Hurford | Building Relationships With the Library Publishing Coalition Peer Mentorship Program | Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

Abstract:  Introduction: In 2018, the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) Professional Development Committee (PDC) created the Peer Mentorship Program as a way for library publishing practitioners to build professional relationships within the LPC community and support the development of professionals in the library publishing field. This program was created to help fill the gap in library publishing mentorship resources, in both programs and published literature. 

Description of Program: The LPC Mentorship Program was created in 2018 as a traditional mentor/mentee mentorship relationship, but it has undergone iterations each year since, resulting in the current Peer Mentorship Program. Additionally, more structure and support for mentorship pairs have been developed and made available each year, thanks to helpful feedback from mid-year and end-of-year participant survey responses. 

Next Steps: This article identifies ways in which further outreach should be conducted to diversify and expand participants of the Peer Mentorship Program, and also to help support the work needed to sustain a program like this. Finally, suggestions are made for further research and literature to be made available to support the growing need for mentorship in the library publishing field.

REPORT: Best Practices for Institutional Publishing Service Providers – DIAMAS

“DIAMAS plans to improve Open Access publishing practices. To do so, we will create Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP), which aim to ensure the quality and transparency of governance, processes and workflows in institutional publishing. The Best practices report is an initial step in this process.

The report is based on an analysis of existing quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems in publishing developed by international publishers’ associations, research funding organisations, international indexing databases, etc (full dataset available here). If you are an institutional publisher, a service provider involved in Open Access publishing, or a journal editor, this report can help you learn about current best practices and identify where you need to align.

Our recommendations and tips cover seven categories, which are also the core components of the Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP): 1) Funding; 2) Ownership and governance; 3) Open science practices; 4) Editorial quality, editorial management, and research integrity; 5) Technical service efficiency; 6) Visibility; and 7) Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).

A self-assessment checklist summarises the best practices outlined in the report. Institutional publishers, service providers and journal editors can use it to get an idea of the future Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP), and assess their current practices and see where to make improvements.”

Finding the Right Platform: A Crosswalk of Academy-Owned and Open-Source Digital Publishing Platforms | hc:59231 | Humanities CORE

Abstract:  A key responsibility for many library publishers is to collaborate with authors to determine the best mechanisms for sharing and publishing research. Librarians are often asked to assist with a wide range of research outputs and publication types, including eBooks, digital humanities (DH) projects, scholarly journals, archival and thematic collections, and community projects. These projects can exist on a variety of platforms both for profit and academy owned. Additionally, over the past decade, more and more academy owned platforms have been created to support both library publishing programs. Library publishers who wish to emphasize open access and open-source publishing can feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of available academy-owned or -affiliated publishing platforms. For many of these platforms, documentation exists but can be difficult to locate and interpret. While experienced users can usually find and evaluate the available resources for a particular platform, this kind of documentation is often less useful to authors and librarians who are just starting a new publishing project and want to determine if a given platform will work for them. Because of the challenges involved in identifying and evaluating the various platforms, we created this comparative crosswalk to help library publishers (and potentially authors) determine which platforms are right for their services and authors’ needs.

Celebrating 10 years of the Library Publishing Coalition! | Library Publishing Coalition

“The next in-person Library Publishing Forum will take place May 15 & 16, 2024, at the McNamara Alumni Center on the campus of University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN). As always, the Forum will be welcoming and affordable, but we are working overtime this year to make sure it’s also full of the kinds of experiences you can only have at an in-person event. Join us to learn, to connect, and to celebrate! Save the date for now, and keep an eye out for the call for proposals this fall.”

DIAMAS D.1.3 Towards an enhanced and aligned institutional publishing landscape in the ERA | Zenodo

Rooryck, Johan, & Mounier, Pierre. (2023). D.1.3 Towards an enhanced and aligned institutional publishing landscape in the ERA (V1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8202169

 

This preliminary policy document calls for increased alignment in institutional publishing along several dimensions: (1) geographical (i.e. national, regional, and global), (2) disciplines and epistemic traditions, and (3) types of stakeholders (institutions, publishers, service providers, scholarly societies, journal editors), to benefit the work of researchers and thus enable science to progress faster.

 

Inclusion in the DOAJ panel recording from Coalition Publica – Public Knowledge Project

“The following panel discussion highlights:

Library publisher best practices for supporting journals in applying for DOAJ inclusion;
Development of strategies in supporting journals to meet the technical and policy requirements;
Insights of experienced OJS-using library publishers on structured support systems for journals seeking inclusion in the DOAJ, and more….”

Academic Movers Q&A: Emma Molls, Championing Open Access Publishing in the Library | Library Journal

“I’ve been doing a lot of the same work, but recently I moved into my new position. Now I’m the head of a unit within the libraries that, I think, in 2021 did not exist. It’s a department that pulls together a wider collection of expertise and services dedicated to open access and open research. My work has extended to include research, data services, information management, and open access publishing, specifically through our publishing program. I now have a little bit more of a holistic approach to open research, whereas before, it was specifically focused on publishing. I’ve backed up a little bit to look at the larger picture of all the open access and open research projects we have at the university, which is significant….”

job: Publishing Librarian I/II | Digital Publishing House, Wayne State University | Feb 2023

“…The Publishing Librarian works within the Discovery Services Unit under the supervision of the Assistant Dean. The Library Publishing team is focused on sustainable open publishing, with a pedagogical focus on new practitioners and a commitment to supporting our campus in its engagement with the scholarly communication ecosystem. The successful candidate will work in collaboration with scholars from a variety of backgrounds, including faculty, librarians, students, and the broader community to conceive, enact, advance, and sustain digital, open, library-centered publishing and scholarship. This position has broad latitude to collaborate with partners within and outside the university to pursue advancements in areas including but not limited to new conceptions and outputs of library publishing, publishing workflows and competencies, digital publishing platforms, publishing pedagogy, and digital humanities. Publishing librarians often team with liaison librarian colleagues to support scholarly communication and copyright initiatives in the university. This position also supports Wayne State University library’s institutional repository (currently Bepress’s Digital Commons) in collaboration with the Library Publishing team, including ETD management, journal publishing, and outreach to students and faculty for projects appropriate to the IR. Essential Job Functions: Collaborate with partners inside and outside the library to conceive and support open scholarship, repository services, and other publishing-related initiatives. Translate ideas developed in collaboration with partners into actionable workflows and infrastructure in the library, with an emphasis on open digital models….”

SUP collective funding for library-led open access publishing — Scottish Universities Press

“Scottish Universities Press (SUP) was conceived as a collaborative, institution-led approach to exploring the benefits of open access publishing, with a particular focus on the shift towards open access mandates from funders of research.

SUP is owned and managed by the 18 participating libraries through SCURL and operates on a not-for-profit basis, investing any surpluses generated back into the Press. The objective was to develop a Scotland-wide solution, providing researchers across institutions with a clear and cost-effective route to publishing open access. We were also keen to better understand the costs associated with publishing, and to scope the potential for savings associated with open access and realising economies of scale through collaboration. Through SCURL’s work in coordinating the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL), we had a strong basis for collaborative working and confidence in the benefits of shared services.

The first collective challenge we faced was in raising the funds to get SUP off the ground. We explored external funding possibilities but found that approach was not an obvious fit with most existing funding streams available to us in libraries.

SCURL member libraries, therefore, agreed to fund the start-up through a subscription paid from existing library budgets. We were also fortunate to secure a small Innovation and Development grant from the Scottish Library and Information Council.

Keeping costs low was a priority as our member libraries emerged from the pandemic into a precarious funding climate. Library budgets alone are not sufficient to meet the entire cost of providing a high-quality open access publishing service.

SUP therefore opted for a hybrid model involving authors (or their funders/institution) paying a per-book production charge in addition to the annual subscriptions. The latter covers core costs such as staffing and platform hosting, which is provided by the Edinburgh Diamond service from the University of Edinburgh. The subscription income does not cover any of the costs associated with book production (e.g., copyediting, typesetting, design, distribution, marketing) so the production charge fills that gap….”

DIAMAS deliverable: D3.1 IPSP Best Practices Quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems for Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) | Zenodo

“This report outlines existing quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems for IPSPs developed by international associations, RPOs, governments, and international databases. It also analyses academic literature on research evaluation of IPSPs, assessment criteria and indicators. The analysis matrix includes the following categories, which will also be the core components of EQSIP: 

Funding: description of the funding model, OA business model, transparency in listing all funding sources, etc. 

Ownership and governance: legal ownership, mission, and governance.

Open science practices: OA policy, copyright and licensing, open peer review, data availability, new approaches to research assessment, etc.

Editorial quality, editorial management, and research integrity.  

Technical service efficiency: technical strength, interoperability – metadata, ISSN, PIDs, machine readability, and accessible  journal website. 

Visibility, including indexation, communication, marketing and impact.

Equity, Diversity  and Inclusion (EDI): multilingualism, gender equity….”

Job: Digital Publishing Specialist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, US

“…Reporting to the Head of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, the Digital Publishing Specialist will manage editorial and production workflows including those related to publication metadata, digital archiving, and document transformation. The incumbent will act as part of the Library’s effort to offer high quality, open access publishing services to the Urbana-Champaign campus and beyond through the Illinois Open Publishing Network (https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/) and related scholarly communication efforts….”

“Fostering Epistemic Equality with Library-Based Publishing in the Glo” by Monica Berger

Abstract:  This talk will consider the marginalization of scholars and other stakeholders in the Global South and how local publishing infrastructure is critical to recalibrating imbalances. The Latin American ethos and practice of bibliodiversity, or scholarly self-determination, is a precondition for the decolonialization of knowledge. Accordingly, predatory publishing is minimal in Latin America which has its own publishing infrastructures. Library publishing, which supports bibliodiversity, represents an important path towards much needed free to authors or diamond open access. Librarians play a critical role in educating editors and fostering publishing best practices.

 

Call for Proposals- The Global Impact of Library Publishing | IFLA Library Publishing SIG | deadline 30 April 2023

“Library publishing has a long history, coming into its own with the Internet, the proliferation of open source and proprietary publishing platforms, the rapid expansion of formal library publishing programs globally, and a vibrant international community of practice nurtured by the  Library Publishing Coalition and  IFLA’s Special Interest Group .  Today, hundreds of libraries globally are engaged in numerous aspects of publishing, from local, informal initiatives, to extensive, diverse, and sophisticated formats.  The growth of this area of library activity knows no bounds and continues to grow exponentially, gaining added impetus with open science, EDI, and bibliodiversity imperatives. The satellite seeks to explore how the growth of this passionate and energetic work by library publishers is impacting three areas of high value for society:  (1) Library Publishing Supporting open science; (2) Library Publishing Supporting open pedagogy; and (3) Library Publishing Supporting an educated society. The SIG Program Committee enthusiastically solicits and welcomes proposals in each of our featured areas, with the aim of inspiring and engaging the IFLA community as our professionals pursue goals that are at the heart of library missions and values….

Date:  Saturday, August 19, 2023 –  9:30 – 5:00 p.m. Location:  Koninklijke Bibliotheek / Royal Library of the Netherlands, Den Haag….”