Minutes of November 26, 2012 Meeting

Present:

Tom Izbicki (Co-Chair), Laura Mullen (Co-Chair, interim science), Jane Otto (digital library issues, Senator), Donna Schulman (social sciences, minutes), Jeffery Triggs (SCC, recorder), Caryn Radick (SC&UA), Minglu Wang (Data).

Guest:

Ron Jantz (SCC)

Excused:

Janice Pilch (Copyright), Joseph Deodato (digital library issues).

1. Approval of past minutes (all); short recap of OA week event (all)

Minutes of last meeting (Sept. 24) to be approved, let Laura know if you have any more changes.

We will be exhibiting a poster for a table at the State of the Libraries meeting. Jane and Laura will also be speaking at the meeting about the path the Senate took toward approval of the Open Access resolution. Open access journals also will be a focus of a poster at State of the Libraries.

OA Week event seemed to be enjoyed by all; feedback was positive.

2. Open access journals at RU

"Formalizing" the program, DOIs, journals' role in research services (follow up from Planning and Coordinating) and next steps (Jantz and Mullen).

This discussion focused on the issues of "formalizing" the Open Access Journals program, including enhancements, memberships, and moving forward. Ron distributed a handout on the Current Status of Journal Publishing at RUL, and summarized its history:

RUL has five active journals, each one unique. Each journal is edited/governed by at least one person from Rutgers:

1. Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy. Started by Dan Fishman, of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, in 2003. Dan put a lot of work in structuring the journal, which is basically a database; it was important to him that it be open access. The journal is governed by a three-person committee: the dean of the school (GSAPP), University Librarian, (Marianne Gaunt), and Fishman. They are responsible for continuity. (Note, see http://pcsp.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/pcsp/about/editorialPolicies#peerReviewProcess for the journal's formal Open Access Policy and a Statement by Rutgers Universities Libraries.)
2. Journal of Rutgers Universities Libraries. Bob Sewall started the digital version in 2006. Recently, all back issues were scanned; they get a surprising number of hits.
3. Electronic Journal of Boundary Elements (EJBE). Created by Mitch Denda.
4. Journal of Jazz Studies. Belongs to Institute of Jazz Studies.
5. New Jersey History. Created by the New Jersey Historical Society; Terry Golway is the current editor; there are some concerns about continuity.

Additional background and current information on the program:

• All journals are available at no cost to the user; all open access. In the long run, this saves RUL money.
• Creative Commons is used for licensing. We may need to re-visit this issue; Laura suggests this as a discussion item for a future agenda.
• We try to use a common template in addition to the common OJS platform from PKP (Public Knowledge Project).
• Digital journals are not time consuming for SCC; they set up the platform and structure, and the editor(s) take it from there. The work literally takes hours, not weeks. It will not take staff time away from work on other projects. Our role is to get the platform set up and get the journal launched, and the editor takes it from there.
• Memorandum of Understanding for each title. RUL is considered the publisher.
• RUL might establish a team for the journals program; we may want to consider only starting a very select two or three journals per year. This team may also do the early vetting of new journal ideas.
• Open access journals (developing the program) has been of interest to the library faculty in recent meetings.

Two things are being considered to enhance the platform:

1. DOI's. We need to start assigning DOI's as persistent publishing identifiers. CrossRef charges for them, but it is not much and we could offset these costs. Joining the OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) would give certain number of free DOIs per year. OASPA membership runs about 250 euros per year. The possibility was raised of charging people who want to start a digital journal a Starting Fee (existing titles would be grandfathered).
2. We need a Dark Archive. Journals would be archived in a trusted repository, not visible to the public. RUCore is the best possibility. There would be a collection in RUcore for each journal.

Discussion:

There is increasing interest from various people and departments in creating new digital journals. Benefits: (a) these initiatives can be said to tie into RUL's strategic plan, specifically open access. It also ties into strategic planning for subject liaisons.

The University of Pittsburgh has done an impressive job publishing digital journals, and there is no reason we can't do this as well and as impressively as they do: www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals/pubs.html

It is important to have a process by which we review and "vet" proposals, and streamline development of each title. It is also important that each future title build in provisions for continuity. There is the danger of one person starting a title, involving RUL in the work, and then disappearing.

Should there be a policy for who could start a new title? Should new titles be limited to journals associated with a society, department or a center? There are several possible new digital titles in various stages of development:

1. A journal on leadership.
2. A journal on children's literature. This would involve the reformatting of a web site into a journal.
3. International society journal question coming from an RU faculty member. This would involve moving a society subscription journal to an open access platform. The society wants to charge author fees in order to generate revenue. This issue was brought up as a result of Senate discussions, and a journal that charges APCs would not be a candidate for the RU journals program.
4. An undergraduate research journal

The Committee endorsed Ron's proposal and thinks that the "journals program" should continue to formalize its current titles/program, and then we need to continue to push forward with conversations on new projects. This discussion should go to Cabinet.

3. CSC Website (members of website team will lead discussion)

The Website team (Laura, Joseph, Jane, Donna, Minglu, Jeff) met on October 12. We reviewed other school's scholarly communications sites; Minglu also distributed materials on good academic sites. The Penn State and MIT Scholarly Communications sites were considered to be good models for our purposes. We want to keep it simple, answer the questions: What is it? Why? How? The Penn State page was most desirable in terms of our idea of one portal, an umbrella site for all of our current services.

The website team envisions that each portal would have a "landing page," with short description of each of the major topics. This would be a brief page answering very targeted questions with linking to more in depth information. The landing page would answer:

(a) Why?
(b) What is it?
(c) current trends
links to materials

Sample design for Research Services web site includes the following topical areas (not in this order necessarily):
Data Management
RUCore
Copyright
Open Access
RU Research
Digital Projects
Journal publishing
Digital Curation Research Center (or similar)

Minglu volunteered to be responsible for the initial design of the site. Joseph has set up a Twitter feed for scholarly communication as we envision some ability to share information from this site. This website will be a top priority for CSC this spring.

4. Open Access

1. Open Access Policy implementation; likely next steps, communications, advocacy (initial discussion; will continue) (Otto, Mullen)
2. The open access related aspects of the strategic plan; the action grid (CSC has a big part in the strategic plan) (Tom Izbicki)

Jane and Laura reviewed the Senate vote: There was a large turnout and a lot of excitement. Only a couple of questions from the floor, only two people voted against it. President Barchi was present during the vote, and gave it his personal support right afterwards. Since the Senate cannot actually make university policy, this recommendation must be presented to President Barchi and adopted. The Senate president will follow up this week (there is a long backlog of recommendations that need presidential approval). We know President Barchi supports the policy, so it is only a formality to get the response. There will then be an implementation phase. What is the CSC's role in this?

Discussion:

We need a coordinated response to requests for information. Requests will come to various communication points, but may need added context about the open access policy.

More work needs to be done to get information down to the departmental level. Requests for presentations are coming in. We need to keep the conversation going in a positive way, without getting bogged down. We should get out a message to the RUL faculty about what to do pending the implementation. Liaisons should be a part of this.

We need talking points for librarians who will be answering questions about Open Access and implementation.

The FAQ page needs to be refined. There is a problem with the contacts link, needs to be fixed (not go to an Outlook screen).

How will RUCore be handling what we hope is an increase in the number of papers submitted to the repository? We need to talk to them about their plans. Can the process be streamlined? What is CSC's relationship with RUCore?

We need to reconsider the whole nature of the CSC. Does the committee need more authority? Does the make-up of the committee need to be revised? This is a future agenda item. There are some disconnects between those doing the work, and those discussing that work and possibly recommending policy.

Tom: Let's postpone the discussion of 4.b.

What will be the academic implications of Rutgers joining the Big 10? We will become part of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), which Tom thinks this will be a good fit for us.

Next meeting: CSC will not meet in December, and Laura will send a poll around for a January date.