Scholarly Communication

From Understanding to Engagement
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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 has blond hair and is wearing a grey coat and a black shirt. She is standing outside and smiling.
Jennifer Beamer, Ph.D. is the Senior Assistant Scholarly Communications Librarian at California State University San Bernardino. Previously, she was the Head of Scholarly Communications and Open Publishing at Claremont College Library. From November 2023 to June 2024, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo. She has a Doctorate in Communications and Information Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she studied open access Infrastructure, including the relationships among social, technical, and public policy networks in the United States and Japan. She also has a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Hawaii.
A black and white photo of Sandra Aya Enimil. Sandra has dark hair and is wearing a dark shirt with a light beaded necklace; she is smiling.
Sandra Aya Enimil, JD, MSLIS (she/her) is the Director for Scholarly Communication and Collection Strategy at Yale Library. In this role, Sandra advises library leadership and advances the library’s strategic and operational goals related to scholarly communication and collection strategy. She also advances openness by providing insight, information and resources on open scholarship and publishing. She consults with Yale researchers on using copyrighted materials and assists creators in protecting their own copyright. Sandra leads a committee that reviews and negotiates licenses for electronic resources and provides input on licenses of all types for the library. Sandra collaborates with the Yale Office of General Counsel, individuals and departments within the library, and colleagues across and beyond campus on issues related to scholarly communication, collections, copyright, and publishing. Sandra is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and is interested in the intersection of DEI and intellectual property. She 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, Ann Arbor and an MA in International Relations from the University of Ghana, Legon.
John Edward Martin headshot
Dr. John Edward Martin (he/him) is the Director of Scholarly Communication at the University of North Texas Libraries. He coordinates scholarly communication outreach and education initiatives, Open Access and OER support, scholarly impact and data management planning consultations, digital scholarship support, and the library's open publishing platforms, supporting OER materials, open textbooks, and open journals. He co-organizes an annual Open Access Symposium and other events promoting open education and open scholarship. He has served as a member of the Library Publishing Coalition Research Committee, the COAPI Working Group, and as a Founding Fellow for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's Texas OER Fellows Program. He holds a PhD in American literature from Northwestern University and an MLS from the University of North Texas.


Carla Myers headshot
Carla S. 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 has medium-length red-brown hair and is wearing glasses, a silver necklace, and a teal patterned shirt.
Jenny Oleen (she/her) 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. 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.

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: $8,000 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, please contact us.