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“R/EVOLUTION! Scholarly Communication at a Crossroads,” the ACRL Oregon & Washington Joint Fall Conference 2004
A Student’s Perspective The two days, which went by much too quickly, were filled with excellent talks. Director of UW Libraries Betsy Wilson’s keynote provided a thoughtful overview of the library's role in today’s scholarly publishing environment and potential strategies for improving the situation. She laid the groundwork for the panels and talks to follow, touching on themes that would arise again and again, such as open access, intellectual property, publishing conglomerates, and digital repositories. As I am new to the field of librarianship, some of what was said (in all the talks!) was a bit over my head, but Betsy explained quite clearly the challenges that face academic libraries. Her metaphor of the librarian as the “canary in the coal mine” elicited laughter and invited reflection. The second talk, by Andy Gass from the Public Library of Science (PLoS), revealed further complexities about the system of scholarly communication and provided a unique viewpoint from outside the world of libraries. In particular, his reiteration of several points from the keynote address--scientists/researchers are both the creators and the consumers of scholarly work, they are not paid for publishing, they want their work seen, and libraries and taxpayers often foot much of the bill for scholarly work--made a strong impression on me. He emphasized that PLoS does not want open-access publishing to be a burden on libraries. Isabel Sterling's talk on institutional repositories in California (e.g. the California Digital Library and the eScholarship Repository) alerted me to this new direction for information seeking and sharing. She noted that librarians need to consider the user/access end as well as the repository end. The theme of institutional repositories continued as the focus of the talks on the second day. Camila Gabaldon and Charles Anderson from Western Oregon University (WOU) began the panel session by describing their efforts to create a repository at WOU. They posed several thought-provoking questions such as what are other libraries in Orbis-Cascade doing in this area and how do we effectively facilitate groups or "communities" using these repositories? Next, Carol Hixson explained the Scholars' Bank at the University of Oregon. She also raised interesting questions: who should be responsible for any controlled vocabulary in such a repository and how can librarians encourage interested faculty to actually submit documents? The last member of the panel, Carol Green, UW Forest Resources Librarian, spoke about the University of Washington's efforts in this area. She described the UW Scholarly Communication Steering Committee and the tool kit they are developing to help librarians effectively argue their points. The breakout sessions at the end of the second day allowed attendees to choose which conversation to join. I found the "Repositories under the hood" session fascinating, and I appreciated being able to participate in a discussion about specific technologies used in digital repositories. The focus on institutional repositories at this conference spurred me to think about ways I could learn as much as possible about such technologies and systems while still in school.
Of course, the meeting schedule allowed for informal interaction outside of the organized sessions. Plenty of opportunities to chat presented themselves during lunch and dinner. The chapter board meetings provided a smaller forum for practical planning, and the party on Thursday night was a great social event during which I was able to talk to current students and recent graduates! Some of us also participated in some “scholarly communication” efforts of our own, playing a pick-up game of Taboo. In this game we tried to coax each other into saying a key word on a card without using the other terms listed on the cards. Talk about controlled vocabulary!
I returned to school in Seattle re-energized by both the scenic autumn
landscapes and friendly conversations at Menucha, and grateful for the
opportunity to attend. Thank you to the Washington chapter of ACRL for the
scholarship that made it possible for me to attend the “R/evolution:
Scholarly Communication at a Crossroads” conference. A First-Time
Attendee's Perspective In her excellent overview of the history and emerging trends in scholarly communication, keynote speaker Betsy Wilson, from the University of Washington, used the metaphor of the canary in the coalmine. Much as those sensitive birds were the first to detect poisonous gases in mines, librarians were among the first to raise the alarm about the state of scholarly publishing. After placing the current crisis in serials pricing within its historical context, Wilson went on to describe a number of national and international initiatives currently underway to attempt to address the problem--from declarations of principles, such as the Keystone Principles and the Tempe Principles, to projects such as Project MUSE, Project Euclid, and OAI to name a few. She also briefly discussed open access publishing and institutional repositories. She ended her talk with the lyrics to the Police song “Canary in a Coalmine.” Andy Gass, a policy analyst from the Public Library of Science and our next speaker, saw Betsy’s Police lyrics and raised her one, beginning his talk with a reference to “I Can’t Stand Losing You,” referring to the commercial publishers’ presumed attitude toward the loss of complete domination of scholarly publishing market. Gass’s spirited presentation delved into the history and development of the Public Library of Science (PLoS). He described the need for open access publishing and what PLoS is doing to fill that need and to address the cultural and institutional challenges inherent to their mission. Two points from Gass’s presentation stuck with me. Gass referred to the moral dimension of open access publishing. He shared the following quote from a recent piece in The Lancet by Anthony Costello and David Osrin: “Faced with the option of submitting to an open-access or closed-access journal, we now wonder whether it is ethical for us to opt for closed access on the grounds of impact factor or preferred specialist audience.” As librarians it is particularly easy to see how open access publishing fits into the ethics of our profession. It was heartening to see this quote from medical researchers, a sign that researchers and scholars outside of the library field share these values. The second point that struck me had to do with the nuts and bolts of publishing PLoS. Despite the fact that I have followed with great interest the development of PLoS, I still felt that I couldn’t quite get my mind around the economic model. When Gass spoke of promoting a model where publishers are paid as “service providers,” something finally clicked in my mind. The idea of publication as one of the costs of doing research made sense to me when it was put in those terms. It’s always interesting when simply the right turn of phrase brings a new understanding. During Gass’s presentation, we talked a good deal about the challenge that open-access publishing presents to researchers, including the risks involved for untenured faculty, topics we would return to throughout the conference. After a nice break sponsored by Midwest Library Service, we heard from the final speaker of the day, Isabel Stirling from the University of California, Berkeley. She discussed the University of California’s eScholarship repository project. She described thoroughly the origins and development of the eScholarship repository. The talk combined nicely the technical, philosophical, cultural, and practical aspects of repository development. Stirling mentioned the fact that many users gain access to papers in the repository using Google. This was mentioned almost as an aside; however, I found it provoked some interesting discussion, both during the session and later during the party, about the shift we will have to make when thinking about helping students find scholarly, peer-reviewed work. After some free time and a very nice dinner, I attended the Washington ACRL chapter meeting. It was great to hear what the chapter has been up to and to hear the plans for the next conference.
After this full day of discussion, I wasn’t sure I’d have any energy left for
the evening’s festivities. However, I soon caught a second wind and enjoyed the
opportunity to socialize and meet people, especially since this was my first
ACRL event, and to discuss the talks we had heard earlier in the day. I
was involved in conversations that ranged from the dual excitement of the
eclipse and the Red Sox victory the night before to metadata standards. In
addition to great conversation, the party offered a pumpkin carving contest,
great snacks and drinks, games, and even some dancing in the kitchen!
Next up was Carol Hixson discussing the University of Oregon’s Scholar’s Bank
project. Also a Dspace project, the Scholar’s Bank is more mature than the start
up project at WOU, but Hixson assured Gabaldon and Anderson that they had more
in common than not. Hixson reflected on the early stages of the project, which
very closely mirrored WOU’s experiences. She discussed the difficulty she has
had in promoting the repository, indicating that the vast majority of
contributions to the repository are a direct result of outreach. She described
the need to educate students and faculty about open access so that they will not
be afraid that they are either violating the copyright policies of their
publishers or giving away their rights to their work. |
ACRL Washington
Newsletter, November 2004, No. 55 © 2004 WA/ACRL |
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