Libraries as publishers and promoters of OA scholarship

Slides from a presentation delivered March 20, 2017 at the Library Publishing Forum in Baltimore, MD. In 2010, the University Libraries at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro began offering support for open access journal publishing via Open Journal Systems (OJS). This service, developed in response to faculty requests for support in this area, complements a suite of OA projects that continue to grow and change as the University Libraries explore their roles in furthering academic discourse on campus and beyond. The intervening years have seen the Libraries' OJS services move from experimental to established, and as of 2016, the Libraries' provide hosting services for twelve journals on a variety of scholarly subjects and with varying activity levels. Along the way, staff have confronted technical challenges, turnover and continuity issues, and questions about the specific roles of the Libraries within the support and publishing processes. Presenters will discuss the shift from experimental project to ongoing service and will provide information on roles, expectations, and skills needed for both journal personnel and library staff who work with OJS. In addition to giving a general overview of the Libraries' OJS services, this session will provide a case study of the OJS-hosted Journal of Learning Spaces, which commenced publication in 2011 (http://libjournal.uncg.edu/jls). This journal, which was created to fill a need in the professional literature, publishes scholarly work related to all aspects of learning space design, operation, pedagogy, and assessment in higher education. Both speakers are active in editorial roles in JLS, and will address the challenges and changes the journal has undergone in establishing itself as a new, peer-reviewed, OA journal. Presenters will discuss staff roles, skills needed, journal workflows, author relations, and impact and credibility. If your institution is providing or considering support for scholarly journal publishing services, this session will offer insight on some of the possibly-unexpected questions and issues that may surface during the implementation and integration of these services. Presenters will discuss challenges and lessons learned at the macro level, in relation to service and support for the hosting institution; as well as at the level of the individual journal, providing insight from both sides of the fence.