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….”

Digital Publishing and Repository Librarian – Northwestern University, US | 03/27/2023

“Northwestern University Libraries seek a Digital Publishing and Repository Librarian committed to open scholarship and providing innovative services to faculty and students for creating and publishing original educational and scholarly materials. This role is integral to the Libraries’ collaboration across campus and the wider academic community in the planning, execution, and assessment of a variety of digital publishing ventures. Digital publishing services include project management, production, metadata, design, hosting, and archiving for digital publications, including Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Access (OA) journals, and OA monographs in collaboration with Northwestern faculty, students, and other scholars and campus partners. Current digital publishing projects include the peer-reviewed journal Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, monographs and websites for Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, and OER created through the Affordable Instructional Resources (AIR) Faculty Grant Program. As the service manager for Arch, Northwestern’s institutional repository the Digital Publishing and Repository Librarian promotes faculty deposits to Arch and collaborates with other library departments to report user feedback to improve overall experiences. The Digital Publishing and Repository Librarian keeps abreast of trends and best practices in library-based publishing, especially in relation to OA, OER, open science, digital humanities, and new methods of publishing in digital formats. This role also actively participates in planning and implementing new initiatives that transform digital scholarship within the Libraries, across the University, and throughout the scholarly publishing domain….”

Repository Services Manager – The University of Chicago Library

“The Repository Services Manager manages the University of Chicago’s institutional repository (Knowledge@UChicago) and its associated services. Reporting to the Scholarly Communications Librarian, the Repository Services Manager will deliver robust services and technologies to preserve and share the intellectual assets of the University of Chicago by providing researchers, instructors, and administrative staff with a professionally managed digital environment in which to curate, preserve, and disseminate their materials including scholarship, research data, and teaching resources. The Repository Services Manager is responsible for maintaining a patron-driven approach that ensures the daily operations of Knowledge@UChicago meet the needs of the University community.

Knowledge@UChicago relies on collaboration with the Research Computing Center and the University’s IT Services Division, and the Repository Services Manager is responsible for maintaining strong working relationships and ensuring flexible and coordinated services and infrastructure that support researchers working with a wide variety of data types, formats, and sizes including big data. The Repository Services Manager is expected to provide solutions that range from user-friendly, web-based services to API and command line capabilities that support batch processing and integration with researcher’s lab workflows.

The Repository Services Manager works with the Scholarly Communications Librarian and others across the Library to provide outreach and advocacy for Knowledge@UChicago by raising awareness of IR services across campus, creating opportunities for collaboration, and developing training programs. This will include developing solutions and documentation that support open access and open data publishing in the repository, creation of data management plans for grant applications, and support for data reproducibility….”

Illinois, Rhode Island Introduce New Library E-book Bills

“Illinois has become the latest state to introduce a library e-book bill, with state legislators last week introducing the Equitable Access to Electronic Literature Act. In addition, Rhode Island legislators have re-introduced their library e-book bill in the new legislative session after a previous effort stalled last year.

The Illinois bill provides that publishers that offer “a contract or license for electronic literary product acquisition to the public shall offer to license the electronic literary product to libraries, if purchased with public funds, on reasonable terms and under reasonable technological protection measures that will permit libraries to provide their patrons with access to the electronic literary products.” 

The bill in Rhode Island is similar, although it specifically expands the law to cover “elementary and secondary schools and educational institutions” in the state.

The bills are also similar to efforts passed in Maryland and New York last year (although New York governor Kathy Hochul vetoed the bill last month.) Similar bills are being considered in several more state legislatures, library leaders tell PW….”

Illinois Open Publishing Network – digital publishing from the University Library

“The Illinois Open Publishing Network (IOPN) is a set of digital publishing initiatives that are hosted and coordinated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. IOPN offers a suite of publishing services to members of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign community and beyond. We aim to facilitate the dissemination of high-quality, open access scholarly publications. Our services include infrastructure and support for publishing open access journals, monographs, born-digital projects that integrate multimedia and interactive content.

IOPN is committed to publishing high-quality open access works of lasting scholarly value across multiple disciplines, regardless of institutional affiliation. We particularly invite innovative digital publication projects that bring together multimedia and text. We additionally welcome partnerships with University Presses or other publishers in order to publish companion websites (such as a digital exhibit of related primary source materials) for traditional text monographs and articles….”

IOPN to launch textbook series with titles by Wong, Wolske

“The Illinois Open Publishing Network is excited to announce the upcoming release of two open access textbooks, Instruction in Libraries and Information Centers: An Introduction by Laura Saunders and iSchool Adjunct Lecturer Melissa A. Wong and A Person-Centered Guide to Demystifying Technology by iSchool Teaching Assistant Professor Martin Wolske. These textbooks represent the first in the Windsor & Downs Press series OPN Textbooks, which seeks to publish high-quality open access textbooks for higher education across the disciplines. …”

Scholarly Communications Librarian – The University of Chicago Library

“This position leads development of the University of Chicago’s growing scholarly communication services and policies; and contributes in meaningful ways to our recently launched (2018) Center for Digital Scholarship.

Open access, copyright, research data management and dissemination, institutional repository services, data preservation, and curation, are critical aspects of scholarly communication, from access to archiving. We encourage candidates with a strong, access-centered vision of scholarly communications-related services, such as scholarly publishing and guidance on research data management, to apply for our Scholarly Communication Librarian (SCL) position. This position leads development of the University of Chicago’s growing scholarly communication services and policies; and contributes in meaningful ways to our recently launched (2018) Center for Digital Scholarship, which includes the Dissertation Office. The SCL collaborates with others to develop training, workshops and other programming around data management, author rights, copyright, and open scholarship….”

Scholarly Communications Librarian – The University of Chicago Library

“This position leads development of the University of Chicago’s growing scholarly communication services and policies; and contributes in meaningful ways to our recently launched (2018) Center for Digital Scholarship.

Open access, copyright, research data management and dissemination, institutional repository services, data preservation, and curation, are critical aspects of scholarly communication, from access to archiving. We encourage candidates with a strong, access-centered vision of scholarly communications-related services, such as scholarly publishing and guidance on research data management, to apply for our Scholarly Communication Librarian (SCL) position. This position leads development of the University of Chicago’s growing scholarly communication services and policies; and contributes in meaningful ways to our recently launched (2018) Center for Digital Scholarship, which includes the Dissertation Office. The SCL collaborates with others to develop training, workshops and other programming around data management, author rights, copyright, and open scholarship….”

Policy giving public ‘open access’ to research set for approval | News-Gazette.com

“The University of Illinois has developed a new policy on “open access” to research articles published by UI faculty members and researchers, which UI trustees are set to approve in Springfield today.”

EDITORIAL: Lamar, TSUS schools should cut textbook costs too – Beaumont Enterprise

“Growing anger over books bills spurred Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to sponsor the Affordable College Textbook Act for a second session after it went nowhere in 2013. It would create a grant program for the creation and use of more open textbooks, which are under open copyright licenses and can be accessed online for free. Colleges in Texas and the entire nation should get behind initiatives like this to help more students climb up that first rung of the ladder….”