Author: jbolick

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New to the SCN: Wikidata for Scholarly Communication Librarianship

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Wikidata for Scholarly Communication Librarianship” (available via Pressbooks and in the SCN OER Commons Hub). This work was created by Jere Odell, Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, and Lucille Brys, who we think have done a fantastic job presenting a somewhat technical topic in a clear and consumable way, with activities to help apply knowledge gained. Here they are to introduce Wikidata for Scholarly Communication Librarianship:

Have you ever wondered if your work to support open access will be lost to a new kind of data market? Do you wish you could do something to push back against a scholarly communication ecosystem that rewards the usual suspects? Have you ever wondered what it would look like if citation data lived in the commons and not in the pockets of for-profit, “information analytics” companies? Have you heard about Wikidata, but wonder how you might get started? In Wikidata for Scholarly Communication Librarianship we provide an introduction to contributing open citation data to Wikidata. We also share how contributing to Wikidata can align with your efforts to support both gender equity and open knowledge at your institution.

Wikidata for Scholarly Communication Librarianship grew from our own efforts to begin creating truly open, communally-owned author profiles for women authors on our campus. In this five-part text we provide a practical introduction to Wikidata with suggested activities for people that work on scholarly communication projects in academic libraries.

In Chapter 1, we introduce the open knowledge base and Wikipedia-related project, Wikidata. We also give readers basic steps for creating an account, editing their user page, and enabling useful account preferences and gadgets. After reading Chapter 1, readers will be ready to make their first edits to a Wikidata entry.

In Chapter 2, we describe the data model that makes Wikidata a powerful linked open data (LOD) environment. The structure of the triples in Wikidata are expressed as Items, Properties, and Values. These statements make the building blocks that facilitate the connections between entities (e.g., authors and their works). The chapter also provides a short list of useful properties when editing existing or creating new entries for scholarly authors and their works. On completion of this chapter, readers will be ready to add a missing statement with a supporting reference to an entry for an author or a scholarly article.

In Chapter 3, we introduce the concept of “open citations” and describe recent initiatives to establish a body of open citation data that would enable researchers and others to be less reliant on proprietary, citation databases. Wikidata interacts with these initiatives as an open knowledge base for using and enhancing open citation data.

In Chapter 4, we briefly review gender inequities in scholarly communication and open knowledge projects. We demonstrate how Wikidata can be used to partly address these gender inequities and propose a model gender statement that could be cautiously used in Wikidata entries for authors.

In Chapter 5, we provide a short summary of selected tools that we have found useful for  contributing data to Wikidata as well as for visualizing the content related to authors and their works. These tools include Scholia, a web-based application that renders scholarly profiles based on Wikidata’s data. Using Scholia and the approaches described in the prior chapters, libraries can work toward generating faculty profiles for authors. By making use of freely available data, libraries can minimize the need for proprietary profile systems.

If you are interested in learning more about Wikidata in the context of scholarly communication, we encourage you to check out this work and hope you find it useful.

About the Authors

Jere Odell (0000-0001-5455-1471) works as a Scholarly Communication Librarian at IUPUI University Library. By supporting a broad range of open access initiatives at IUPUI, Jere hopes to do a small part toward building a culture where anyone can contribute to and benefit from open knowledge.

Mairelys Lemus-Rojas (0000-0002-3727-2187) works as the Head of Metadata Services at Brown University and previously as the Open Knowledge Librarian at IUPUI. As a proponent of open knowledge, she is committed to democratizing knowledge by improving the representation of underserved and underrepresented subjects and communities through the repurpose and reuse of curated data in open infrastructures.

Lucille Brys (0000-0002-9521-6685) is an Open Knowledge Specialist for University Library at IUPUI. She loves creating open metadata for digital collections and Wikidata entries for IUPUI authors and their works.

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New to the SCN: Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing” (available in the SCN OER Commons Hub and via Pressbooks). This work was created by Amanda Makula from the University of San Diego. Folks in scholcomm land may be familiar with Amanda’s great work as the principle planner of the Digital Initiatives Symposium. We’re thrilled with what she’s created here, as scholarly publishing can definitely use some problematizing. Here’s Amanda to introduce Power, Profit, and Privilege:

The scholarly communications system – and open access in particular – has always been interesting and exciting to me. There are so many intricacies and possibilities for innovation that the conversation is endless, and always evolving. But though I find it fascinating, I’ve noticed that non-library faculty and students are generally less enthusiastic. Rather, understanding and navigating it seems to be just one more hurdle for them to get around to reach their goal of publication in a top-tier journal.

After years spent having these conversations, and feeling frustrated that open access wasn’t necessarily intrinsically interesting or valuable to the academic community, I realized that the only way to truly engage my audience was to contextualize the scholarly publishing system within their culture of academia. Open access and scholarly publishing reform didn’t necessarily matter to them if it was isolated from their lived reality of trying to secure an academic position or achieve tenure and promotion.

Scholarly publishing and academia are bound together, and tightly. One does not exist separate from the other, and one cannot change without redefining the other. If we as librarians want to transform scholarly communications, as we say that we do, we must work internally, from within academia, to make it happen. This means doing things like agitating for the reform of rank and tenure, problematizing journal rankings, desanctifying peer review, and working not only to pass OA policies on our campuses but also to connect them to other existing academic policies and practices.

This is a tall order, and academia is notoriously slow to change. Those of us who have lived in it for a while can have difficulty seeing that it is a construct, not a natural order. Those who are new to it, who are students themselves or who are contemplating pursuing an advanced degree, are more likely to question why it operates as it does – and whether there might be better ways to build, consume, and share knowledge in the future.

I designed Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing with this audience in mind. To revolutionize scholarly communications, we need to start with the next generation of academics. Scholarly communications should have a place in the curriculum; it should be taught so that students who are interested in publishing their scholarship, who are interested in matriculating to graduate school, will have a foundational understanding of the system and what it means to participate in it. I think too often it’s assumed that students will pick up this information on their own or from faculty advisors as they go through a program. But even if that’s the case, it’s unlikely that they will question the system or recognize its complicated challenges. And we absolutely need them as allies to make inroads on reform.

My curriculum is organized into two main parts, each with several chapters. The Fundamentals aims to acquaint students with the basic framework of contemporary scholarly publishing. (Some) Problems raises issues that complicate scholarly publishing, specifically how it intersects with power, money, prestige, and privilege. Chapters include hands-on exercises, readings, and additional resources. The course culminates in two final written assignments that instructors can use as part of the curriculum, or that independent learners can work through on their own.

I hope that you and/or your students will find something provocative, perplexing, and pragmatic within the pages of Power, Profit, and Privilege. Like scholarly publishing itself, this work is evolving and benefits from your feedback. Get in touch with me at amakula[at]sandiego[dot]edu if you have questions, comments, or ideas. In the meantime: happy reading!

About the Author

Amanda Y. Makula worked as a Research & Instruction Librarian for 12 years before moving into her current role as Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of San Diego, where she manages the institutional repository, engages the campus community on scholarly communication topics, serves as liaison to the Ethnic Studies department, and oversees the annual Digital Initiatives Symposium. Her most recent research project appeared in the March 2022 issue of College & Research Libraries. In her spare time you’ll find her listening to podcasts in Spanish or riding her e-bike.

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New to the SCN: Understanding Community-University Knowledge Exchange

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Understanding Community-University Knowledge Exchange: A Case Study of the Making Research Accessible Initiative (MRAi)” (available in the SCN OER Commons Hub and in Google Docs). This project was created by Heather O’Brien, Luanne Sinnamon, Mandy Choie, and Nick Ubels. They note that community/university partnerships haven’t always been mutually beneficial, and that info professionals have a role to play in supporting greater equity in these interactions. Here are the creators to introduce their resources:

The Downtown Eastside (DTES) Research Access Portal (RAP) is a knowledge exchange platform designed through a collaboration between the University of British Columbia (UBC) Library and Learning Exchange, with input from DTES neighborhood members in Vancouver, Canada. It was DTES community members who identified such a platform as an important priority for the University to address. The DTES experiences deep, systemic inequities [1] and draws considerable attention from researchers. This has led to over-research: repetitive studies on a narrow scope of issues, limited reciprocity in sharing research priorities and findings, and limited evidence of research impact [2]. In 2015, the UBC Learning Exchange partnered with the UBC Library to establish the Making Research Accessible Initiative (MRAi) and began to build the RAP based upon principles of university-community knowledge exchange.

The RAP is devoted to increasing access to and dialogue around research, and is a valuable learning environment for library and information science (LIS) students to grapple with complex issues of access, system design and representation in legacy classification systems.  Drawing on the RAP as a case study, we developed an Open Education Resource (OER) for LIS courses and professional development. Courses in LIS programs focus on publishing practices, open access, copyright and evaluation and consider the roles of librarians, publishers, scholars, policy makers, and funding agencies. It is increasingly important to consider community members whose lives are directly impacted by research in order to holistically assess research impact. Information professionals have a critical role to play in the shift to broader, more inclusive and impactful approaches to scholarly communication [3].

The OER, consisting of an Instructor’s Guide and accompanying presentation Slide Deck with speaking notes, emphasizes three primary themes:

  1. Principles and practices of community engagement for knowledge exchange;
  2. Meaningful access to research for non-academic audiences;
  3. Research ethics in historically marginalized and underrepresented communities.

We have organized the OER to consist of a “core” module, “Community-based knowledge exchange and mitigating information privilege” and three pathways: 1) “Information access and alternative formats,” 2) “Supporting community led research,” and 3) “Community engagement and services.”  Instructors can “mix and match” content from the pathways depending on available class time, course structure, and student interests.  The core and pathway modules include learning objectives, a wide selection of open access academic and professional articles, books, blogs, websites, videos and multimedia, and active learning activities for in-person or online delivery.

While the DTES RAP is used as a case study for the OER, we encourage instructors to apply examples from their local contexts. The OER is a useful tool for infusing community perspectives in discussions of scholarly communication; promoting ethical, democratic research practices, and supporting (emerging) librarians working with diverse communities. We welcome feedback on the module as well as interest in connecting about the Making Research Accessible initiative. Please contact us by e-mail at mrai.info@ubc.ca.

Works Cited:

  1. DTES Literacy Roundtable. (2017).  Strengthening literacy in the Downtown Eastside: Vision, goals and action plan of the DTES Literacy Roundtable. http://decoda.ca/wp-content/uploads/Vancouver_Downtown-Eastside_SD39_2015.pdf
  2. Boilevin, L., Chapman,…& Pham, S. (2019). Research 101: A manifesto for ethical research in the Downtown Eastside. https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0377565
  3. De Forest, H., Freund, L., McCauley, A., O’Brien, H. L., & Smythe, S. (2019). Building infrastructures for university-community knowledge exchange: The role of information professionals and literacy educators. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS / Actes Du congrès Annuel De l’ACSI. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29173/cais1073

About the Authors

Heather O’Brien is Associate Professor at the UBC School of Information.

Luanne Sinnamon  is Associate Professor at the UBC School of Information.

Mandy Choie is a recent graduate of UBC’s Master of Library and Information Studies program.

Nick Ubels is a community engagement librarian at the UBC Learning Exchange and UBC Library’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

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New to the SCN: OER Community of Learning

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Open Educational Resources Community of Learning” (available in the SCN OER Commons Hub and the OERTX Repository), contributed by Stephanie Towery, Lisa Ancelet, Laura Waugh, and Amanda N. Price. As OER has been experiencing sustained growth for some years, and librarians are a major contributor to its success, we’re happy to support this project. Here are the creators to introduce the OER Community of Learning:

The Texas State University Libraries Scholarly Communications Team designed a foundational course, the Open Educational Resources (OER) Community of Learning, to develop a baseline of knowledge about OER for faculty, librarians, and library staff. The Community of Learning was constructed with self-paced Canvas modules, which were created by librarians and then peer-reviewed by library staff and university faculty, staff, and administrators to assure needs-based, quality content covering a broad range of perspectives in teaching and learning. These self-paced modules included instructional content, quizzes, and supplemental live workshop sessions with content creators and cohorts for active discussions on related topics. Texas State University Libraries shares this foundational OER course content to the broader community by converting the Canvas-based modules for the OERTX repository platform and via the Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN).

The course, Open Education Resources Community of Learning, is an OER about OER, suitable for use by librarians, faculty, students, or anyone wanting to learn how to create, remix, and reuse open educational materials. Still available as an open Canvas course, the content was made available outside of the Canvas platform on OERTX, the open educational resources platform hosted by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. OERTX was specifically chosen for both its broad range of features and in order to provide an example for Texas State University faculty pursuing available platforms for creating and disseminating Open Educational Resources in their teaching.

Texas State University librarians Lisa Ancelet, Amanda N. Price, Stephanie Towery, and Laura Waugh created the latest iteration of the course. The OERTX version of the course is now live and available for remix and review. The team plans to update the content in OERTX based on feedback and reviews as well as adding new resources and content this summer.

About the Authors

Stephanie Towery is Copyright Officer at Texas State University as well as the liaison for Theatre & Dance, Distance, and the Office of Disability Services.

Lisa Ancelet is Research, Instruction and Outreach Librarian at Texas State University and currently the liaison to the Criminal Justice, Philosophy, and Sociology departments.

Laura Waugh is the Digital Collections Librarian at Texas State University managing the institutional repository, data repository, and open publishing services.

Amanda N. Price is a Texas State University Acquisitions Librarian who manages the firm orders unit and budgets, collection purchasing strategies, licensing, streaming video, ebooks, PDA programs, and digital archives and packages.

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New to the SCN: Peer Review: A Critical Primer and Practical Course

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Peer Review: A Critical Primer and Practical Course” (available in the SCN OER Commons Hub and via Pressbooks), contributed by Emily Ford. Despite its obvious importance to scholarly publishing, peer review is often opaque and frequently poorly understood as a practice. Emily has created this open course to explain and interrogate it. Here she is to introduce Peer Review: A Critical Primer and Practical Course:

Peer Review: A Critical Primer and Practical Course is a self-paced, open access training in peer review. In eight modules it asks readers to engage in a variety of activities to learn the who, what, why, and how of peer review. It is geared toward library professionals, library school students, or other academic professionals who must understand and/or engage with the peer-review process. The modules are:

  1. What is Peer Review?
  2. Opportunities and Challenges in Peer Review
  3. Bias and Power Structures in Peer Review
  4. Critically Examining Established Peer-Review Practices
  5. Innovations in Peer Review
  6. Librarians and Peer Review
  7. Developing Peer Review Norms, Guidelines, and Expectations for LIS (or your discipline)
  8. Developing Your Peer Review Practice

My interest in peer-review processes began with my career in librarianship. At the time I was a co-founder of In the Library with the Lead Pipe, where we “invented” an open peer-review process. From then on my research, scholarship, and advocacy has been around building capacity in our profession to engage in peer review, to understand it, to improve it, and to implement open peer-review processes in more of our publications in LIS.

One of the most notable things to me about peer review and librarianship was that we have had no basis upon which to be practicing it. How had we been trained to engage in it? Instruction librarians must often teach students to identify peer-reviewed articles for their research assignments, library workers at reference desks show students how to use limiters and filters to find peer-reviewed content, and instructors continue to try and elevate peer-reviewed scholarship as the most authoritative and the best research. Yet the first time we receive a review request many of us are baffled by the task – we ask colleagues what we are supposed to do. We try to make sense of the minimal instructions sent us by an automated journal management system, we try to have helpful comments, and we fit this work in amongst our busy work and personal lives. We simply learn it by doing.

On top of these issues, and like so many other systems in higher education, peer-review processes and systems can reinforce white supremacy and other forms of oppression. As such it is pertinent that any peer-review practice be mindfully executed to eliminate as much of this oppression as we can. This course attempts to offer folks the opportunity to learn about peer review and to critically question it so that we may, over time, develop peer-review practices, norms, guidelines, and systems for LIS that dismantle its role in systemic oppression. My sincere hope is that the materials offered in this course are used, reused, modified, and become part of a larger conversation and effort to educate scholarly communication and other librarians in peer-review practices.

About the Author

Emily Ford is Associate Professor and Urban & Public Affairs Librarian at Portland State University. Her research uses narrative inquiry methods to understand peer review and she is an advocate for open peer review. In 2021, her book Stories of Open: Opening Peer Review through Narrative Inquiry was published by ACRL Press. In her spare time she is the proud human guardian of two cats and three fancy rats, volunteers at a local no-kill cat shelter, and runs tree-lined trails through forests near her home.