introductions

it's me, mike! hello! i hope you're well, despite [gestures broadly] everything.

 

i'm your open scholarship & publishing librarian.

 

i work, primarily, in a field referred to as "scholarly communications".

in short, ...

... my job is about helping you make the results of your research as accessible to the public (or, relevant research communities) as you need them to be, whether that's due to funding mandates, personal interest, or a sort of proactive capitulation.

 

i am here to help you. it's, like, specifically built into the cba (16c.02). it is what librarians are for.

research data management
tri-agency oa requirements
open access publishing
scholar profiles
repositories
digital publishing
open educational resources
open infrastructure
persistent identifiers
scholarly publishing
scholarly communications

before we get started...

a lot of things in academia will be presented to you as prescriptive, rigid, and/or immutable.

here are three helpful (i hope) narratives for navigating different generations in/of academia

you have (more) agency (than a lot of folks in academia might let on)

the whole point of scholarship is for, at least, some people to see your work and for your work to make some kind of difference.

 

right? yes?

the whole point of scholarship is for, ideally, some as many people as possible to see your work and for your work to make some kind of difference.

publishing and sharing research is a hugely important part of an academic career.

when you think about it, it's kind of wild that we don't spend more time talking about this stuff.

for a librarian like myself, scholarly communications work is about supporting publishing literacy and making these disparate products of research more available.

scholarly publishing & sharing your work

every discipline has its own culture of publishing

try not to fall into the trap of assuming that the way you work is the way everyone else does.

publishing is about submission, rejection, peer review, rejection, and ego/prestige

where to publish?

• is this a good journal?
  • does it have a good reputation in my field?
  • will my community of practice read it?
  • will it be well-cited?
  • am I in good company?
  • is this a publisher of good repute?
• a presumption of access...
  • the people who are interested in this research will be able to see it.
  • the best journals in my field are generally available for this research community to read.

publications of repute will not come looking for you. (unless you are, like, a really big deal)

keep your head on a swivel. there is money to be made in exploiting folks who have more ambition than time/literacy.

once you've been published, then the metrics start.

 

impact, h-index, citations, repute, grants, research, publications, impact, citations, h-index, ego, prestige...

Think, Check, Submit
https://thinkchecksubmit.org/

UNB Libraries Publishing Support
lib.unb.ca/openaccess

Publishing Support Form
lib.unb.ca/faculty/publishing-support

Assessing Journals Guide

lib.unb.ca/openaccess/assessing-journals-publication

ok!

let us get political

academic publishing is a hugely lucrative industry

A vague generalization of the

$Economics of Publishing

$$ is the primary cause of issues/tension/angst in academic publishing

open access

open access

there are many wonderful things about open access. it's a very idealistic movement based on the idea that increased access to information will, in turn, provide more equality and equity in scholarship worldwide.

 

people should engage with open access because it is a moral good! information wants to be free!

it was spurred through what's known as the "serials crisis" where journal subscriptions rapidly increased to such an extent that institutions struggled to keep up and research became more and more restricted to folks with deep pockets.

open access

• being priced out of journals means being priced out of knowledge
• schools with money are often in the global north
• publicly funded research should be available to the public
• the more people who can read your work, the larger an impact that work may have

 

• access to knowledge is a public good.

but...

• journals rely on subscriptions for revenue, and publishing is not free. copyediting and layout are labour. distribution is labour web design/hosting... many costs!
• publishers have a vested interest in maintaining their significant revenues.
• if a journal wants to operate with no subscription costs, it typically needs money from another source.

the apc

author processing charge

bad-faith publishers

• so then, some unscrupulous folks figured a few things out.

1. researchers are under the gun to publish (or perish).
2. open access appears to be trendy.
3. people don't know the oa journals as well. they're newish!
4. all of this is complicated enough that you can get someone to pay an apc for "fast peer review" you have no intention to do.

"predatory"

though, i'd suggest, major publishers are just as predatory

and then, mandates

• before long, governments and funding bodies started to insist that publications coming from public money needed to be made public!
• you can add an APC to a funding proposal.
• or, you can engage in open access in free ways (so-called "green oa"), that are sometimes complicated and time consuming!

which brings us back to...

• most publishers now put OA at the forefront via APC, for anyone under mandate
• this means a lot of people just assume they have to pay an APC to meet OA requirements
• they don't, usually they can share a pre-publication version.
• publishers have successfully managed to monetize OA on top of their existing subscription fees

the apc

author processing charge

green open access

generally...

• publishers let you share an accepted manuscript in a disciplinary or institutional repository
• you can almost always share a preprint
• pretty much every school has a repository
• you just need to save that copy!
• there are no fees associated
• that work is indexed by google scholar and openaire and all kinds of places

unb scholar

unbscholar.lib.unb.ca

zenodo

zenodo.org

arxiv

arxiv.org

 

sherpa/romeo

v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo

so now, you can find publications in myriad places. and, researchers use those places to share the other products and/or research outputs we listed earlier.

Where to publish?

• Is this a good journal?
  • Does it have a good reputation in my field?
  • Will my community of practice read it?
  • Will it be well-cited?
  • Am I in good company?
  • Is this a publisher of good repute?
• A presumption of access...
  • The people who are interested in this research will be able to see it.
  • The best journals in my field are generally available for this research community to read.

Where to publish?

How to publish?

What to publish?

Where to publish?

• Is this a good journal?
  • Does it have a good reputation in my field?
  • Will my community of practice read it?
  • Will it be well-cited?
  • Am I in good company?
  • Is this a publisher of good repute?
• A presumption of access...
  • The people who are interested in this research will be able to see it.
  • The best journals in my field are generally available for this research community to read.

Where to publish?

• Is this a real journal?
  • How many retractions does it have? Scandals?
  • Is it "predatory"?
  • Is the journal kind of ok but the PUBLISHER isn't?
  • Are APC fees normal or bad?
  • Wait, why am I paying for publishing?
• A presumption of access...
  • Is this journal published by someone a whole entire country/state/school stopped working with?
  • How accessible do I want my work to be? For whom?
  • If I share a link, who hits a paywall?

How to publish?

• Open Access?
  • Is this journal open access or not?
  • What does "hybrid OA" mean?
  • Am I under an OA mandate?
  • Why am I paying for publishing?
  • Do I actually need to pay for publishing?
• A presumption of access...
  • What works can we find where?
  • How on top of all this do I need to be?
  • If I share a link, who hits a paywall?
  • How accessible do I want my work to be? For whom?

What to publish?

• Which versions am I sharing?
  • Preprints on a preprint server like arxiv?
  • Accepted manuscripts in our institutional repo?
  • Links to publisher PDFs I paid an APC to open up?
  • Links to publisher PDFs that most people can't read?
  • Subsets of my research data?
  • All of my research data?
• A presumption of access...
  • What am I allowed to share?
  • Which versions of things are open, and which aren't?
  • How open should my data be? Does it need to be?

These decisions are non-trivial and, likely, overwhelming!

You, generally, have agency.

It is, I think, important that you publish with intention.

Where and how you share your research affects the "impact" your work has on your research community and the public.

ALSO (again), you can avoid APCs by posting a submitted or accepted manuscript in a repository.

UNB Scholar Research Repository
unbscholar.lib.unb.ca

UNB Libraries Publishing Support
lib.unb.ca/openaccess
APC Discounts Guide
guides.lib.unb.ca/guide/311

Publishing Support Form
lib.unb.ca/faculty/publishing-support

SHERPA/RoMEO
www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you want to talk about publishing stuff.

Librarians love nothing more than the acknowledgement of their existence.

Thanks. Questions?

mnason@unb.ca
lib.unb.ca/openaccess