing community.  Proposal submissions are welcome from LPC members and nonmembers, including library employees, university press employees, scholars, students, and other scholarly communication and publishing professionals. We welcome proposals from first-time presenters and representatives of small and emerging publishing programs. Please view the Call for Proposals for detailed information about the Forum and the different formats of proposed sessions. The submission deadline is December 16, 2022….”

“…We welcome proposals on topics including, but not limited to: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), decolonial approaches to library publishing, intersections of library publishing with broader social issues, university presses, society and association partnerships, funding models, copyright, open access publishing, and Open Educational Resources (OER)….”

ARL Releases Report on US Academic Member Libraries’ Open Infrastructure Expenses | STM Publishing News

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“Open access (OA) and the broad sharing of research outputs has been empirically shown to accelerate scientific progress and benefit society and individuals at scale through improved health outcomes, socioeconomic mobility, and environmental well-being, to name a few. Academic research libraries, for their part, have made significant investments in opening up research and scholarship—particularly research conducted on their campuses and made available through journal subscriptions. Yet these investments are difficult to collect given their distribution across many budget lines, the lack of standardized reporting categories, and inconsistent data collection practices.

In May–June 2022 the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) surveyed its US-based academic research libraries to better understand OA expenses. The survey asked respondents to categorize expenses into six areas of investment: read-and-publish or transitional agreements, article processing charges (APC) or OA funds, non-APC-based OA publishing models, institutional repository services, OA journal hosting and publishing services, and open monographs. This ARL report provides a summary and analysis of the aggregate data from the survey, provides charts on institutional responses and averages, and discusses some outcomes and next steps….”

ARL Releases Report on US Academic Member Libraries’ Open Infrastructure Expenses

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In May–June 2022 the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) surveyed its US-based academic research libraries to better understand OA expenses. The survey asked respondents to categorize expenses into six areas of investment: read-and-publish or transitional agreements, article processing charges (APC) or OA funds, non-APC-based OA publishing models, institutional repository services, OA journal hosting and publishing services, and open monographs.

What LPC accomplished under our first strategic plan | Library Publishing Coalition

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by Melanie Schlosser

LPC’s current 5-year strategic plan (PDF) is winding down. Published in summer 2018, it was our young community’s first concrete statement of our strategic goals. From LPC’s seed-funded project period (2013-14) through our first two years as a full-fledged membership association (2015-2017), we relied for guidance on our original scoping materials and focused much of our energy on getting the community’s infrastructure and ongoing programs on solid footing. By 2017, it had become apparent that we were ready to think more strategically about the future and put in the work to make sure we were pulling in the same directions across the community. The strategic planning process we undertook was a traditional one, involving a SWOT Analysis, an environmental scan, and community consultation. The outcome was a traditional 5-year strategic plan consisting of three goals, with nested objectives and action items.

[…]

 

Tectonic shifts in academic publishing – McGill Reporter

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“McGill Library’s support for a new seismology journal is just one example of how the Library is helping researchers challenge the status quo in academic publishing…

Seismica, which charges neither subscription fees for readers, nor publication fees for authors, is a landmark in Rowe’s move away from the world of for-profit academic publishing. After more than 10 years serving on the editorial boards of several journals in her field, she says she decided to cut ties with big publishers. A watershed moment came in 2020 when the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced an author fee of €10,000 for each paper published in one of its ‘open access’ journals. At a time when government funding agencies are increasingly requiring researchers to publish their work in open access journals as a condition of their grants, moves like this are seen by some as a strategy on the part of commercial publishers to shore up their revenue base by shifting fees from subscribers to authors.

According to Rowe, however, researchers themselves are partly to blame for feeding a cycle of high fees and perceived status in academic publishing. “The only reason authors would pay [these fees] is for the prestige – and potential career benefits – of publishing in Nature,” she says. “In other words, we academics have created an expensive spiral of prestige and power – which we ourselves enforce on one another – which drives the flow of grant money toward these publishing companies.” …”

Library Publishing Coalition: Annual Report 2021-2022

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“While scholarly publishing is a core function of academia, the commercial companies that have traditionally controlled a majority of publications often hold values that run counter to those of the faculty whose work they publish. This includes the publication of content behind paywalls, which ties breadth of dissemination to profits. In efforts to better serve their parent institutions, faculty, and the common good, libraries began establishing publishing programs that support the publication needs and efforts of their institution while maximizing access to publications. While each library publishing program differs in its structure, goals, and focus, these programs build on the skills of librarians in scholarship, metadata, and publishing, and align with the values of their institutions, often prioritizing open access, open source software, and new and emerging publication types. This scaffolding and expertise ensure that those producing the scholarship have increased control over the production, publication, and ownership of their publications….”

New digital texts shake up monograph publishing (opinion)

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“Is A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures—an interactive, open-access, born-digital monograph developed by Brown University Digital Publications and published in August by MIT Press—the monograph of the future? Asking readers to imagine Islam anew, as a vast web of interconnected traces seen through the prism of time, the book opens with a networked table of contents. Portals lead to different time periods across different parts of the world, inviting readers to explore Islam via a path of their choosing. In designing a one-of-a-kind trajectory that follows their own interests and queries, the reader, effectively, creates their own journey while traversing the world of ideas and evidence that has been curated by the author.

This groundbreaking interface, says author Shahzad Bashir, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities at Brown, “performs, rather than simply states, the book’s argument—namely, that we see pasts and futures as fields of unlimited possibility that come alive through a combination of close observation and ethical positioning.” …

In working together to produce and disseminate essential knowledge for broad audiences, Brown University Library and the MIT Press are also addressing issues of scalability and sustainability. A critical goal of the series is to mobilize knowledge creation and sharing. To this end, On Seeing will comprise a publication suite that includes a multiplicity of forms. The print book, providing a revenue stream to help offset costs, will be offered at a reasonable price and distributed globally in order to reach the widest possible readership. The enhanced, open-access digital publication will be developed using the open-source publishing platform PubPub, which introduces a less bespoke approach to interactive design and development….

We are seeing the payoff from these investments through the expansive reach and impact that this approach to digital publication, together with presses gravitating to open access….”

Announcing the Canadian Community Development Working Group! | Library Publishing Coalition | October 6, 2022

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“The Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to announce the formation of a Canadian Community Development Working Group. Initiated by Canadian LPC members, this 6-month working group will engage Canadian scholarly communications stakeholders to explore  strategies for developing a stronger Canadian library publisher community. This new group provides an opportunity for Canadian library publishers to grow and develop according to their unique national context. …”

Capacity-building for institutional open access publishing across Europe

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“Projects are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

Improved understanding of the current landscape of institutional scientific publishing activities across Europe.
Coordination amongst institutional publishing services and initiatives across Europe at the non-technological level and improve their overall service efficiency, in particular in a multilingual environment.
Actionable recommendations for strategies regarding institutional publishing in research performing organisations across the European Research Area.

These targeted outcomes in turn contribute to medium and long-term impacts:

Increased equity, diversity and inclusivity of open science practices in the European Research Area.
Increased capacity in the EU R&I system to conduct open science and set it as a modus operandi of modern science.

Scope:

Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in open access publishing activities. Commercial scientific publishers and other service providers have turned their attention to open access publishing, responding to increased demand for open access by funders and research performing organisations. Research institutions have also developed their own open access publishing activities and services. These are either new and based on open access publishing, or are existing publishing activities transitioning into the new digital and open access environment. Libraries are often involved, while new types of mission-driven open access university presses are also emerging in Europe and beyond. Such initiatives do not require article fees for publishing, and are often supported by their institutions. They enable open access publishing of journals and other types of outcomes in various languages and are important in supporting multilingualism in Europe. At the same time, they often have not gained the prestige bestowed on established publishing venues, usually produced in collaboration with well-known commercial scientific publishers. Moreover, institutional publishing in the social sciences and the humanities is often in languages other than English, which is both an asset and a limitation….”

East Carolina University, US | Publishing and Open Access Support Librarian | August 2022

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“…The Publishing and Open Access Support Librarian promotes and supports open access to the scholarship and educational resources produced by faculty and students at East Carolina University. This highly collaborative position will be part of the Scholarly Communication Department in the Division for Collections and Scholarly Communication in Academic Library Services (ALS). In alignment with the library’s strategic emphasis on impacting research and maximizing student success, this employee’s primary duties include providing consultation, training, and support to the campus community on issues and evolving needs related to digital and open access publishing. Specifically, the incumbent will lead and support Open Journal Systems, the library’s online publishing software, and explore other relevant open access publishing tools. This position will support faculty and students by promoting and implementing sustainable scholarship initiatives. As a member of the Division for Collections and Scholarly Communication, this position participates in the library’s student affordability and equity initiatives. These duties include creating, adapting, publishing, supporting, and advocating for Open Educational Resources and other open access works. Additional duties include assisting with open data and digital scholarship projects and making content available through the institutional repository in collaboration with department colleagues. This position may serve as a liaison to one or more departments. This position will support the Scholarly Communication Department and library with other projects as assigned. The Publishing and Open Access Support Librarian participates in professional development and appropriate service on library, university, and professional committees. Employment contingent upon availability of funds….”

Next Generation Library Publishing project: Portable data, modular tools, and shared values | Catherine Mitchell, John Sherer | August 16, 2022

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“Back in 2017, Elsevier acquired the Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress), the journals and institutional repository platform of choice for a great many library publishers who sought to provide open access, values-driven publishing solutions for their academic communities. The acquisition of bepress meant that all these programs– focused on open research, open data, and open publications–were now providing those services on a platform owned by a commercial publisher who had become, for many, emblematic of a profit-driven scholarly communication system that no longer served the interests of the academic community.  The Next Generation Library Publishing (NGLP) project seeks to ensure that this sort of thing won’t happen again – that the infrastructure supporting the publication of academic research will, itself, align with the library publishing community’s commitment to the open, equitable and sustainable distribution of knowledge. To that end, NGLP is focusing its Arcadia-funded work on three core pathways for establishing open, resilient and compelling publishing solutions for the library publishing community: Values, Modularity, and Interdependence….”

Pathways to Open Access: Library Publishing/Repository Services and CDL – Office of Scholarly Communication

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“The Pathways blog series highlights CDL’s efforts on various pathways to open access and illustrates how diverse approaches can complement and reinforce each other–and how they can raise productive tensions that push us to think more critically about the work we do. We believe this kind of approach can move us toward true and comprehensive transformation of the scholarly communications landscape….”

Pathways to Open Access: Library Publishing/Repository Services and CDL – Office of Scholarly Communication

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“The Pathways blog series highlights CDL’s efforts on various pathways to open access and illustrates how diverse approaches can complement and reinforce each other–and how they can raise productive tensions that push us to think more critically about the work we do. We believe this kind of approach can move us toward true and comprehensive transformation of the scholarly communications landscape….”