Association of Research Libraries (ARL®)

Session 1: The New Landscape of Collaboration (Moderator: Charles Watkinson)

View Session 1 video on ARL's YouTube channel

Research Libraries Support for Small Publishers—Julia Blixrud, Assistant Executive Director, Scholarly Communication, ARL

The Association of Research Libraries has either conducted or commissioned studies in recent years to examine how their members support publishing operations. A recent study specifically looked at the potential of ARL libraries to provide support to print only publishers in order to ensure long term digital access to their content. The results of the study noted an increasing level of support for publishing activities, identified the kinds of publishing services being provided, and recommended actions libraries can undertake in support of small publishers.

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Recapturing the Essence of the Past: Integrating the University Press into the Library at Utah State University—Richard W. Clement, Dean of Libraries, Utah State University

The original role of a press in a research university was to publish and disseminate the research and scholarship of the faculty. The university was willing to undertake a significant level of subsidy because the press was seen as fulfilling a central part of the mission of a research university. In the second half of the twentieth century, many faculty began to be concerned that to publish with one’s own university’s press might be considered a conflict of interest. An unforeseen consequence of this was that a university press was no longer seen as fulfilling a university’s specific mission to publish the university’s scholarship and research, and this resulted in decreased subsidies. This in turn has forced presses to pay more attention to the bottom line. Now in a period of deep budgetary crisis, many university presses feel threatened. Last year the USU Press was faced with such a situation. But recognizing the centrality of the Library and the history of university presses, I proposed to incorporate the Press into the Library and bring it back to the center of the University’s mission. We are initiating an experiment to publish USU faculty authors in all fields and disciplines as Open Access electronic books that will once again place the Press, now integrated into the Library, right at the center of the university.

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Information Life-Cycle at GAO: Content Creation to Publishing—Bonnie Mueller, Director of Library and Information Services, Government Accountability Office

GAO is the auditing and investigative arm of Congress providing objective, fact-based information in the form of reports and testimonies. GAO’s Knowledge Services office was created to leverage resources within one unit to improve the information life-cycle of GAO’s published products from research to publishing. The library is at the beginning and the end of the information life-cycle with records management, web content, and publishing in between. This presentation will examine the role of librarians in this process from conducting research in the beginning to ensuring improved access to GAO’s published products at the end.

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Session 2: New Editorial Roles (Moderator: Julia Blixrud)

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Coaching Authors to Publish Better Papers in Better Journals—Dr. Vivian Siegel, Center for Science Communication, Vanderbilt

Communicating the results of research – particularly in research publications but also to the tax-paying public – is an essential component of the research flywheel, ensuring that others can learn from, build on, and benefit from the research that we do. If we communicate and publish well, we help maximize the impact of the research that we do. The Center for Science Communication at Vanderbilt University helps authors “publish well” by teaching them to write clearly and strategically, so that editors and reviewers can appreciate the importance of the work and request reasonable revisions; and to interact with these “gatekeepers” in ways that maximize the likelihood of acceptance.

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New Roles for Librarians as Editorial Consultants—Cindy Clark, NIH Library Writing Center

The pressure to publish or perish, persistent in many research institutions, is especially felt by early-in-their-career scientists and clinicians. The NIH Library found that an unmet need exists to help researchers quickly draft manuscripts in order to get research results into the public arena. While librarians have historically assisted researchers with the publication process by conducting literature searches and advising on citation formatting, the advent of online databases and bibliographic management software has contributed to a drop in requests for basic reference assistance. How then can today’s librarians provide value to their organizations? Learn how the NIH Library is meeting the more complex research needs of its customers and is propelling researchers to publish through the Writing Center and Editing Service.

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Partnering with Researchers to Share New Knowledge through Digital Technologies—Rebecca Kennison, CDRS, Columbia University

Major changes in scholarly workflows, due primarily to advances in communications technologies, require a reevaluation and revision of the relationship of libraries to scholarly activities. Librarians and other library staff are assisting scholars not only by locating information resources for their research, but by helping them to use, manipulate, and share information and the products of their research as broadly as possible. Furthermore, as the use of technology expands throughout research processes, faculty need new tools to support their research. Increasingly the university library’s mission is to support scholarly communication in all its forms and to develop a range of scalable and sustainable services in support of research and publishing. My talk will discuss this changing library role and provide examples of research support from Columbia's Center for Digital Research and Scholarship.

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Session 3: New Production Roles (Moderator: Rebecca Kennison)

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XML: It’s Not Rocket Science—Philippa Benson, Director, Strategic and Business Development, Charlesworth

There’s a lot of discussion about “building XML workflows” in both publishing and library circles, but relatively few publishers are doing this. To see the opportunities that might exist for collaboration in creating XML workflows, it is necessary to demystify the technology. In this session, I’ll review the basics of XML, focusing on how XML allows internal and external linking of resources and facilitates rich reuse of content at low cost. I will briefly compare advantages and disadvantages of XML and other basic electronic formats for print, including comparing cost, workflow, and archiving implications. I will review in basic terms how XML relates to ePub, mobile applications, and print-on-demand technologies. To close, I’ll share some of what I’ve learned about the causes of resistance to using XML that can arise in many organizations.

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Old and New Synergies: Libraries and Journals—Rea Devakos, Scholarly Communications Coordinator, University of Toronto

The University of Toronto provides an increasingly common set of library services for the support of publishing, combining repository software such as DSpace with journal and conference hosting applications based on Public Knowledge Project platforms. What may be less common are the partnerships the Libraries have with larger initiatives such as Synergies and the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). Synergies is a Canadian Foundation for Innovation funded project to build a national digital publication infrastructure for the social sciences and humanities, with an initial focus on journals. As part of the Synergies project, we will be adding Canadian journals to Scholars Portal, an OCUL delivery and archiving platform. This presentation will discuss how to balance local services with wider partnerships, and the underlying approaches and lessons learned to date.

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Building a Scholarly Publishing Infrastructure at the University of Michigan: Challenges, Opportunities and First Moves—Maria Bonn, AUL for Publishing, University of Michigan

In late 2009, the University of Michigan Library formally created a Publishing Division in recognition of publishing as a significant area of organizational activity. MPublishing is a suite of imprints and services dedicated to publishing and preserving the scholarly record. It consists of both pre-existing publishing and dissemination units (the University Press, the Library's Scholarly Publishing Office, the institutional repository) and new staff and services. In its first year, MPublishing has focused on organizational and cultural change to create a robust publishing infrastructure. This talk will share some of our early experiences and illustrate them with discussion of projects where we are trying new approaches to management and production.

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Session 4: The Secret Sauce: Marketing and Outreach Strategies (Moderator: Julia Blixrud)

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Libraries and Publishers: Join Forces for Better Outreach and Marketing—Monica McCormick, Program Officer for Digital Scholarly Publishing, NYU Libraries and NYU Press

This presentation will address how what libraries and publishers can learn from each other allows both parties to extend their marketing and outreach in new ways. Drawing from our nascent programs at NYU, as well as projects underway elsewhere, I will examine print and digital projects that support each other; metadata as a marketing tool and metadata for the publishing world; adding print publishing services to born-digital efforts; and other ways to share the expertise of librarians and publishing professionals for mutual benefit.

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Enhancing Discovery and Impact—Susan Makar, on behalf of Barbara P. Silcox, Program Manager, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Reporting on the results of the laboratory research activities has been an important part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) mission since its founding in 1901. NIST researchers produce approximately 2,200 manuscripts each year, targeted for commercial and society publishers of journals and technical books; scientific/technical conference proceedings; and agency publications. The NIST Information Services Office (ISO), in its role of providing professional scientific and technical information assistance to NIST staff throughout their research and publishing cycles, has been providing a variety of publishing services to the NIST research community. Over the last 10+ years, these services have transitioned from editing and printing assistance to a more collaborative role. This presentation will describe ISO’s new service model, focusing on the methods being used to increase the visibility and impact of the Journal of Research of NIST and other agency publications.

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The Benefits of Collaborative Marketing at Purdue University / Libraries—Charles Watkinson, Director, Purdue University Press, a unit of Purdue University Libraries

After presenting an organizational context in which Purdue University Press is imbedded in the Libraries, the speaker explores the concept of “a continuum of scholarly communication needs” at Purdue University, and shows how the Press and Digital Collections Librarian are collaborating to try and provide services to fill these. He then focuses on marketing as a key area of collaboration, showing how the Press can benefit from the support of other library units and vice versa. He concludes by discussing the common interest that university press publishers and librarians have in collection building / list development, and presents a case study of how Purdue Libraries and Press are building a signature area in Engineering Education – from formal books and journals to less formal types of scholarly communication such as technical reports and conference proceedings.

View Watkinson slides [PDF]