Category: NC State

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CFP: Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Culture: Law, Economics, and Publishing

UPDATE: due to holidays and related downtime, feedback from peers, and respect for everyone’s work/life balance (including our own), we’re extending the CFP by 2 weeks, to Jan. 19. We will begin reviewing submissions on the 5th in an attempt to maintain the timeline below, but we hope this takes a little heat off and encourages more folks to submit.

We are pleased to announce a call for proposals for Unit 3 contributions (see more details below) in our upcoming edited open book, Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Culture: Law, Economics, and Publishing, to be openly published by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in electronic and print formats. Authors retain copyright of their contributions, but commit to open publication in the CC-BY-NC book.

Proposals will be accepted in three areas:

  • Perspectives – situated and self-reflexive discussions of topics of importance in scholarly communication
  • Intersections – examples of and reflections on the intersection of scholarly communication with other areas of academic librarianship or other stakeholders
  • Case Studies – stories and lessons learned drawn from experience by librarians engaged in scholarly communication work

Edited by (in alphabetical order)

Josh Bolick, University of Kansas Libraries, jbolick@ku.edu

Maria Bonn, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, mbonn@illinois.edu

Will Cross, North Carolina State University Libraries, wmcross@ncsu.edu

Proposal Deadline: January 5, 2020 

Notification of Selected Authors/Contributions

January 24, 2020

Authors Submit Completed Contributions

March 30, 2020 (editors may provide feedback and make revision suggestions and will work with selected authors to set timeline for resubmission)

Description

Scholarly Communication and Open Culture was conceived as an open textbook of scholarly communication librarianship, which we hope may be a vehicle to increase instruction on SC topics in LIS programs, as well as serve as a resource for continuing education. The book consists of three units. Unit 1 defines scholarly communication and scholarly communication librarianship, and provides an introduction to the social, economic, technological, and legal backgrounds that underpin and shape scholarly communication work in libraries. Unit 2 begins with an introduction to “open”, broadly conceived, followed by guest-edited sections on Open Access (Amy Buckland), Open Education (Lillian Hogendoorn), Open Data (Brianna Marshall), and Open Science & Infrastructure (Micah Vandegrift). Unit 3, the subject of this CFP, will consist of concise (approx. 1,000 words) Perspectives, Intersections, and Case Studies.

Perspectives, Intersections, and Case Studies should serve to stimulate discussion and reflection on theory and implications for practice. They might dive into more niche subjects/topics, or emerging areas. Suggested further reading, discussion questions, and reference to existing resources for more information/training are welcome.

Perspectives

Perspectives are intended to offer situated and self-reflexive discussions of topics of importance in scholarly communication and the ways in which libraries or librarians respond to those topics. Scholarly communications work inevitably leads to engagement with issues upon which opinions vary, as do the courses of action that address those issues. Personal and professional experience, as well as institutional context, and personal and community identity inform and shape the opinions and approaches of scholarly communication professionals.

Examples of Perspectives might include reflections from a solo scholarly communication librarian asked to spin up a new program, a community college librarian working to support open access with faculty that do not prioritize publishing in scientific journals, or a scholar working on politically contested topics balancing a commitment to openness with safeguarding themselves from hostile alt-right trolls and doxxing.

Intersections

Intersections invites examples of and reflections on the intersection of scholarly communication with other areas of academic librarianship, obvious or otherwise. Almost all work in academic libraries is arguably and ultimately in service of scholarly communication. While libraries increasingly designate scholarly communications specialists, those specialists often collaborate with colleagues throughout their organizations to provide their expertise in addressing scholarly communication opportunities and challenges. Conversely, any area of library work might turn to a scholarly communications specialist for an informed perspective and expertise. Intersections will explore how scholarly communication work can or should interface with other areas of academic librarianship, such as undergraduate engagement, public services, tech services, DEI work, and so on.

Examples of Intersections might include exploration of library-press partnerships for sharing nontraditional research, open pedagogy work done as a collaboration between the library and a center for academic support, or a scholarly project that connects with the knowledge, innovations, and practices of indigenous and local communities.

Case Studies

Case Studies present stories and lessons learned drawn from experience. Case Studies should provide specific, contextualized examples of the kinds of tasks and questions librarians working in scholarly communication encounter and strategies for response. A case study will describe and evaluate a case, reflecting upon the issues involved and their implications for scholars and scholarship. It will suggest possible responses to the case and evaluate the effectiveness and possible challenges of those strategies. A case study grounded in actual experience might also describe the actions that were taken and reflect upon subsequent outcomes.

Examples of Case Studies might include a specific course marking project done at an institution working to support OER and textbook affordability, a digital humanities project that used interdisciplinary expertise in the libraries, or a library research data management initiative that helps researchers meet funder mandates for open data.

Selection Criteria
Proposals will be selected based on:

  • Alignment with goals and theme of book
  • A clear sense of intent/purpose
  • Quality of writing
  • Feasibility
  • Basis in theory, research, and/or practice
  • Contribution to book as a whole
  • Offering a new or underrepresented perspective on scholarly communication and scholarly communication librarianship

Acceptance of a proposal does not guarantee inclusion in the book. In addition to the above criteria, editors are keen to include contributions from a variety of institutional types, from authors at different career status, and with diversity and representation in mind. Co-authoring is welcome but not required, particularly where senior authors can partner with rising/early career authors.

Proposal Information required:

  • Section (Perspective, Intersection, or Case Study)
  • Title of contribution
  • Keywords
  • Proposal abstract (up to 250 words)
  • Justification: tell us why it’s important, including links to any supporting documentation (materials, sites, news stories, etc.)
  • Author(s) name, title, institution, and preferred email
  • Author bio (up to 100 words)
  • Acknowledgement of Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial license of the entire book

Submission Process:
Authors interested in submitting Unit 3 contributions should complete the proposal form on or before January 5, 2020. UPDATED: CFP open until January 19, 2020.

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.

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Open Science and Infrastructure Section Editor

This is the last section editor announcement, and like the others, a very exciting one for a variety of reasons. Open Science and Infrastructure are super actively evolving spaces, and Micah Vandegrift is an ideal colleague to help us consider them and where they fit in the LIS scholarly communication landscape. Micah was the first scholarly communication librarian at Florida State University, where he built a phenomenal team and program, and mentored lots of folks who now work in scholcomm spaces (we call ourselves Vandeminions). Micah is a provocateur, challenging us to live up to our professed ideas. But he’s not reckless; he’s thoughtful and kind and supportive, which is evidenced in his post below. In mid-2018, Micah became the Open Knowledge Librarian at NCSU, and then promptly embarked on a five month tour of Europe imagining the future of open scholarship (which is to say: scholarship) and infrastructure. We’re really excited to have him engaged in the production of the open textbook of scholarly communication librarianship. Here’s Micah in his own words:

What is Open Science and Infrastructure, and What’s it Doing in Library School?

Friends, colleagues, folks, I am humbled and frankly pretty nervous to be an invited section editor for the forthcoming OER + ScholComm resource. I count my co-section-editors (Brianna, Lillian, & Amy) and Will, Josh, and Maria as inspirations and luminaries, and I am excited to play a small role in shaping the scholcomm minds of tomorrow.

The open umbrella is well on its way to becoming a big tent. Organizations like SPARC and communities like OpenCon have helped refine and define action areas in open data, open education, and open access. But, what does it mean when we simultaneously aim to open ALL OF science (read: wissenschaft), and the services, protocols, standards, software, and people (read: infrastructure) through which knowledge flows? Someone had a ludicrous idea to hire an “open knowledge” librarian, who tricked someone else into letting said librarian wander Europe asking these kinds of questions. And, so, here we are.

I’m cautiously treading into these topics, both because they are hyper-current (in 2019), and because they can be political, expensive, career-shaping, and organization/institution steering. Ever since my wee-Hack Library School days, I’ve been interested in poking holes in structures we assume as solid, and I intend to continue that impulse in the open science and infrastructure section of this text. My hope is that in compiling a primer on these interconnected topics, readers/learners/colleagues will gain a landscape perspective that will continue to advance what we have called “the library” deeper and broader into a more equitable, just, and open ecosystem for the circulation of knowledge.

So, I invite your suggestions – what is open science and infrastructure and what SHOULD it do in library school?

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Open Access Section Editor

We’re super stoked to share that Amy Buckland is contributing to the forthcoming ACRL Intro to Scholarly Communication Librarianship as Open Access Section Editor. Amy is Head, Research & Scholarship at the University of Guelph. Her professional life revolves around open access initiatives, publishing support, digital scholarship, and research data services. Her considerable experience as a passionate advocate for openness is a huge boon to the project, particularly on an aspect of SC (and broader) librarianship that has become so pivotal. She’s done more rad things than can be quickly listed here, among them raising critical awareness of SC issues in the ACRL Scholarly Communication Roadshow. Prior to joining libraryland, Amy worked in publishing for 14 years, and left that industry to build a better system with libraries at the centre. She generously wrote the following post to announce her involvement:

Hey everyone! I am excited to be joining this extremely great super awesome group of folks working on an open textbook for scholarly communication. As someone who has been working in open access for almost 15 years (yowsa), I was honoured to be invited to edit the section on open access. Just as Brianna (open data) and Lillian (OER) have mentioned in their posts, I’d love to hear from you about what should be included (I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have lots of ideas, but the magic lives in our community). Since this topic is near and dear to my heart, rest assured that we will not shy away from controversies, nor will anyone be mollycoddled.

Give me a shout at @jambina or buckland[at]] uoguelph.ca with questions, comments, criticism, and cathartic confessions.

This leaves one more section editor announcement to round out the editorial team, to be made in the next couple of weeks. #highfive #nomollycoddling

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Open Education Section Editor

We’re thrilled to share the news that Lillian Hogendoorn is joining our forthcoming (2020) ACRL open book on scholarly communication librarianship as the Open Education Section Editor. Lillian is the Digital Access and OER Lead at eCampusOntario, where she supports open and technology-enabled learning at Ontario’s 45 colleges and universities. Prior to her current role, Lillian worked as a Research and Scholarly Communications Librarian at Western University Libraries, and as a cross-appointed Librarian/Fellow at North Carolina State University Libraries in the Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center and User Experience Department. Her research and practice centres on the intersection of Open with critical issues, such as privacy, information privilege, and accessibility.

Lillian is imminently qualified and we’re deeply grateful that she’s sharing her time and knowledge with us as the lead on the OER Section of the book. She generously agreed to the following post about her involvement in our collaboration. In the coming weeks, look for additional posts about our growing editorial team.

Hello, everyone! I am so excited to join some of my amazing colleagues to work on a forthcoming open textbook on Scholarly Communication librarianship. I will be joining as the editor of the open education section, and I can’t wait to get started.

This project will be a much-needed introductory text for anyone interested in learning about the many facets of scholarly communication librarianship.  When Maria, Will, and Josh reached out to me, I couldn’t help but think back on my time working in eReserves as a graduate student, feeling proud to save students money on course materials. I remembered hearing about open access in a six week workshop course, and wondering if there was anything like that for textbooks. I remembered feeling simultaneously excited by the amazing possibilities of OER and frustrated by the lack of opportunities to explore these possibilities in the classroom. So naturally, I jumped at the chance to be a part of this project.

Over the past month, I’ve been working closely with the OER + ScholComm team to understand the vision for this project, and starting to shape the open education section of the text. I’m looking to create a comprehensive overview of the Open Education landscape as well as a practical overview of what open education work looks like for librarians. Much like Brianna Marshall, open data section editor, I would love to hear your ideas on what to include in this section.

If you do OER work in libraries, what does OER work look like for you? What do you wish you had learned in graduate school?

If you are a student, or just learning about open education, what are your burning questions? What would make you feel more prepared to work in open education?

You can reach me on Twitter at @l_hogendoorn or by email at lillian.hogendoorn [at] gmail.com. I can’t wait to hear from you all!

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Building an “Empowering, Collaborative, and Just Architecture for Learning” with the Scholarly Communication Notebook

We are thrilled to share the news that IMLS has funded our proposal for the Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN), “the locus for an active, inclusive, empowered community of practice for teaching scholarly communications to emerging librarians.” We believe that this project is a natural outgrowth of our work over the past two years on LIS+OER as well as a way to more fully embody our values of openness and open-enabled pedagogy.

As we continue to develop an open textbook with ACRL, we have worked hard to continue to bring in diverse voices and perspectives – more on that front soon! – but we recognize that any static text is necessary hierarchical and limited. Throughout our work we have continued to wrestle with the question of how to introduce the diverse and transformative potential of scholarly communication. The most exciting aspects of the field aren’t just about open licenses and removing paywalls, they are about revisiting core questions about the purpose and value of scholarship, the relationship between teachers and students, and the ways we aspire to, but often fall short of, the values of equity and inclusion.

We hope that this project can open a door to the multiplicity of approaches and perspectives in the field as well as centering the dynamic and ongoing work of scholarly communication. To do this, we have borrowed an approach from Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani’s Open Pedagogy Notebook. Like OPN, the Scholarly Communication Notebook will host community-designed examples of teaching and doing scholarly communication that we hope will be regularly refreshed by librarians from across the field as well as LIS faculty and students completing coursework on these topics.

Several faculty members have already agreed to pilot this resource and invite their students to do coursework that culminates in contributions that center their own voices and experiences. We’re also planning to offer financial support to three rounds of contributors with an eye to recruiting the stories and experiences of scholcommies from a broad range of institutions and intersectional identities, particularly emphasizing marginalized and underrepresented perspectives.

We’re really excited about this opportunity to use open pedagogy to build a more active and inclusive community around teaching and practicing scholarly communication. We hope that the open textbook can provide a foundation that, paired with the SCN, can offer what DeRosa and Jhangiani describe as an “empowering, collaborative, and just architecture for learning.”

You can read more about the project and see all of our proposal materials on our OSF site. We’re so excited to see this project move forward and hope you’ll consider sharing your own stories, methods, and experiences.

-Will, Maria, and Josh