Scholarly Communication Commons^™

Access Denied: Defending Research In A Shrinking Scholarly Landscape, Emily Kingsland

SJSU Open Access Conference

In early 2025, the U.S. Department of Education announced a reduction in the indexing of key journals in the ERIC database. As government censorship increasingly threatens the accessibility of educational research, librarians are emerging as critical defenders of open access and research transparency. This presentation reports on the proactive efforts of a Canadian academic librarian who developed actionable workarounds to address the disappearance of articles from ERIC. These missing records pose a significant challenge to researchers conducting knowledge syntheses, who face a reporting and reproducibility crisis when search results fluctuate or shrink without explanation. The implications are profound: systematic reviews …

Navigating Nih’S Revised Public Access Policy: On-The-Ground Experiences From Librarians And Researchers, Anneliese Taylor, Katie Fortney, Tim Vollmer

SJSU Open Access Conference

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) rolled out its revised Public Access Policy on July 1, 2025, in accordance with the 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy Nelson Memo. The Nelson Memo calls on all U.S. federal funders to implement a policy requiring immediate public access to published articles and supporting datasets resulting from federal grants. On the surface, NIH’s new policy is a public good, ensuring that federally funded research outputs will no longer be held back from public access for 12 months after publication. But the implementation mechanisms of this new policy for researchers and publishers …

Predator-Prey Population Distribution, Robert Robinette, April Sheppard

Staff and Faculty Scholarship

Determining the extent of the predatory publication problem at an R2 research university, Robert and April share their discoveries as well as how that impacts library services. This was presented at the Arkansas Library Association (ArLA) conference on October 19, 2025.

W&L Law Fall Scholarship Celebration 2025, Andrew Christensen, Michelle Cosby, Brandon Hasbrouck, Jennifer Mitchell, Melanie D. Wilson

Library Events

On October 9, 2025, the Washington and Lee Law Library hosted the fifth W&L Law Fall Scholarship Celebration. The event was co-sponsored by the Frances Lewis Law Center and took place in the Law Library's main reading room from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

On display were dozens of scholarly articles, books, chapters, and court briefs authored by the W&L Law faculty and student body between October 2022 and October 2025. Additional works were accessible online via QR codes to W&L Law Scholarly Commons institutional repository. A selection of vintage scholarship by former W&L Law professors was also on display, courtesy …

Understanding Faculty Engagement With Transformative Publishing Agreements, Andrea Goldstein Shipper, Marlowe Bogino, Daniel G. Kipnis, Benjamin H. Saracco

Libraries Scholarship

Transformative agreements, also known as read and publish agreements, are a journal subscription model used to facilitate both access to scholarly content and Open Access (OA) publishing for researchers. The Rowan University Libraries (RUL) have adopted 17 of these agreements in addition to supporting an OA publishing fund. This research study aims to discover how the use of these agreements has influenced perceptions of OA publishing and publishing decisions of faculty.

Prrla Members Digital Preservation Landscape, Pin Pin Yeo, Suqing Liu, Pimnapa Amaritworachai

Research Collection Library

The research aimed to assess the current state of digital preservation practices among PRRLA (Pacific Rim Research Libraries Alliance) member libraries. A literature review on digital preservation in academic libraries was conducted. Information was gathered through surveys and interviews. focusing on policies, staffing, skills, funding, collection maintenance and services related to digital preservation. Additionally, the study explored the role of AI, and future trends in digital preservation. Challenges and best practices for sustainable digital preservation were highlighted.

The President's Column, Laura Slavin

The Southeastern Librarian

No abstract provided.

Interview With The Past President: Crystal Gates, Camille Mccutcheon

The Southeastern Librarian

No abstract provided.

Government Documents For All: Statistical Abstract Of The United States, Tim Dodge

The Southeastern Librarian

No abstract provided.

Member Spotlight: Paula Lenor Webb, Blair Jones

The Southeastern Librarian

No abstract provided.

Preserving The Poetic And The Ephemeral: Archiving The Summer Seminar Of The Arts, Samantha Mcneilly

The Southeastern Librarian

The Summer Seminar of the Arts Papers, housed at the Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) Library, document a lively and eclectic arts festival that took place in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1969 to 1983. The collection brings together correspondence, manuscripts, broadsides, and ephemera, including unexpected items such as a poem typed on aluminum foil, from some of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century, including U.S. Poets Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winners. This article explores how archivists managed the unique challenges of processing a small literary collection filled with delicate and experimental materials. By blending standard archival practices with creative …

The Teaching Librarian's Role In College Reading, Lori Spradley

The Southeastern Librarian

Reading is an essential function for everything people learn. The main goal of reading is for readers to interpret, comprehend, and receive meaning from the text. Academic reading differs from standard reading. It is a complex form implemented throughout all subjects in higher educational institutions. Academic reading involves a detailed and critical approach, whereas standard reading is casual and typically involves briefly skimming over information. Students entering college are often unprepared to comprehend the complicated reading materials and manage the heavy reading load required for their class assignments. To be successful in college, students must understand different terminology and styles …

Postmortem: Understanding The Life And Death Of A Multi-Year Writing Program In An Academic Library, Catherine Bowers

The Southeastern Librarian

A shared interest in a month-long novel writing event inspired two reference and instruction librarians to develop a serialized program built around writing and research. Through leveraging resources and partnerships, the librarians planned to foster creativity and confidence in research writing skills within an ethos of community. This project relied on multiple forms of outreach and assessment with an intention that would be meaningful and valuable to the students. The goal from the beginning was to develop an event that incorporated the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, fit the library’s mission, …

Printz Award Titles In Mississippi Public Libraries: A Collection Analysis, Ally Watkins, Harley Rogers, Melissa Dennis

The Southeastern Librarian

The Michael L. Printz Award is presented annually by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) to recognize one book as the Printz Award winner and up to four books as Honor books. In areas of rapid growth like young adult (YA) publishing, librarians may add books recognized by an award as part of their collection development practice. The number of Printz Award winner and Honor books in a Mississippi library’s holdings can be viewed as a standard to see if Mississippi is falling behind or keeping up with trends in young adult publishing. Building on research completed for an …

Sela News, Blake Denton

The Southeastern Librarian

No abstract provided.

News From The States, Blake Denton

The Southeastern Librarian

No abstract provided.

University Of South Alabama Oa Week 2025 Promotional Fliers, Leesha Coleman, Jana Herrmann

Open Access Week 2025

Promotional fliers for presentations associated with International Open Access Week 2025 on the University of South Alabama campus.

Waring Library Society Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2025, Waring Library Society, Waring Historical Library, Medical University Of South Carolina, Jude Arendall, Joann Livingston Zeise, Tabitha Samuel, Jahliah Brown

The Waring Library Society Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Academic Commons Annual Report (2024-2025), Elizabeth D'Angel

Annual Reports & Administrative Documents

Please review the Academic Commons 2024-2025 website report.

Contents

• Updates at the Jefferson Libraries & Library Statistics
• Textile & Costume Collection
• Siegman Archives
• Instructional Design & Educational Technologies Support
• Professional Writing and Communications
• AV, Graphics, Video Production, and Photography
• Staff Highlights

Studying Topic Evolution Based On Bertopic Model And Semantic Function, Jiabin Qu, Mengyang Wang

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] Topic evolution analysis can help researchers quickly grasp the research hotspots and development trends of a discipline. However, existing topic models often overlook the semantic functions and structures of texts during topic extraction, making it difficult to reveal the deeper patterns of disciplinary development. This paper proposes an integrated framework for topic evolution analysis that combines the BERTopic model with semantic functions, aiming to enrich and improve the methodological system of topic evolution research.

[Method/process] Firstly, the BERTopic model is used to extract topics, obtaining the“Topic-Word”distribution. Next, a discourse parsing tool analyzes abstracts into five semantic function segments, resulting …