Scholarly Communication Commons^™

Altmetrics Concepts And Practices, Janice Winkler

Western Libraries Presentations

Researchers are often asked to demonstrate their productivity and the impact of their research when they apply for funding, as well as when they go up for promotion and tenure. One of the ways they do this is by using traditional bibliometrics. Librarians, publishers, and institutions are other stakeholders with sometimes widely varying use cases for research impact metrics. Unfortunately, some traditional research impact metrics have been identified as barriers to open access initiatives, including Scholarship@Western.

Altmetrics provide an alternative or complement to traditional metrics. They generally use information available on the web to determine how research output is used …

Scholarly Communication Coaching: Liaison Librarians' Shifting Roles, Todd Bruns, John Stephen Brantley, Kirstin Duffin

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

Two and a half decades into the open access (OA) movement, rapid changes in scholarly communication are creating significant demands on scholars. Today’s scholars must wrestle with meeting funder mandates for providing public access to their research, managing and preserving raw data, establishing/publishing open access journals, understanding the difference between “green OA” and “gold OA,” navigating the complicated issues around copyright and intellectual property, avoiding potentially predatory publishers, adapting their tenure plans to OA, and discovering increasing amounts of OA resources for their research and their curricular materials. These demands present an opportunity and a need for librarians to step …

Big Things Have Small Beginnings: Curating A Large Natural History Collection - Processes And Lessons Learned, Stacey Knight-Davis, Todd Bruns, Gordon Tucker

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

In the fall of 2013, the chair of Biological Sciences asked the IR librarian about digitizing the herbarium collection and including it in The Keep. A meeting between the IR librarian and Herbarium Curator Dr. Tucker thus began a project that would represent the maturing of The Keep into a substantial repository, involve both the IR librarian and the Head of Library Technology Services, and require steep learning curves in a number of areas including equipment procurement, metadata schema, data manipulation, and cross-platform communication. By opening up the collection for discovery, scholars around the world would see what is available …

Banging Our Heads To The Music And On The Walls: First Year Ir Adventures, Michele Gibney, Jaime M. Goldman, Keri Baker

Staff Presentations, Proceedings, Lectures, and Symposia

Creating an Institutional Repository from scratch creates a multitude of both opportunities and pitfalls in establishment of workflow, content creation, outreach and marketing policies, and stakeholder support. Nova Southeastern University’s Digital Commons based repository, NSUWorks, completed its first year in February 2015. During this session, the triumphs and tribulations of the first year will be discussed, along with future plans in order to give attendees a glimpse into one particular IR experience. Archival collection digitization, outreach/marketing, journal/book publishing, reporting tools, and collection development will also be covered.

Spotify Playlist.

Demystifying Open Access Workshop, Rose Fortier, Heather G. James, Martha G. Jermé, Patricia Berge, Rosemary Del Toro

Library Events and Research Institutes

Among the avenues for sharing research and scholarship, open access journals offer an increasingly viable and important option. However, it can be challenging not only to identify these journals but also to evaluate their quality and reach, as well as to weigh the benefits of publishing in them.

To help demystify this process, Raynor Memorial Libraries offered a workshop on evaluating open access journals. Aimed at faculty, graduate students, and others interested in publishing their academic work, the workshop offered an overview of current open access options for sharing research, criteria to help assess the rigor and reliability of open …

Introducing Undergraduates To Open Access And The Power Of Collaboration Between Scholarly Communications And Instruction Librarians, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker, Annie Knight

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Undergraduates are often left out of conversations surrounding open access. While they may not share the same concerns about publishing and prestige as faculty and graduate students, they do consume vast amounts of information, and thus can benefit just as much as those farther in their academic careers by knowing how to find, evaluate, and use open access resources. This presentation highlights a successful collaboration between the presenters in their respective roles as scholarly communications librarian and course developer to create and implement curriculum for a 3-unit information literacy course to teach undergraduate students about open access principles. Once the …

Institutional Repositories And The Humanities: A New Collaborative Model For Scholarly Publishing, Laura M. Ruschman

ASIS&T Student Chapter Events Archive

Presentation by Laura Ruschman at the Symposium on Information and Technology in the Arts and Humanities (April 22 & 23, 2015). The Symposium was sponsored by the Special Interest Groups for the Arts and Humanities (SIG AH) and Visualization, Images, and Sound (SIG VIS) of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T).

Traditionally, academic library systems have used institutional repositories to preserve, collect, and provide access to scholarly work produced by those comprising their respective university community. This places libraries near the end of the total information lifecycle, acting in the roles of secondary distributors and collectors. By better …

Who’S Talking About (And Citing) Me? Tracking Your Work Using Databases, Google, Web Of Knowledge, And Altmetrics Tools, Amanda Izenstark, Julia Lovett, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Faculty Presentations

Slides from a presentation, "Who's Talking About (and Citing) Me? Tracking Your Work using Databases, Google, Web of Knowledge, and Altmetrics Tools," offered at the University of Rhode Island Libraries on April 22 and April 23, 2015.

"Stop using the impact factor as a measure of the value of your research. There are better ways. In this hands-on session find out about tools that can help you learn how your work is being received, used, and disseminated across scholarly platforms and social media networks."

Part of the University Libraries' Search Savvy Seminar series.

Leveraging Oa, The Ir, And Crossdepartment Collaboration For Sustainability: Ensuring Library Centrality In The Scholarly Communication Discourse On Campus, Steve Brantley, Todd Bruns, Kirstin Duffin

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

More than halfway into the second decade of the 21st century, academic libraries are becoming more integrated in the scholarly life of their faculties than ever before. Important trends in scholarly communication, such as transitioning from subscription journals to open access journals, increasing amounts of “born digital” data and creative works, the growing importance of protecting one’s intellectual property rights, and keeping digital scholarship organized, managed, and preserved, are all areas where academic scholars and researchers require support services and assistance. Librarians are natural partners to provide these services.

Leveraging Oa, The Ir, And Cross-Department Collaboration For Sustainability: Ensuring Library Centrality In The Scholarly Communication Discourse On Campus, Steve Brantley, Todd Bruns, Kirstin Duffin

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

More than halfway into the second decade of the 21st century, academic libraries are becoming more integrated in the scholarly life of their faculties than ever before. Important trends in scholarly communication, such as transitioning from subscription journals to open access journals, increasing amounts of “born digital” data and creative works, the growing importance of protecting one’s intellectual property rights, and keeping digital scholarship organized, managed, and preserved, are all areas where academic scholars and researchers require support services and assistance. Librarians are natural partners to provide these services.Steve Brantley ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9880-1361Todd Bruns ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1197-2521Kirstin Duffin ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6269-8262

Contributions To The Scholarly Record: Conferences & Symposia In The Repository, Jonathan Bull, Stephanie Davis-Kahl

Library Faculty Presentations

Many academic libraries have found opportunities to showcase unique content through conference-hosting services, such as website-hosting and conference proceeding publishing. This poster describes two libraries’ successful efforts to archive conference materials from an undergraduate research conference and a professional conference for scholars.

Through the lens of these two case studies, the repository coordinators will discuss engaging with presenters on topics of author rights, ethical use of others’ work in their presentations, creating a sustainable infrastructure for continued growth of the conference, and collaborating with faculty.

Beyond Beall’S List: Better Understanding Predatory Publishers, Monica Berger, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

This article discusses the phenomenon of predatory publishing and examines the benefits and limitations of Jeffrey Beall's blacklist of "potential, possible, or probable" predatory open access (OA) publishers. It also describes the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a whitelist of scholarly OA journals, and other tools for evaluating open access journals. It concludes by discussing the role of librarians, who must help researchers avoid low-quality journals and also need to counteract the misconceptions and alarmism that stymie the acceptance of OA.

Repository Reboot, Ann Ellis, Ashley M. Thompson

Librarian and Staff Presentations

The presentation outlines the constraints on Stephen F. Austin State University Library's original repository and the work completed by staff members of the Center for Digital Scholarship to ensure the repository's future success for our campus.

Authors Alliance: A Force To Promote Authorship For Public Good, Michael Wolfe, Adrian K. Ho

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Scholarly Communication Coaching: Liaison Librarians' Shifting Roles, Todd Bruns, Steve Brantley, Kirstin Duffin

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

Two and a half decades into the open access (OA) movement, rapid changes in scholarly communication are creating significant demands on scholars. Today’s scholars must wrestle with meeting funder mandates for providing public access to their research, managing and preserving raw data, establishing/publishing open access journals, understanding the difference between “green OA” and “gold OA,” navigating the complicated issues around copyright and intellectual property, avoiding potentially predatory publishers, adapting their tenure plans to OA, and discovering increasing amounts of OA resources for their research and their curricular materials. These demands present an opportunity and a need for librarians to step …

Open Peer Review At Four Stem Journals: An Observational Overview [Version 2; Referees: 2 Approved, 2 Approved With Reservations], Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Open peer review, peer review where authors' and reviewers' identities are disclosed to one another, is a growing trend in scholarly publishing. Through observation of four journals in STEM disciplines, PLOS One, Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, PeerJ, and F1000Research, an observational overview is conducted. The overview relies on defined characteristics of open peer review. Results show that despite differing open peer review implementations, each journal retains editorial involvement in scholarly publishing. Further, the analysis shows that only one of these implementations is fully transparent in its peer review and decision making process. Finally, the overview contends …

Elements Of Successful Online Journal Publishing, Dillon Wackerman, R Philip Reynolds

Central University Libraries Research

At the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU), we have discovered that there are many complex details to launching a successful online journal-publishing program. In our lead role at SFASU, we have streamlined implementation to make this a relatively straightforward process for the journal managers and editors.

Most of the journal editors with whom we currently work are experienced authors and reviewers, but they rely upon us to assist them with the design, implementation and editorial processes. Following this, we have found it beneficial to provide comprehensive and personalized customer support and training. Some …

Coming Together: Successful Press, Library, Vendor Content Collaboration: A Case Study, Mary Beth Thomson

Library Presentations

University presses (UP's) are essential to the advancement of our culture and the understanding of our world, and, are just as much at the forefront of publishing innovation as anyone. UP's publish and engage in some of the most essential research across the humanities, sciences and arts, and, also dive in to top-of-mind trending topics. Academic libraries are prized hubs of information, supporting a school's curriculum and the research of its university faculty and students - the foundation of content. In an effort to strengthen its relationship with its host institution library and help promote scholarship, the University Press of …

Data Narratives: Increasing Scholarly Value, Line C. Pouchard, Amy Barton, Lisa Zilinski

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Data narratives or data stories have emerged as a new form of the scholarly communication focused on data. In this paper, we explore the potential value of data narratives and the requirements for data stories to enhance scholarly communication. We examine three types of data stories that form a continuum from the less to the more structured: the DataONE data stories, the Data Curation Profiles, and the Data Descriptors from the journal Scientific Data. We take the position that these data stories will increase the value of scholarly communication if they are linked to the datasets and to the publications …

Library Involvement In Faculty Publication Funds, Jane D. Monson, Wendy Highby, Bette Rathe

University Libraries Publications

A faculty publication fund is a fairly new concept in scholarly communication, and academic institutions are experimenting with different models for the administration of funds designed to assist faculty who face prohibitive journal publication charges. Findings are reported from a survey-based, qualitative study of small and medium-sized academic libraries involved with open access faculty publication funds. The survey results and a case study of one library’s involvement in fund development are considered in light of the broader research questions: How are libraries engaging as facilitators of scholarly publishing, and what successes and challenges are they facing in this new role?

Assessing The Scholarly Communication Attitudes And Practices Of Faculty: Lessons From A "Failed" Survey, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Articles and Research

INTRODUCTION This paper reports on a survey administered to faculty at Chapman University to assess their knowledge, attitudes, and practices with regard to scholarly communications, in order to help the new scholarly communications librarian plan appropriate library programs and services to meet faculty needs. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM The survey was adapted from the Institute on Scholarly Communications’ “Faculty Involvement in Scholarly Communications Opportunity Assessment Instrument” for a faculty audience in early fall 2013. It “failed” in that it faced long administrative delays and was met with a low response rate when finally published in December 2013. However, the responses received …

Ripple Effect: Etds, Workflows, And Policies One Year After "A Bigger Splash", Todd Bruns, Stacey Knight-Davis

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

Since 2008 EIU has been digitizing ETDs and making them available via the library catalog, I-Share (the state of IL consortia catalog), and WorldCat. It was only after ETDs were included in the institutional repository (The Keep) that the majority of faculty became fully aware of how accessible these theses had become. This dawning realization led to important conversations with faculty and other stakeholders about concerns regarding publishing, grant approval, and patents. Following these discussions new embargo policies and workflows were developed. In this presentation, we will provide statistics showing increased access to ETDs due to the repository, and describe …

Collaborators In Course Design: A Librarian And Publisher At The Intersection Of Information Literacy And Scholarly Communication, Catherine Fraser Riehle

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This paper describes a university press director and academic librarian’s collaborative effort to co-design and co-teach an honors course on publishing and scholarly communication. The project-based course, offered in Spring 2014, wove students through practical application of the publication process (the publisher’s perspective) while engaging in conversation, debate, and other activities related to the complex ethical, legal, and social aspects of scholarly communication (the author’s perspective), and culminated in the publication of a student-created print and Open Access e-book.

Collaborators In Course Design: A Librarian And Publisher At The Intersection Of Information Literacy & Scholarly Communication, Catherine Fraser Riehle

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This session will focus on a university press director and academic librarian's collaborative effort to design and teach an undergraduate honors course on publishing and scholarly communication. The project-based course, first offered Spring 2014, weaves students through practical application of the publication process (the publisher's perspective) while engaging in conversation, debate, and research related to the complex ethical, legal, social, and cultural aspects of scholarly communication (the author's perspective). The librarian/publisher collaboration will be described in the context of course design and implementation, and preliminary assessment and evaluation data will be shared. Attendees should emerge with ideas for teaching partnerships …

Elevator Pitch: Open Access Talking Points, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Faculty Presentations

Speaking notes and discussion questions for a facilitated networking session, "Elevator Pitch: Open Access Talking Points." The speaking notes outline the argument that "an Open Access future is inevitable," and the questions are geared to encouraging discussion among librarians about their roles in relation to Open Access.

The networking session was sponsored by the Special Interest Groups of the ACRL New England Chapter and was held during the ACRL/NEC Spring 2014 Conference, We’re All in This Together: Strengthening Librarians through Professional Development. The session took place on May 9, 2014 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, …

The Nsf/Nih Effect: Surveying The Effect Of Data Management Requirements On Faculty, Sponsored Programs, And Institutional Repositories, Anne Diekema, Andrew Wesolek, Cheryl D. Walters

Publications

The scholarly communication landscape is rapidly changing and nowhere is this more evident than in the field of data management. Mandates by major funding agencies, further expanded by executive order and pending legislation in 2013, require many research grant applicants to provide data management plans for preserving and making their research data openly available. However, do faculty researchers have the requisite skill sets and are their institutions providing the necessary infrastructure to comply with these mandates? To answer these questions, three groups were surveyed in 2012: research and teaching faculty, sponsored programs office staff, and institutional repository librarians. Survey results …

Who's Talking About (And Citing) Me? Tracking Your Work Using Databases, Google, Web Of Knowledge, And Altmetrics Tools, Amanda Izenstark, Julia Lovett, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Faculty Presentations

Slides and handouts from a presentation, "Who's Talking About (and Citing) Me? Tracking Your Work using Databases, Google, Web of Knowledge, and Altmetrics Tools," offered at the University of Rhode Island Libraries on April 9 and April 10, 2014.

"Stop using the impact factor as a measure of the value of your research. There are better ways. In this hands-on session find out about tools that can help you learn how your work is being received, used, and disseminated across scholarly platforms and social media networks."

Part of the University Libraries' Search Savvy Seminar series.

Open Access, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

This article describes some problems with the traditional system of scholarly journal publishing and explains how scholars can make their works open access, or freely available online. It also discusses some of the benefits of open access, as well as some of the challenges to achieving widespread openness.

Scholarly Communication Coaches, J. Brantley, Todd Bruns

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

The Open Access (OA) movement’s impact on scholarly communication has reached a tipping point. Increasingly, legal requirements such as the Illinois Open Access law (Public Act 098-0925) mandate open access to state funded research, and funding agencies are obliging researchers to preserve data in accessible platforms. In addition, publisher-driven “gold OA” and free-access “green OA” require researchers to navigate complicated options for copyright control. Meanwhile, new OA “scholars networks” offer possibilities for collaboration of which scholars may be unaware. These growing trends have ramifications across many disciplines and they create a need that librarians can fill. Subject librarians trained in …

Engaging Academics And Reimagining Scholarly Communication For The Public Good: A Report, Jessie Daniels, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

JustPublics@365 began as a discussion about how an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the Graduate Center, CUNY (located at 365 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan) might be able to bring their work together to foster greater social justice by sharing it in the public sphere.

We live in an era in which inequality is rampant. Media reports on inequality often gain little traction in a 24-hour news cycle dominated by the trivial. Activists work to address inequality in a myriad of ways, online and on the ground, but often lack connections to research or media that could further their cause. Key …