Open course publications offer students meaningful, real-world experience with the scholarly publishing process, positioning them as knowledge creators rather than passive consumers. As an example of open pedagogy in action, course books created as part of credit-bearing courses allow students to engage directly with research, authorship, editorial workflows, and publication practices. Supporting these projects has become one of the most impactful contributions of library digital publishing programs, advancing student engagement and learning while reinforcing the value of open access and publicly engaged scholarship. This session presents a case study of supporting in-class course book publishing through a sustained collaboration between the library and an instructor. It describes how academic librarians work with instructors to plan and support a course publication from the classroom to final publication. This includes scoping the assignment, aligning pedagogical goals with publishing workflows, delivering in-class instruction on scholarly publishing concepts, and providing ongoing consultation and production support throughout the term. We examine course books as a form of library publishing practice and reflect on the benefits and challenges of embedding publishing into the curriculum. This presentation highlights how in-class publishing projects enable collaboration, knowledge sharing, and student engagement, while also requiring coordination, communication, and labour planning. By situating course books within the broader library publishing ecosystem, this session offers insight into how libraries can support meaningful, curriculum-integrated publishing projects that extend student work beyond the classroom and into the scholarly record.
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all watch party 1 presentations.
Student belonging continues to be an important professional development topic for instructors because of its connection to increased retention. At the same time, because Open Educational Resources (OER) can be edited, they have been touted as a potential solution for furthering Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the classroom. But which edits to OER would be most impactful for actually furthering students’ sense of belonging? And what role do library publishers play in encouraging faculty authors to implement these best practices? This session will present results from a qualitative research study that asked fourteen UC Santa Cruz undergraduate students to reflect on existing OER in order to better understand what impedes their sense of belonging. The study’s more exploratory and open-ended approach, which invited students to reflect on OER as they currently are with minimal prompting, was intended to identify barriers that may not have previously surfaced when assessing modified OER. The webinar will highlight key questions faculty authors should ask themselves about course reading language, organization, and purpose in order to edit OER with student belonging in mind. The presentation will conclude with a reflection about library publishers might operationalize best practices such as the ones found in our study. In University Presses, developmental editors often take on this role, prompting authors to follow style guides, refine the organization of their arguments, and advocate for potential readers’ needs. But in library publishing, where roles are less well-defined and faculty may be more reticent to follow such guidelines, how might we ensure that the OER that are created as part of our programs are most effective for learners? Whose responsibility is this and how do we keep learners at the forefront of our publishing process?
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all watch party 1 presentations.
Crafting a compelling book proposal is both an art and a strategic exercise that sits at the intersection of scholarly rigor, craft, and market awareness. Faculty authors from R2 institutions struggle with navigating a complex and competitive scholarly publishing landscape, and many need assistance developing a book proposal, which has become a genre of its own. Library publishers and university presses now find a shared purpose in helping faculty scholars articulate their ideas, find relevant presses, work with editors, and get published. This presentation explores how university presses and library publishers can collaborate through the book proposal development process to help aspiring faculty authors develop book proposals that catch the attention of editors and lead to book deals. Using a case study from Appalachian State University, this presentation will describe how library publishers and university presses can partner to support faculty during the book proposal development stage, using collaborative models, such as workshops and consultations, to help faculty craft stronger book proposals. This presentation will also examine how library publishers can identify and build sustainable cross-campus partnerships that improve the overall faculty author experience and strengthen publishing pipelines that support both open and traditional models of dissemination. Finally, this presentation will examine the core components of an effective proposal and highlight how library publishers are uniquely positioned to facilitate relationships between university presses and faculty authors.
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all watch party 1 presentations.
Through spring and Summer 2025 our library publishing team embarked on a zero textbook cost (ZTC) campus tour. With the goal of talking to every department on campus, we engaged with librarians, the students’ union, and we delivered 28 presentations across campus about our ZTC program and supporting library services! This presentation would highlight the process of coordinating this outreach on a large campus, share the faulty perspectives we encountered and reflect on our experience for others interest in engaging their campus around ZTC.
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all watch party 1 presentations.
This presentation shares an update on the Public Knowledge Project’s research into the needs of open publishing programs oriented towards books and other standalone content. It will summarise the findings of the Open Monograph Press (OMP) Under the Spotlight report, including the technical roadmap for OMP, an evaluation of publication type metadata that is informing efforts to better support more formats in scholarly communication, and highlight partnerships advocating for bibliodiversity across the global publishing ecosystem. Finally, it will outline the path forward for further exploration of the unique needs, technical and otherwise, of institutional publishers seeking to support long form content.
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all but one of the watch party 2 presentations. The link to view From Vulnerabilities to Verification is different; see the presentation's description for the link to view.
This short presentation will share how our institution enabled Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for Open Journal Systems (OJS) to improve the security of editorial and administrative accounts. After a joint review with central IT, we addressed common vulnerabilities, outdated accounts, shared logins, and weak password practices through a careful cleanup and role reassignment to protect the integrity of our hosted journals. With an upgrade, staged testing, and steady collaboration across departments, we introduced MFA through the PKP OpenID Connect plugin and supported users through a smooth transition. The result is a more secure publishing environment with stronger protection for privileged accounts in line with institutional standards and a more dependable editorial publishing process. The talk will share the steps we followed, the problems we encountered, and the lessons that helped guide the process, offering practical direction and valuable guidance for libraries planning similar improvements.
NOTE: The video stream link for this presentation is separate and different from the link that goes to the playlist.
In 2025, the University of Ottawa Library was approached by an affiliated professor whose academic society, the Society for Transparency, Openness, and Replication in Kinesiology (STORK), was about to lose funding for hosting its publishing activities on Open Monograph Press (OMP), Open Journal Systems (OMP), and Open Preprint Systems (OPS). Initially, the professor asked if the library could provide financial support. However, since the library already hosted journals on OJS, it made more sense to migrate over the journal. The problem, though, was that at the time, the uOttawa Library did not operate instances of OMP or OPS, and with a constrained budget, setting up new platforms with additional costs seemed uncertain. To the rescue comes the consortia model! Leveraging the library’s membership with Scholars Portal and its shared infrastructure approach, the library was able to implement new instances of OMP and OPS at no additional cost and begin migrating STORK’s publishing activities. Sounds simple, right? In reality, it was doable but not seamless. We encountered technical hurdles, it required additional staff time to sort out and develop new internal workflows as well as devote time to training, and we learned valuable lessons along the way. In this session, we will provide an overview of the project, share lessons learned, and discuss the partnership between the library and the consortium, including the roles we each played. For this project, the shared infrastructure model proved essential to sustaining STORK’s three open publishing activities using the Public Knowledge Project’s software and highlights how consortia models can support sustainability for openness, with benefits like reducing costs, distributing workload across the teams, minimizing technical burden, and enabling knowledge sharing across teams.
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all but one of the watch party 2 presentations. The link to view From Vulnerabilities to Verification is different; see the presentation's description for the link to view.
This presentation will introduce participants to an open, community-maintained dataset that inventories active and historical Canadian scholarly journals, compiled and stewarded by the Érudit research team as part of Coalition Publica. The dataset documents various characteristics of over a thousand Canadian peer-reviewed journals, including ownership, access models, language, and indexing status among others, and offers rich insight into a national publishing ecosystem. Designed as an open resource, the dataset is continuously improved through community contributions, ensuring it remains accurate, current, and responsive to evolving library and publishing needs. The presentation will briefly outline key characteristics of the journals represented in the dataset and discuss how libraries are already incorporating this open data into local tools to surface diamond open access journals alongside APC-based titles in read-and-publish agreements. By positioning non-commercial journals within the same decision-making and discovery contexts as commercial titles, this information helps libraries present a more values-aligned and complete picture of publishing options available to their research communities. The presentation concludes by reflecting on lessons learned from community engagement, opportunities for further collaboration, and the broader implications for library publishing in Canada and beyond.
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all but one of the watch party 2 presentations. The link to view From Vulnerabilities to Verification is different; see the presentation's description for the link to view.
University libraries in the United States play a critical and growing role in supporting open access (OA) scholarly journals, yet the labor required to sustain these publications—who performs it, how much time it demands, and how it is compensated—remains underexamined. Recent research by Lange & Severson examined labor in Canadian open access journals, providing valuable insights into editorial structures and compensation models in that national context. However, their study did not include journals hosted or published by U.S. university libraries. To expand this conversation and develop evidence to support local decision-making, the presenters conducted a complementary research study focused specifically on U.S. members of the Library Publishing Coalition. Our study mirrors Lange & Severson’s methodological approach to allow for direct comparison between the two countries. This presentation will share early findings from the U.S. survey and highlight noteworthy similarities and differences between U.S. and Canadian journal labor structures. By offering concrete data about how editorial labor is distributed and supported, our goal is to equip library publishers with evidence they can use to shape their service models, advocate for staffing and funding, and better understand the sustainability needs of the journals they support.
NOTE: Video stream link goes to a YouTube playlist containing all but one of the watch party 2 presentations. The link to view From Vulnerabilities to Verification is different; see the presentation's description for the link to view.
