Month: September 2020

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Announcement: Open Review for Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Culture (book)

The editors and authors of Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Culture: Law, Economics, and Publishing are seeking critical feedback on portions of the book to ensure accuracy, clarity, and in order to reflect a multiplicity of perspectives and practices regarding scholarly communication work in academic libraries. To that end we are making portions of the book available for open review. Specifically, Parts 1 and 2 (of three parts that comprise the book) will be shared as they’re available, each for a period of 3-4 weeks, for comments, questions, suggestions, and feedback. We expect to start with the Open Data section, edited by Brianna Marshall, in the coming weeks (Oct. 5 – 25), with other portions to follow as they’re ready. More information about the book and our plan for the process is below.

Overview of Book

This project was conceived as an open textbook of scholarly communication librarianship, which we hope may be a vehicle to increase instruction on scholarly communication topics in LIS programs, as well as serve as a resource for continuing education. We anticipate publication in 2021, and are very happy to have ACRL as publisher. The book, licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC) license, will consist of three Parts.

Part 1: “What is Scholarly Communication?” by lead editors Maria Bonn, Will Cross, and Josh Bolick, introduces scholarly communication and scholarly communication library work, and outlines the issues that most directly shape and drive scholarly communication work in academic libraries. Part 1 consists of five chapters:

1.1 Basics and Definitions

1.2 Economic Issues

1.3 Social Issues

1.4 Legal and Political Issues

1.5 Technological Issues

Part 2: “Scholarly Communication and Open Culture” builds on the foundation laid in Part 1 by introducing openness and presenting sections on the four major opens most relevant to the academy and scholarly communication library work. Each of these four sections is guest edited by a widely known expert in that space, working with authors of their choosing.

2.1 What is “Open”? The 5 Rs and Open Culture (by Maria, Will, and Josh)

2.2 Open Access Section (edited by Amy Buckland)

2.3 Open Data Section (edited by Brianna Marshall)

2.4 Open Education Section (edited by Lillian Hogendoorn)

2.5 Open Science and Infrastructure (edited by Micah Vandegrift)

Part 3: “Voices from the Field: Perspectives, Intersections, and Case Studies” is out of scope for open review. This part consists of 26 short pieces that reflect the ideas and practices of a wide range of practitioners. An overview of each of these subsections, with authors, institutions, and contribution title, is available on the News (blog) section of our project site:

3.1 Perspectives

3.2 Intersections

3.3 Case Studies

How will open review work?

Each unit of Parts 1 and 2 will be shared via Google Docs (set to allow comments) as they’re ready for feedback, which is to say they will not be presented in the order outlined above. Comments will be accepted for a period of 3 to 4 weeks, at which point comments will be closed and considered by authors and editors as we move towards publication. As units are made available for open review, we will share them via News posts on our website, promote on Twitter with #LISOER and other relevant hashtags, and posted to relevant discussion lists as appropriate. Anonymous review will be permitted. Reviewers who wish to have their review acknowledged should sign their review with their preferred spelling. Critical feedback is welcome and appreciated; abusive or combative comments will be deleted and/or ignored. Be the reviewer you wish you had; help make this work the best it can be. Some sections may be available for review concurrently.

Each section post inviting review will feature a brief overview by lead editors of where that piece fits in the larger work and what that means for context, an intro to the section by the lead editors and/or authors of that section, links to the relevant documents, and end date of comment period.

We are deeply grateful to the many supporters of this work, which we hope represents the ideas and practices of a community (and communities within that community) to the extent possible. Feedback and suggestions on this process and how we might improve it to better support reviewer generosity are welcome at any point. Look for the first section, Open Data, edited by Brianna Marshall, on October 5th through the 25th.

Take care – Josh, Maria, Will

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CFP: Contributions to the Scholarly Communication Notebook

We are pleased to announce a call for proposals for materials to be included in the Scholarly Communication Notebook. Successful proposals will contribute openly-licensed educational materials (OER) about scholarly communication that reflect the broad range of people, institution types, and service models in scholarly communication and specifically fill gaps of representation in the current body of materials. With generous support from IMLS, we are able to offer $2,500 financial awards in recognition of the expertise and labor required to develop these resources. You can see the full application as a Google doc, read more below, and submit here (form deactivated).

Call for Proposals

The Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN) team is excited to invite proposals for the development of open educational resources (OER) that reflect and encourage diversity in scholarly communication. The SCN is an online community/repository that is explicitly intended to support and educate a diversifying workforce of LIS professionals and to extend social justice values to all participants by intentionally and thoughtfully reflecting the broad range of people, institution types, and service models in scholarly communication.

With generous support from IMLS, we are able to offer $2,500 financial awards in recognition of the expertise and labor required to develop these resources.

We are particularly interested in proposals from authors from a broad range of institutions and intersectional identities, particularly emphasizing marginalized and underrepresented perspectives.

The Materials

The OER should be a learning object or collection of objects that is ready to be used in both a formal classroom setting and as a resource for self-guided learning. For the first of three rounds, we are leaving space for a variety of approaches to the design of the core resource and pedagogical apparatus. We are also committed to working with contributors to develop proposals before they are submitted and continuing to support development and refinement throughout creation.

Example Projects

Because this is a new project we invite proposals that reflect a variety of approaches to building open resources and supporting open practices. These examples reflect a small set of gaps in the literature that a proposal might help fill:

  • A lesson introducing a model open education program being run at an HBCU
  • An exercise exploring strategies for supporting open and public access at a community college
  • Narratives and discussion questions that highlight unique work being done on archiving and supporting engagement with local materials at a regional college or university
  • A podcast or videos describing a tribal college’s work developing tools that support digital scholarship that engages the college’s history and the communities it serves

Selection Criteria

Proposals are open-ended but should address the following areas:

  • An overview of the topic being presented (copyright, OER, digital scholarship, etc.)
  • The need for this resource and the gaps that it fills. Why is it important? Are you building on existing openly licensed content or creating something new?
  • Your approach to presenting this material. What methods are you using? How are you addressing the need you identified above?
  • The format of the learning object? Is it a selection of readings? A video? A podcast?
  • What sort of pedagogical apparatus will be included? Will you include discussion questions? A structured assignment? What will you add to make this an educational resource, not just a document? If you have concerns about this area we are happy to work with you to refine these through discussion.
  • What are the learning outcomes/objectives for these materials?
  • Suggested (foundational/canonical) further reading? What are the most important readings, either necessary or optional for a learner to engage with these materials?

Submission Process

Review of proposals will begin on October 20, 2020 and continue throughout the fall until awarded proposals are selected. Work on selected proposals will be conducted in the late fall and early winter, with specific deliverable due dates determined among SCN leads and awarded proposal authors according to needs of project.

Please direct questions to Josh Bolick (jbolick@ku.edu), Maria Bonn (mbonn@illinois.edu), and/or Will Cross (wmcross@ncsu.edu).

Note: this CFP is also available as a Google Doc with comments enabled. Feedback on the CFP itself (including suggestions for improving it) is welcome and appreciated.