We’ve released a free webinar on demand — “Publishing OA Journals at a Scholarly Society or University.” Click here to get a link to the full recording!
Are you considering launching an open access (OA) journal at your scholarly society or university? Or are you working to develop an existing journal program to expand the reach of your articles and meet core publishing standards? You and your team likely have many questions around where to focus your efforts and how to publish at the highest level possible with limited time and resources.
In Scholastica’s free webinar on-demand, “Publishing OA Journals at a Scholarly Society or University,” editors and publishers that use Scholastica share their experience developing successful society and university journal publishing initiatives. The webinar focuses on digitally-driven publishing models with case studies from two born-digital journals. Speakers share actionable takeaways that you can apply to your publishing efforts to produce high-quality journals on a budget and with a small team. You can register to access the free webinar recording here.
The webinar features the following guest speakers:
- Peter Coles, Professor in, and Head of, the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University, and Editor-in-Chief of The Open Journal of Astrophysics (@OJ_Astro)
- Fiona Morley, Head of Digital Programmes and Information Systems at Maynooth University Library (@library_MU)
- Ashley Amaya, Senior Research Survey Methodologist at RTI International and Editor-in-Chief of Survey Practice (@SurveyPractice)
We are grateful to all of our guest speakers for taking the time to be a part of this event!
What do we mean by publishing at a scholarly society or university?
This webinar looks at examples of a scholarly society and a university publishing in-house with the help of online tools and services. Unlike the traditional publishing model, where all aspects of publishing such as web hosting and typesetting, are centralized and specialized under the publisher, the society and university publishers featured in this webinar are taking a more modular approach to publishing.
By publishing in-house, universities and scholarly societies can remain in control of all journal decisions and choose the most efficient publishing models and tools based on their needs. During the webinar, speakers share how they navigated deciding what aspects of publishing to handle among their team and where they required the help of tools and services. They share how using publishing tools and services has enabled their journal programs to operate more efficiently with limited resources.
Webinar highlights
The 1-hour webinar takes a deep dive into how to develop and scale journal publishing initiatives at a scholarly society or university. Speakers share lessons learned from the early days of their publishing programs and how they’ve worked to determine publishing needs and priorities over time, including advice on how to:
- Use tools and services to publish journals in-house, including an overview of the pre-print overlay publishing model
- Develop OA journals to meet the highest standards, including advice on how to streamline peer review, get articles added to relevant indexes, and optimize articles for multiple devices
- Communicate the benefits of OA publishing to key stakeholders and expand OA publishing efforts with limited resources
- Take advantage of all of the benefits of online-only publishing to make new articles available sooner and reach more readers
First, Fiona Morley and Peter Coles discuss the launch of The Open Journal of Astrophysics an arXiv overlay journal out of Maynooth Academic Publishing that provides open access to peer-reviewed research in astrophysics and cosmology. Morley shares her experience from the library perspective supporting the launch of The Open Journal of Astrophysics, and how she is initiating a library publishing program at Maynooth. Coles then shares the specifics of how he and his co-editors approached setting up The Open Journal of Astrophysics, why they opted to publish via the arXiv, and how they’re continuing to develop the journal to fulfill core publishing standards.
Then, Ashley Amaya shares her experience running Survey Practice, the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s e-journal. Amaya took on the role of EIC in 2017 and made modernizing the journal her main focus. She discusses what her priorities for Survey Practice were when she joined the publication and how she’s approached them including, improving the journal’s manuscript turnaround time from submission to publication to make research available faster, and making the journal more interactive for readers. She also share insights from her experience transitioning Survey Practice from an issue-based publishing model to a rolling publishing model, wherein articles are published as they’re ready and compiled into issues later.
The webinar also features a Q&A at the end, during which live viewers were able to submit questions for the guest speakers to answer. Topics covered during the Q&A include journal funding approaches and the specifics of the rolling publishing model.
Watch the free webinar on-demand
The full webinar is available for free via an on-demand Zoom recording. Click here to register for the webinar and have the recording link sent directly to your inbox.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this webinar and invite you to share them in the comments section!
This post was originally published on September 12, 2019 and updated on September 30, 2019. This webinar aired live on September 26, 2019
