Posts by Melanie Schlosser

April 3, 2024

Affiliate Spotlight: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

LPC’s Strategic Affiliates Program connects our community with peer membership communities working in libraries, publishing, and scholarly communications. LPC’s leadership has regular touch base calls with each of our affiliates and occasionally invites their leadership to group discussions on topics of broad interest. This work helps us to support the ‘community of communities,’ to align our work and to avoid duplication of effort. However, it is largely invisible to LPC’s membership. To recognize our affiliates’ contributions to our community, and to connect our members to resources and opportunities in peer communities, we are publishing a series of Affiliate Spotlights on the blog in 2024.

About

Name: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Website: https://doaj.org/
X (Twitter): @doajplus
Strategic affiliate since: 2017

DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of over 20,000 diverse open access journals from around the world. Our mission is to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals.

DOAJ is a vital part of the open access infrastructure. We are a global community, with team members, ambassadors and volunteers based in 45 countries around the world, speaking 36 languages. Our criteria have become a gold standard for open access publishing.

DOAJ is committed to being 100% independent and maintaining all of its primary services and metadata as free for everyone.

Resources

We asked our affiliates to identify some of their resources that may be of interest to the LPC community.

Beyond being a widely used and integrated resource itself, DOAJ has collaborated with a number of industry partners to provide several other tools and resources. The Open Access Journals Toolkit (OA Journals Toolkit) was launched in 2023, and is a self-guided online resource for anyone managing or supporting an open access journal. This resource is created and managed by DOAJ and OASPA, and has since its launch been translated to French, with an Arabic translation due to be released soon. If you have questions that cannot be answered by this resource, you can try Publishers Learning and Community Exchange (PLACE), an online forum for publishers and those involved in publishing, managed by Crossref, COPE, OASPA and DOAJ. Both these resources are completely free, and developed to help the community with best practice in publishing.

JASPER is a project developed to help diamond open access journals with limited resources to preserve their content for the long term. This project enables journals that are indexed in DOAJ and meet set criteria to get free help with archiving and preservation.

In addition to these resources to help journals with best practice, DOAJ is also a co-founder of Think.Check.Submit, a resource for researchers to identify trusted journals and publishers for their work. Think.Check.Submit is an international cross-sector initiative that aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications.

To keep up to date with the latest information on DOAJ and affiliated projects, visit the DOAJ blog.

Collaborations

DOAJ and LPC worked together on a task force in 2017-18 to evaluate the needs of LPC members in relation to DOAJ indexing, mentor members thorough the application process, and recommend ongoing support. The task force facilitated a workshop at the 2018 Forum and produced a How-To Guide for Library Publishers, which was last updated in 2021.

LPC also maintains an official DOAJ Liaison (currently Emma Molls) to serve as a first point of contact for LPC members navigating the DOAJ application process, but the DOAJ team is also happy to work with LPC members to assist with their DOAJ applications. Several LPC members have volunteered as DOAJ editors to help to review journal applications.

March 20, 2024

Affiliate Spotlight: Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ)

LPC’s Strategic Affiliates Program connects our community with peer membership communities working in libraries, publishing, and scholarly communications. LPC’s leadership has regular touch base calls with each of our affiliates and occasionally invites their leadership to group discussions on topics of broad interest. This work helps us to support the ‘community of communities,’ to align our work and to avoid duplication of effort. However, it is largely invisible to LPC’s membership. To recognize our affiliates’ contributions to our community, and to connect our members to resources and opportunities in peer communities, we are publishing a series of Affiliate Spotlights on the blog in 2024. 

About

Name: The Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ)
Website: https://www.celj.org/
X (Twitter): @celj_editors
Strategic affiliate since: 2020

The Council of Editors of Learned Journals is an international association for scholarly journal editors. Our mission is to enable conversations, collaborations, and communication around scholarly journal editing and to mentor editors and authors by creating an inclusive scholarly communications landscape.

Resources

If LPC members are journal editors or work with journal editors who could use more support or training in being editors, CELJ is a welcoming organization that can help!

The organization’s greatest strength is its members, who participate in editor–editor mentoring through our members-only discussion list and editor–author mentoring through face-to-face and virtual Chat with an Editor sessions at institutions and conventions. These discussions create space for potential authors and editors to ask questions they might be afraid to email into the editorial abyss about getting published or starting editorial work. The virtual spaces have proven especially helpful to BIPOC and other multimarginalized scholars, which in turn helps us make scholarly publishing more inclusive. Collective knowledge-sharing of scholarly editorial workflows among the members and with potential authors and new editors is a cornerstone of CELJ’s inclusive mission.

CELJ offers free resources on its website to assist editors with their work. Some of these resources include in-house authored guides on Best Practices for Online Journals, Guidelines for Contributors, Tips on Publishing, Tips for Starting a New Journal, and a Letter of Support for Editors. CELJ also maintains up-to-date links to inclusive style guides from a range of identity-specific organizations (e.g., National Association of Black Journalists, Native American Journalists Association, The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, Trans Journalists Association, etc.).

CELJ also provides a Featured Journal section on its website in which we interview one of our member journal editors. As an Allied Organization of the Modern Language Association, CELJ’s membership is mostly humanities and humanistically oriented social science journal editors, and we welcome journal editors from any disciplinary background. At the annual MLA convention (not to be confused with the Michigan Library Association or the Music Library Association), CELJ sponsors several sessions that feature key topics on editorial work. This past year’s convention featured sessions on Graduate Student Labor and the Future of Editing, Mentoring New Editors into Scholarly Journal Publishing, How to Get Published in a Scholarly Journal, Inclusive Citation Practices in Research and Editing, and Making Digital Humanities Projects Public. Previous years have also featured sessions on inclusive editing practices, peer review, and editorial workflow issues. Some of these sessions have been recorded and posted on our members-only website and will be featured in virtual CELJ conferences, starting in 2024.

CELJ is a resource for library publishers or the journal editors they work with. Publishers and editors can access free resources mentioned above or join (individually or as a group through the library publisher, who then gets one free membership for themselves) to gain access to exclusive resources, such as the confidential discussion group and the annual journal and editorial awards CELJ offers. Many journals and press journal managers join for the awards and stay for the rich mentoring discussions.

Collaborations

CELJ collaborates with several organizations to produce knowledge-sharing about editorial processes and scholarly publishing. CELJ has shared several reading group meet-ups with LPC members to cover new documents and guidelines on diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in scholarly publishing (e.g., C4DISC Toolkit for Disability Equity; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in APA Journals; Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices heuristic, etc.).

As CELJ continues to create knowledge-sharing events on editorial processes, we will invite LPC members to its reading groups, webinars, and future conferences.

March 6, 2024

Affiliate Spotlight: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)

LPC’s Strategic Affiliates Program connects our community with peer membership communities working in libraries, publishing, and scholarly communications. LPC’s leadership has regular touch base calls with each of our affiliates and occasionally invites their leadership to group discussions on topics of broad interest. This work helps us to support the ‘community of communities,’ to align our work and to avoid duplication of effort. However, it is largely invisible to LPC’s membership. To recognize our affiliates’ contributions to our community, and to connect our members to resources and opportunities in peer communities, we are publishing a series of Affiliate Spotlights on the blog in 2024.

About

Name: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Website: https://www.cni.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cni.org/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/coalition-for-networked-information/
Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@cni
X (Twitter): @cni_org
Strategic affiliate since: 2017

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is a joint program of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and EDUCAUSE that promotes the use of information technology to advance scholarship and education. Over 200 organizations representing higher education, publishing, information technology, scholarly and professional organizations, foundations, and libraries and library organizations, make up CNI’s members. Learn more at cni.org.

Resources

We asked our affiliates to identify some of their resources that may be of interest to the LPC community.

• All content from CNI’s semi-annual meetings (videos, slide decks, etc.) is open to anyone: https://www.cni.org/events/membership-meetings/past-meetings
• YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/cnivideo/
• Vimeo channel: https://vimeo.com/cni/
• Pre-Recorded Project Briefing Series (video collections released quarterly): https://www.cni.org/resources/pbvs
• “Publishing” topics category is continuously updated with new content related to publishing: https://www.cni.org/category/topics/publishing
• Subscribe to the email listserv (CNI-ANNOUNCE) for the latest news and updates: https://www.cni.org/resources/follow-cni/cni-announce

Collaborations

Our two communities haven’t undertaken any formal projects together, but we regularly share information and cross-promote items of interest. CNI staff have also contributed enormously to an ongoing series of discussions about event planning (hosted by LPC staff and attended by strategic affiliate representatives and other community managers), which have helped us to shape the Library Publishing Forum program going forward.

February 21, 2024

Affiliate Spotlight: Open Education Network (OEN)

LPC’s Strategic Affiliates Program connects our community with peer membership communities working in libraries, publishing, and scholarly communications. LPC’s leadership has regular touch base calls with each of our affiliates and occasionally invites their leadership to group discussions on topics of broad interest. This work helps us to support the ‘community of communities,’ to align our work and to avoid duplication of effort. However, it is largely invisible to LPC’s membership. To recognize our affiliates’ contributions to our community, and to connect our members to resources and opportunities in peer communities, we are publishing a series of Affiliate Spotlights on the blog in 2024. 

About

Name: Open Education Network (OEN)
Website: https://open.umn.edu/oen/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@openeducationnetwork251
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/open-education-network/
Strategic affiliate since: 2018

The Open Education Network (OEN) is a vibrant, supportive community working to advance open educational practices. Our membership represents higher education institutions, consortia, and regional systems across the U.S., as well as international growth that’s broadening and enriching our understanding of open education from a global standpoint.

We achieve our goals locally and collectively by empowering faculty, removing educational barriers, and enhancing student success. Our decisions and efforts are consistently informed by our guiding principles which center on the common good, equity, inclusivity, action, humanity, integrity, and shared abundance.

Resources

We asked our affiliates to identify some of their resources that may be of interest to the LPC community.

The Open Education Network community offers a variety of adaptable resources to both members and non-members. Our recently updated website features curricula, guides, slides and webinars on OER adoption, open pedagogy and open textbook publishing. These include the OER Publishing Toolkit, a collection of adaptable templates and resources organized chronologically by publishing phase; the Pub101 Curriculum, for people who support faculty authors; and the Adaptable OER Publishing Agreement, a starting point for higher education institutions that want to contract with their faculty to create OER.

The OEN Blog showcases our community’s open education initiatives and achievements, sharing helpful insights for readers considering open resources or interested in open practices. Monthly posts also feature OEN programming, leadership and learning opportunities, community member profiles, and collaborative projects. Our YouTube channel provides easy access to a multitude of OEN publishing case studies, webinars, information sessions, tool demonstrations, workshops, and discussions.

We also offer a range of leadership and collaboration opportunities, including the Colleague Connector Program, Pub101 Committee and Publishing Advisory Group. On a monthly basis, members of the Publishing Advisory Group host Tea Time, an informal OEN community conversation with time for “Tea and Sympathy”, when people can ask questions and get feedback from the group about any publishing topic.

Collaborations

The Open Education Network hosted two workshops about creating anti-racist publishing practices and programs in 2021 and 2022, which were co-sponsored by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals and the Library Publishing Coalition.

In 2019, OEN and LPC co-hosted a pre-conference to the Library Publishing Forum that focused on publishing open educational resources. This collaboration has evolved into the popular Pub101 series, offered annually to the OEN community. Pub101 is currently being adapted by the Pub101 Committee for a faculty author audience.

January 24, 2024

Affiliate Spotlight: Association of University Presses (AUPresses)

LPC’s Strategic Affiliates Program connects our community with peer membership communities working in libraries, publishing, and scholarly communications. LPC’s leadership has regular touch base calls with each of our affiliates and occasionally invites their leadership to group discussions on topics of broad interest. This work helps us to support the ‘community of communities,’ to align our work and to avoid duplication of effort. However, it is largely invisible to LPC’s membership. To recognize our affiliates’ contributions to our community, and to connect our members to resources and opportunities in peer communities, we are publishing a series of Affiliate Spotlights on the blog in 2024. 

About

Name: Association of University Presses (AUPresses)
Website: https://aupresses.org/
X (Twitter): @aupresses
Strategic affiliate since: 2017

AUPresses is an organization of 160 international nonprofit scholarly publishers. Since 1937, the Association of University Presses advances the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association holds intellectual freedom, integrity, stewardship, and equity and inclusion as core values. AUPresses members are active across many scholarly disciplines, including the humanities, arts, and sciences, publish significant regional and literary work, and are innovators in the world of digital publishing.

Resources

We asked our affiliates to identify some of their resources that may be of interest to the LPC community.

• AUPresses Annual Meeting https://aupresses.org/programs-events/annual-meeting/
• Best Practices for Peer Review: AUPresses Handbook for Scholarly Books https://peerreview.up.hcommons.org/
• Permissions FAQ https://aupresses.org/permissions-faq/
• Jobs List https://jobs.up.hcommons.org/
• Career Resources https://jobs.up.hcommons.org/career-resources/
• Guidelines for Submitting Illustrations https://aupresses.org/resources/guidelines-for-submitting-illustrations/
• Ask UP website https://ask.up.hcommons.org/
• Digital Monograph Costing Tool https://aupresses.org/resources/costing-tool/
• Facing Censorship: Guiding Principles https://aupresses.org/resources/facing-censorship/
• Value of University Presses https://aupresses.org/the-value-of-university-presses/

Collaborations

AUPresses and LPC regularly work together on envisioning the future of university-based publishing. The AUPresses Library Relations Committee frequently proposes Library Publishing Forum panels. We collaborate to support diversity and inclusion initiatives as members of C4DISC.

January 11, 2024

Affiliate Spotlight: Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP)

LPC’s Strategic Affiliates Program connects our community with peer membership communities working in libraries, publishing, and scholarly communications. LPC’s leadership has regular touch base calls with each of our affiliates and occasionally invites their leadership to group discussions on topics of broad interest. This work helps us to support the ‘community of communities,’ to align our work and to avoid duplication of effort. However, it is largely invisible to LPC’s membership. To recognize our affiliates’ contributions to our community, and to connect our members to resources and opportunities in peer communities, we are publishing a series of Affiliate Spotlights on the blog in 2024. 

About

Name: Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP)
Website: https://www.sspnet.org/
X (Twitter): @scholarlypub
Strategic affiliate since: 2017

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), founded in 1978, is a nonprofit organization formed to promote and advance communication among all sectors of the scholarly publication community through networking, information dissemination, and facilitation of new developments in the field.

SSP members represent all aspects of scholarly publishing — including publishers, printers, e-products developers, technical service providers, librarians, and editors. SSP members come from a wide range of large and small commercial and nonprofit organizations. They meet at SSP’s annual meetings, educational seminars, and regional events to hear the latest trends from respected colleagues and to discuss common and mutual (and sometimes divergent) goals and viewpoints.

Resources

We asked our affiliates to identify some of their resources that may be of interest to the LPC community.

SSP has a wealth of resources available to the scholarly communications community for both members and non-members alike. Our informative and influential blog, The Scholarly Kitchen, serves all segments involved in the scholarly publishing community with daily posts about the latest industry topics. The OnDemand library hosts hundreds of recorded webinars and conference sessions, many of which are freely available (newer content available for purchase). We offer a variety of free webinars throughout the year on DEIA topics (via C4DISC), early career professional topics, and our Innovation Showcase which highlights the newest innovations in the industry.

Our job board lists a variety of open positions (including free internship listings) and our interactive Professional Skills Map presents the most frequently reported personal characteristics and interpersonal and technical skills that are essential to success for a variety of roles. On our website, we offer a roundup of publishing ethics resources and a list of publishing and library programs. We currently have three Communities of Interest open to non-members, the Early Career Professionals Networks, the Humanities and Social Science Publishers Network, and the AI in Scholarly Publishing Network.

We welcome a diverse group of scholarly communications professionals including publishers, librarians, funders, researchers, and industry suppliers to our Annual Meeting each year at the end of May/early June. In the fall, we offer the more intimate New Directions Seminar in Washington DC; and monthly webinars connect professionals to latest information on a variety of topics throughout the year.

Collaborations

SSP has been a regular sponsor of the Library Publishing Forum for many years (thanks, SSP!), but otherwise, our most significant collaboration has been through the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC). C4DISC was started by Melanie Dolechek in her role as SSP Executive Director. LPC has been involved since its founding, but had the opportunity to work most closely with the group during its community formation period, when we contributed Educopia consulting hours to the effort.