Scholarly Communication Commons^™

Hang On To Your Rights (Author Rights!): A Survey Of Author Rights Services On Library Websites, Lauren Puzier, Emily Kilcer, Carol Anne Germain

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Author rights underpin many scholarly communication activities. For authors to openly distribute their work, and thereby enjoy great reach and impact, retaining the rights necessary to do so is essential. However, author rights may not be something familiar to authors. In cases where an author is working with a publisher who may not be supportive of these rights by default, they may not feel confident advocating on their own behalf. Libraries are well positioned to provide services that inform and support authors in efforts to retain their rights. In doing so, libraries can additionally nurture a more sustainable scholarly ecosystem. …

Supplemental Slides For "Data Management Failures: Teaching The Importance Of Dmps Through Cautionary Examples” In The Acrl Data Literacy Cookbook, Richard M. Mikulski

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

This supplemental presentation slide deck was created to accompany the chapter "Data Management Failures: Teaching the Importance of DMPs through Cautionary Examples" in the ACRL Data Literacy Cookbook (2022). Researchers frequently express frustration when confronted with Data Management Plan (DMP) requirements, particularly when drafting or completing a grant application. This sense of annoyance is further fueled by a too-common view that the DMP is “yet another hurdle” that researchers need to confront during the grant writing process. Once researchers and students understand the purpose and utility of DMPs, however, many of these reservations and frustrations subside. The purpose of this …

Building Synergy Between The Institutional Repository And Scholarly Communication, Emily Kilcer, Lauren Puzier, Carol Anne Germain

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Institutional repositories remain a crucial tool for promoting, displaying, and encouraging open access to scholarly research. Institutional repository webpages can help deliver pertinent information about scholarly communication to visitors and authors. Scholarly communication aims to promote a more open, equitable, and sustainable scholarly ecosystem. Building a coherent synergy between scholarly communication services and open distribution through an institution’s repository benefits the user community by facilitating an efficient and effective portal. Designing the institutional repository’s homepage with a clear connection to the scholarly communication presence offers a deeper investment in scholarly communication for its visitors. This study investigates the number of …

Peel, Pare, Plate, Post: Repository Mise En Place For Collecting Faculty Articles, Adriana Palmer, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Mise en place (pronounced “meez ahn plahs”) is a term used in professional kitchens to describe the organizing and arranging of the workspace, ingredients, and equipment before beginning to cook. It translates directly from French as “to put in place” (“Mise en Place,” n.d.).

A carefully constructed mise en place is the key to this recipe for adding faculty articles to an institutional repository (IR). Step by step, this recipe details one proven way for a head chef to prepare a scholarly communication kitchen for this project: (1) identifying sous-chefs to assist in the project, (2) gathering ingredients from multiple …

Current Market Rates For Scholarly Publishing Services, Alexander Grossman, Björn Brembs

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

For decades, the supra-inflation increase of subscription prices for scholarly journals has concerned scholarly institutions. After years of fruitless efforts to solve this “serials crisis”, open access has been proposed as the latest potential solution. However, the prices for open access publishing are also high and are rising well beyond inflation. What has been missing from the public discussion so far is a quantitative approach to determine the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article using state-of-the-art technologies, such that informed decisions can be made as to appropriate price levels. Here we provide a granular, step-by-step calculation of the …

Academic Libraries As Enablers To Prepare Graduate Students For Open Scholarship, Adrian K. Ho

Library Presentations

A plethora of digital tools have become available in the past decade to facilitate different tasks in the scholarly communication process. Meanwhile, research funders have established policies that require grant recipients to practice open scholarship by sharing their research deliverables online. Graduate students as junior scholars may feel overwhelmed due to their unfamiliarity with some digital tools and how to be in compliance with research funders’ requirements. To prepare them for academic success and open scholarship, academic libraries have partnered with graduate schools to educate students about scholarly communication issues.

With the focus on a public university in the U.S., …

Reimagining Peer Review, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

As you may recall, the 2020 Critical Library and Pedagogy Symposium instituted an open peer review process—not masking submitters’ names and other identifying information—to review proposed sessions. This decision came after the committee noted a lack of diversity in accepted sessions using a closed review process. Using open peer review allowed the committee to balance accepted proposals and offer a diverse range of views and experiences among presenters. This hour-long facilitated discussion will examine bias and power structures inherent in peer review. It will be an interactive session that allows participants to critically examine their views and previous experiences with …

How A Young University Can Launch And Grow A Digital Repository, Pin Pin Yeo

Research Collection Library

Learn how SMU, a young university under 50, launched a digital repository back in 2010 and opened their research and scholarship to discovery by the world.
Get tips on how to improve the visibility and profile of your institution’s research and scholarly publications, to provide access to full text articles (wherever possible), to organize the university’s records for research and publications and how repositories discoverability drove some great individual successes for the faculty. This case study is very useful to better understand the importance of a good repository.

Librarians In Dissertation Deposit: Infusing An Institutional Ritual With Scholarly Communication Instruction, Roxanne Shirazi, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Most doctoral students are required to produce a dissertation that makes an original contribution to their field of study in order to fulfill their degree requirements. The scholarly nature of this requirement informs how students and faculty approach doctoral research, but universities often treat the dissertations themselves merely as student records, not scholarly contributions. Librarians, however, are uniquely situated to work with graduate students as emerging participants in the scholarly communication ecosystem and help them prepare their dissertations for an outside audience. Librarians have the expertise to advise students with questions regarding copyright, licensing, fair use, and authors’ rights, as …

Lessons Learned From Teaching Scholarly Communication Alongside A Student-Run Journal, Melissa Seelye

FIMS Presentations

This presentation describes the development and evolution of the Scholarly Communication and Open Access Publishing course in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at Western University. The course has been offered as an online elective once a year since 2018, and its initial impetus was to provide a sustainable peer review model for the MLIS student-run journal Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP). Students in the class are tasked with peer reviewing submissions and providing additional quality control during the production process, but the journal complements the curriculum, as opposed to driving it. Experiential learning opportunities are …

Surfacing Services For Students As Scholars: A Case Study, Jill Cirasella

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

This poster presents as a case study the recent library reorganization at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The reorganization was initially spurred by the need to divide the library’s large, hydra-headed Public Services and Scholarly Communication unit into smaller, more coherent units. One of the five resulting units is Scholarly Communication and Digital Scholarship, composed of librarians who provide services related to scholarly communication, the institutional repository, data management, digital scholarship, digital preservation, and theses and dissertations. In other words, this new unit provides services that pertain not to the discovery and consumption of knowledge …

Fake Journals And Conferences: What To Know About The Faux, Jill Cirasella

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

This train-the-trainers presentation models one way to teach students about deceptive journals and conferences. It was developed expressly for graduate students at the request of campus administrators. I have it taught it numerous times, promoting it with this description:

“As a researcher, you are eager to publish your work in journals and present at conferences. But don’t let your eagerness allow you to be fooled by fake (often called ‘predatory’) journals or conferences. These low-quality outlets exist for the sole purpose of profit, not for the dissemination of peer-reviewed research. Indeed, they frequently lie about their peer review practices and …

Leadership, Development, And Expertise: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Scholarly Communication Librarian Position Announcements, Angela Hackstadt

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

In 2012, the Association of Research Libraries reported that 95% of libraries identified their libraries as leaders of scholarly communication efforts on campus. While academic librarians have long been responsible for SC issues, institutions have explicitly tasked positions with these responsibilities increasingly over time. This qualitative analysis of position announcements focuses on the ways libraries expect these librarians to engage with SC issues and responsibilities, rather than describing the prevalence of SC-related functions. Specifically, this study asks the following questions: (1) How do administrators communicate leadership expectations of SC librarian roles through job advertisements? (2) In what ways could these …

Collaborating Across Campus To Advance Open Access Policy Compliance, Andrew Johnson, Melissa Cantrell, Ryan Caillet

Collaborative Librarianship

In 2018, the Data and Scholarly Communication Services Unit (DSCS) at the University of Colorado Boulder began implementing two open access (OA) policy workflows with the aim of increasing content in the institutional repository CU Scholar, expanding awareness of the campus OA policy that was passed in 2015, and decreasing the burden on researchers for participation in the policy. DSCS leveraged collaborative relationships with other library departments and campus units in order to mobilize the data, infrastructure, procedures, and documentation to execute these workflows. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) workflow identifies existing open access publications by CU Boulder …

Moving Peer Review Transparency From Process To Praxis, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Scholarly publications often work to provide transparency of peer-review processes, posting policy information to their websites as suggested by the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Publishing. Yet this falls short in providing peer-review transparency. Using examples from an interview-based qualitative study, this article argues that scholarly publications should move from peer-review process transparency to a praxis of transparency in peer review. Praxis infers that values inform practices. Scholarly publications should therefore use clear communication practices in all matters of business, and bolster transparency efforts, delineating rights and responsibilities of all players in …

The Rise Of Open Scholarly Data & Possible Implications For Libraries, Aaron Tay

Research Collection Library

The idea of open access is familiar and in recent years there has been a lot of attention paid on the open access movement. Currently due to the rise of the new open scholarly metadata, a lot can be obtained using open data. For instance Title / author / abstract metadata is available in Crossref, references are freely available via many sources such as Crossref itself, Microsoft Academic, Pubmed and Altmetrics data is available via the Crossref Event data. What are the implications for libraries and what is the arc of scholarly communication towards open?

Accelerating Scholarly Communication: The Transformative Role Of Preprints, Andrea Chiarelli, Rob Johnson, Emma Richens, Stephen Pinfield

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Five take-away messages:

Early and fast dissemination, increased opportunities for feedback and openness are seen as the main benefits of preprints.

The main concerns over preprints are the lack of quality assurance, media potentially reporting inaccurate research and journals rejecting articles if a preprint has been posted.

Twitter has been playing a key enabling role in the current second wave of preprints and preprint servers. It also appears to be the main way researchers are exposed to preprints in the first place.

It is not clear who will be responsible for posting preprints in the long-term – researchers or publishers? …

Publication And Evaluation Challenges In Games & Interactive Media, Elizabeth L. Lawley

Presentations and other scholarship

Faculty in the fields of games and interactive media face significant challenges in publishing and documenting their scholarly work for evaluation in the tenure and promotion process. These challenges include selecting appropriate publication venues and assigning authorship for works spanning multiple disciplines; archiving and accurately citing collaborative digital projects; and redefining “peer review,” impact, and dissemination in the context of creative digital works. In this paper I describe many of these challenges, and suggest several potential solutions.

Evolution Of An Institutional Repository: A Case History From Nebraska, Paul Royster

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

The 13-year history of the institutional repository (IR) at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is recounted with emphasis on local conditions, administrative support, recruitment practices, and management philosophy. Practices included offering new services, hosting materials outside the conventional tenure stream, using student employees, and providing user analytics on global dissemination. Acquiring trust of faculty depositors enhanced recruitment and extra-library support. Evolution of policies on open access, copyright, metadata, and third-party vendors are discussed, with statistics illustrating the growth, contents, and outreach of the repository over time. A final section discusses future directions for scholarly communications and IRs in particular.

Making Local Knowledge Visible: An Ir In Kosovo, Michele Gibney

University Libraries Librarian and Staff Presentations

In 2017, a joint international effort commenced under the direction of the President of University for Business and Technology (UBT) in Kosovo with colleagues from Linnaeus University (Sweden) and University for the Pacific (USA) to define, create and populate a Knowledge Center for UBT which would include an institutional repository (IR). Enlivened by discussion and feedback from the intended recipients, the needs and goals of a UBT IR were identified. Of course, creating and populating an IR is a lengthy process with many potential problems and varied approaches. Discussion of best practices was undertaken early and currently, the UBT Knowledge …

Natural Selection And The Workshop, Siobhan K. Mccarthy

University Libraries Scholarship and Creative Works

In Fall of 2017, the Sprague Library began offering workshops for citation management software in response to the increasing number of 1-on-1 appointment requests. While workshops covering various topics had been offered in the past, attendance had been low. Casting this precedent into the wind, we offered additional workshops (using anecdotal evidence from library instruction classes, research appointments, and conversations with faculty to guide the topics), and targeted graduate students and faculty as our audience. Instead of using attendance as a way to measure success, we focus on participant feedback, follow up appointments, and word-of-mouth to advertise the guide topics …

Black & White Response In A Gray Area: Faculty And Predatory Publishing, Nicole R. Webber, Stephanie Wiegand

University Libraries Publications

This study focuses on faculty knowledge, experiences, and attitudes regarding fraudulent journal operations. Many definitions presented to researchers contain two primary aspects to describe these intentional perpetra­tors: 1) the chief motivation to profit monetarily, and 2) the misleading promise of and failure to deliver on indicators of quality, such as peer review. While this definition is simple on its surface, when put into practice it often expands into discussions of poor or unethical practices by journal publishers. It is common to find lists of grievances clarifying acts that signal predatory or unethical practices, which are used to broadly classify jour­nals …

Foundations For Open Scholarship Strategy Development, Version 2.1 [Pre-Print], Jonathan Tennant, Jennifer E. Beamer, Jeroen Bosman, Björn Brembs, Neo Christopher Chung, Gail Clement, Tom Crick, Jonathan Dugan, Alastair Dunning, David Eccles, Asura Enkhbayar, Daniel Graziotin, Rachel Harding, Johanna Havemann, Daniel S. Katz, Kshitiz Khanal, Jesper Norgaard Kjaer, Tim Koder, Paul Macklin, Christopher R. Madan, Paola Masuzzo, Lisa Matthias, Katja Mayer, David M. Nichols, Elli Papadopoulou, Thomas Pasquier, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Michael Schulte-Mecklenbeck, Dan Sholler, Tobias Steiner, Pawel Szczesny, Andy Turner

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This document aims to agree on a broad, international strategy for the implementation of open scholarship that meets the needs of different national and regional communities but works globally.

Scholarly research can be idealised as an inspirational process for advancing our collective knowledge to the benefit of all humankind. However, current research practices often struggle with a range of tensions, in part due to the fact that this collective (or “commons”) ideal conflicts with the competitive system in which most scholars work, and in part because much of the infrastructure of the scholarly world is becoming largely digital. What is …

Heard On The Net: “Academic” And “Freedom” Are Two Words For Nothing Left To Lose, Jill Emery, Amy Buckland, Ashley Farley

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Opinion piece on the use of Academic Freedom as an argument against open access publishing.

Dissemination, Access, Preservation: A Case Study Of Publications From The Organic Agriculture Research And Extension Initiative, Leslie M. Delserone

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

The Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative, administered by USDA-NIFA, is the major federal funder of organic agricultural research. Analysis of 733 publications produced during the initiative’s first five years explored the dissemination of this research, and accessibility to and preservation of the publications. Publications associated with conferences (e.g., abstracts) were most numerous (36%). Many publications (69%) were openly accessible online in 2017 but fewer than 10% of these appeared in a stable digital repository. In four of the eight publication categories, access disappeared over time. No program exists to systematically collect and preserve these outputs of organic agricultural research. …

From Coalition To Commons: Plan S And The Future Of Scholarly Communication, Rob Johnson

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Abstract

The announcement of Plan S in September 2018 triggered a wide-ranging debate over how best to accelerate the shift to open access. The Plan’s ten principles represent a call for the creation of an intellectual commons, to be brought into being through collective action by funders and managed through regulated market mechanisms. As it gathers both momentum and critics, the coalition must grapple with questions of equity, efficiency and sustainability. The work of Elinor Ostrom has shown that successful management of the commons frequently relies on polycentricity and adaptive governance. The Plan S principles must therefore function as …

A Problem None Can Solve Alone: Ra21 As Collaborative Effort, Jill O'Neill

Collaborative Librarianship

Stakeholders in the information community recognize the challenges surrounding user authentication in the context of licensed information resources. Resource Access in the 21st Century (RA21) is one cross-sector initiative that is intended to reduce those challenges for both academic libraries as well as content and technology providers. Further collaboration by stakeholders may assuage some of the hesitations regarding RA21.

Opting Out Is Not An Option: Why All Academic Librarians Must Understand Open Access, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

This presentation challenges the still-too-prevalent notion that scholarly communication competencies are essential only for scholarly communication librarians and optional for other academic librarians. It focuses on one competency in particular: a robust understanding of open access.

Global North And South In Scholarly Publishing: The Affiliations Of Authors And The Situating Of Journals, Beth Evans, Beth Evans, Nanette Johnson

Publications and Research

An important goal of the open access movement in scholarly publishing has been to broaden access to research globally. Electronic delivery and removing paywalls has allowed published, open access research to flow more readily across borders. Furthermore, although subscription publishing platforms continue to be maintained as they have been historically in the Global North (GN), new publishers, often located in the Global South (GS), have seen an opportunity to offer platforms of their own that publish in an open access environment. Journals situated in the GS, nonetheless, have often been suspected as being predatory, in part, because of their unfamiliar …

Institutional Repository Based Open Access Scholarly Publishing System: A Conceptual Model, W.M. Tharanga D. Ranasinghe, Jun Min Chung

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Although Institutional repositories have been used as a strategy to improve the access to traditional scholarly content (such as e-prints) very often, their role in scholarly publishing has been discussed for a long time. Present study investigates the role of institutional repository as a scholarly publishing platform, and intends to propose an open access scholarly publishing model based on institutional repositories. For that purpose, related literature is reviewed to identify the current trends in scholarly publishing, open access movement and institutional repositories. Moreover, features of selected institutional repositories are discussed along with features of widely used institutional repository software platforms. …