Scholarly Communication

From Understanding to Engagement
A teal logo of a white book with an SMS typing logo on it

Scholarly communication is a core competency of the academic and research librarian profession. Whether helping researchers meet their funder's mandates for public access and data sharing, guiding responsible copyright practice, or supporting new types of scholarship and instruction, librarians are leading change across campus and around the world. With this workshop, ACRL empowers our community in accelerating the transformation of the scholarly communication system.

This workshop includes a series of targeted modules that reflect the most exciting and pressing issues in the field today. Workshop hosts can select two Deep Dive topics to customize this workshop experience for their participants. The goal of the structured, interactive program is to equip participants with knowledge and skills to help accelerate the transformation of the scholarly communication system.

Participants

This workshop is intentionally designed for:

  • Librarians or library administrators with new leadership assignments in scholarly communication
  • Librarians or library administrators seeking to engage with and understand digital publishing
  • Library staff or liaisons who want to advance their professional development in scholarly communication

Learning Objectives

Workshop participants will be able to:

  • Understand the academic drivers and economic principles that underlie scholarly publishing worldwide, in order to evaluate and provide guidance about opportunities, benefits, and challenges of broader and more open dissemination of scholarship and data.
  • Integrate essential principles of copyright and other property rights applicable within an academic context, in order to provide guidance on the use of rights-protected materials in scholarly communications and digital scholarship, campus and Library projects, and online learning environments and classrooms.
  • Discover and devise their own implementable strategies for involving their communities in both understanding and participating in scholarly publishing and the scholarly publishing landscape.

Depending on the afternoon topics chosen by hosts, specific learning outcomes may also include:

  • How to implement tools, methodologies, and best practices for monitoring and increasing researchers’ impact, so they can provide community input and facilitate campus decision-making about supporting scholarly impact and return on research investment.
  • Gaining working knowledge of how open educational resources (OERs) are used, created, and supported, so that they may establish or advance relevant campus programs.
  • Learning to recognize and advise their communities about emerging scholarship formats and technologies, as well as new scholarly publishing opportunities (including library publishing), in order to evaluate or build local support at their institutions.

Deep Dive Topics

The day begins with an overview of scholarly communication fundamentals including the publishing landscape, copyright, and library engagement. For afternoon sessions, hosts are asked in advance to select two topics that are of interest to their communities from our special modules:

  • Accessibility
  • Library-Based Publishing
  • Measuring Research Impact
  • Open Education
  • Open Science
  • Research Data Management
  • Scholarly Publishing and Open Access
  • Text and Data Mining

Format

Scholarly Communication is available as an in-person RoadShow.

Learn more about hosting a RoadShow.

Sample In-Person Schedule

  • 45 Minutes: Introductory Exercise
  • 30 Minutes: Understanding Scholarly Communication: Framing the Issues
  • 1.5 Hours: Copyright and Publication Agreement Exercise
  • 1.25 Hours: Deep Dive Topic #1
  • 1.25 Hours: Deep Dive Topic #2
  • 30 Minutes: Conclusion and Wrap-Up Discussion

Total: Approx. 8 hours

Note: This is a sample schedule for example purposes; hosts will receive a final agenda including breaks and meal-times from their RoadShow presenter team.

Meet Our Presenters

Jennifer Beamer
Jennifer Beamer is the Scholarly Communications Librarian/Coordinator at The Claremont Colleges Consortium. She assists faculty and students in publishing their scholarship in the open environment. Jennifer has developed educational materials for open science practices, open educational resources, copyright, fair use, and open access. She has also designed and taught series of scholarly communication workshops for graduate students. She is an open access advocate and has been involved with SPARC and OpenCon 2014 and 2016. Jennifer holds an MLISc. degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a Master of Science degree from the University of Alberta. Read more about Jennifer in her ACRL Member of the Week profile on ACRL Insider.
Will Cross headshot
William M. Cross is the Director of the Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center at North Carolina State University where he provides advice and instruction to campus stakeholders on copyright, licensing, and scholarly communication issues. As a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Will earned an M.A. in Technology & Communication, a J.D. in Law, and an M.S.L.S. in Library Science. Before joining the Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center, Will worked in academic and law libraries, in constitutional litigation, and at the North Carolina Court of Appeals. He serves as an adjunct instructor in the UNC School of Information and Library Science and lectures nationally on free expression, copyright, and scholarly communication. Will has been quoted in publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Techdirt and publishes regularly in law and library journals on topics ranging from the pedagogy of legal education for librarians to First Amendment analysis of the regulation of video games. Read more about Will in his ACRL Member of the Week profile on ACRL Insider.
Sandra Aya Enimil headshot
Sandra Aya Enimil (she/her) is the Copyright Librarian and Contracting Specialist at Yale University Library. At Yale, Sandra is the Chair of the License Review Team and provides consultation on licenses of all types for the Library. Sandra also provides information and resources on using copyrighted materials and assists creators in protecting their own copyright. Sandra collaborates with individuals and departments within the Library and across campus. She has given numerous presentations on various aspects of copyright. Prior to this role, she was the Copyright Services Librarian at Ohio State University Libraries. Sandra is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and is interested in the intersection of DEI and intellectual property. Sandra earned her Law and MSLIS degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sandra has BAs in Political Science and Psychology from the University of Michigan and an MA in International Relations from the University of Ghana. Read more about Sandra in her ACRL Member of the Week profile on ACRL Insider.
John Edward Martin headshot
John Edward Martin is a Scholarly Communication Librarian at the University of North Texas Libraries, where he is responsible for coordinating scholarly communication outreach & education efforts, open textbook & OER initiatives, open publishing support, and scholarly impact consultations. He is also a subject librarian for the departments of Psychology and Technical Communication, and Chair of the Digital Scholarship Workgroup. John has particular interests in integrating scholarly communication into the curriculum and developing pedagogical tools for use in the classroom. He is also passionate about revising promotion & tenure guidelines, peer review models, and academic rewards systems to recognize new forms of scholarship and publication. He holds a B.A. from Rice University, an M.L.S. from the University of North Texas, and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University. Prior to becoming a librarian, John was an English professor and instructor at Wake Forest University, Louisiana Tech University, and San Jacinto College, where he taught American literature, poetry, and gothic fiction.


Carla Myers headshot
Carla Myers serves as Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Scholarly Communications for the Miami University Libraries. Her professional presentations and publications focus on fair use, copyright in the classroom, and library copyright issues. She has a B.S. in Psychology form the University of Akron and a Masters in Library and Information Science from Kent State University. Read more about Carla in her ACRL Member of the Week profile on ACRL Insider.
Jenny Oleen headshot
Jenny Oleen is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Western Washington University, where she also serves as the Copyright Librarian, and manages the Scholarly Communications Unit and the new institutional repository, Western CEDAR (http://cedar.wwu.edu). She has a BS in Agronomy from Kansas State University, a MS in Environmental Science from University of Arizona, and a MLS from Indiana University-Bloomington. Read more about Jenny in her ACRL Member of the Week profile on ACRL Insider.
Anali Perry headshot
Anali Maughan Perry is the Scholarly Communication Librarian at Arizona State University’s ASU Library. In this role, she provides leadership in providing outreach and education to the ASU community regarding scholarly publishing and copyright, with particular emphasis on fair use, open access to scholarly information, and open education. She also assists with scholarly identity management, including scholarly impact metrics. She has served on the steering committee for the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions since 2017. Anali has 23 years of experience in libraries. Her previous positions include working in Interlibrary Loan, acquisitions, and in licensing and collections. Anali also moonlighted as the host of The Library Minute video series from 2009-2013. She has a Bachelor of Music in Guitar Performance from Arizona State University and a Master of Arts in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona. Read more about Anali in her ACRL Member of the Week profile on ACRL Insider.

Rachael Samberg headshot
Rachael G. Samberg is UC Berkeley Library’s Scholarly Communication Officer, and has developed their scholarly communication program. Rachael is responsible for copyright and other IP and licensing rights education for scholars—helping them better understand and make informed decisions about what they include in their research, and manage their own IP rights as authors. She also advises about scholarly publishing options and research impact, and facilitates participation in open access publishing. Rachael has a B.S. from Tufts University, a J.D. from Duke University School of Law, and an MLIS from the University of Washington. Rachael practiced intellectual property litigation at Fenwick & West LLP for seven years before spending six years at Stanford Law School’s library, where she was Head of Reference & Instructional Services and a Lecturer in Law, teaching introductory and advanced legal research courses.

Here's what participants are saying!

"I really have a much better understanding of the importance of all faculty members at my library having a baseline understanding of scholarly communication so that they can be effective leaders and sources of information to faculty and student researchers on our campus."

"The overview of copyright was wonderful! I took a previous course about copyright but really didn't understand concepts until this workshop."

"This workshop was immediately relevant to my job!"

"I really have a much better understanding of the importance of all faculty members at my library having a baseline understanding of scholarly communication so that they can be effective leaders and sources of information to faculty and student researchers on our campus."

"I liked that the workshop brought together multiple local institutions and practitioners from different areas of librarianship"

"I particularly appreciated that both presenters clearly demonstrated their passion for the topic and were very forthright and honest and informal in style."

"The interactiveness and approachability of the presenters, as well as their communications skills helped me learn more and build off what I already knew to develop further expertise."

"Both presenters were great, and I really left the day feeling like I had something to contribute to conversations around scholarly communication on my campus! Thank you!"

"Best, most accessible copyright presentation I've ever seen."

Costs

Institutions pay a licensing fee to host an ACRL RoadShow workshop. ACRL organizational members receive a 10% licensing fee discount.

In-Person Workshop

  • Up to 100 participants: $6,000 and travel costs for two presenters


Virtual Workshop

  • Coming soon!

RoadShow Discounts and Savings

Bring Scholarly Communication to your campus!

To schedule a Scholarly Communication RoadShow, contact Ari Zickau at azickau@ala.org.