The Genesis of a Successful Library Publishing Program – Aisling Coyne, TUD

1. The Genesis of a Successful
Library Publishing Program
Aisling Coyne
Open Scholarship Librarian
Technological University Dublin
aisling.coyne@tudublin.ie

2. Brief Overview
Background and Context

3. Facts about
Library
Publishing at TU
Dublin
• TU Dublin is a first-of-its-kind university in
Ireland, thanks in part to a first-of-its-kind
open access journal publishing program that
supports and amplifies the culture of
research at the university
• Publishing since 2008
• Publish 11 Open Access Journals, all 2+ years
old, indexed in DOAJ
• No formal policy
• All free to read and free to publish
• Variety of publishing – student journals,
academic journals, symposium, OERs,
Brainstorm.
• Sustainable
• Academic-lead, library as support

4. Arrow@TUDublin: A brief background
• Arrow, our Institutional Repository is hosted on Digital Commons https://arrow.tudublin.ie/
• Digital Commons is a best-in-class hosted solution to openly publish, manage and showcase the full spectrum of your institution’s
research and scholarship. It also features a professional grade publishing platform for journals, conference proceedings, open
educational resources, books, campus newsletters and magazines.
• Established Arrow@DIT in 2008 (now Arrow@TUDublin).
• Most of our publications and other material freely available to the world since 2008 and our research has been downloaded by
people from 84,083 organisations in 237 countries.
• Arrow achieved the milestone of 10 million downloads in March and is now fast approaching 10.5 million!
•

5. Genesis

6. Story of our first journal
• 2008 lightbulb moment!
• Open Access Conference for the university sector.
• Speaker from Digital Commons (Tim Taminga) on Journal publishing.
• Dr. Kevin Lalor (Head of Social Science) was in the audience, who was also the Editor of the Irish
Journal of Applied Social Studies.
• The International Journal of Applied Social Studies (IJASS) had just lost it's funding.
• Arrow to the rescue!
•
•

7. Our first OA
Journal:
IJASS
•
• Founded in 1998
• Peer-reviewed, academic, open access journal published annually
• IJASS is a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• There are no charges for authors at any stage in the process and the journal is published
through Arrow@TUDublin
• The full text of this publication can be found on EBSCO Publishing’s databases
• Very important in the Irish context
• Uploaded back issues and moved it online
• Learning curve for academic editors/library
• Very positive feedback - Demonstrated what we could do together
•

8. Library
• Set-up, testing
• Design, upload back issues
Develop
Process
• Faculty Editors
• Editorial Board
• Peer review
On-going
Support
• Digital Commons
• Library
• Editor(s)
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijass/

9. Publishing

10. Partnership
and Roles
Academics
Librarians
Digital
Commons
Generate
material
and ideas
Develop
contacts,
connections,
networks
Manage
the Journal
process
Guidance
Support
(technical and
academic)
Technical
support
Standards
and
Procedures
Friendly
advice
Listening Ear
ENCOURAGEMENT

11. Library Roles
• Facilitation: willing to be flexible, innovative. A journal has never not
happened. Can always take it down. Make it happen!
• Training: Synthesizing information, creating guides and guiding academics
through the process
• Guidelines and Standards: We use COPE publication ethics, library sets the
standards, ethics.
• Support: technical and academic
• Encouragement: pumping-up, hand-holding, you can do this!
• TLC: Academics are busy people, make it easy! Love and support <3
• Proactive: observe trends, needs emerging, give information sessions,
discussion sessions etc.
•
•

12. Publishing Diversity
• Student publishing – e.g Sure-J undergraduate student journal, PhD students publish in IJAP to go through peer-review here first, Masters students
required to publish in IJAP.
• What is publishing? Outputs of the university. Ask questions, meet the needs.
• Niche journals – hot topics, new areas emerging all the time. E.g Event Management, different outputs.
• Promotion of the University – share with the world. Open to the World (our Strategic Plan)
• Dublin Gastronomy Symposium – led to more
• Open Educational Resources
•

13. Open
Educational
Resources
• Diversity! Another format.
• Creating a space for exemplars - high quality, peer-reviewed OERs.
• Plan to have 'living' OERs with excellent metadata records.
• Archive established for all manner of OER
• Staff training in 'How to Upload to Arrow', and 'OERs'
• Competition for most uploaded by deadline with great prize
• Library -> creating demand, outreach
• Guides for academics to turn COVID-19 outputs into OERs and publish them
• Set up, design, training – Library roles
• Need Editorial Board, Peer Reviewers, Editors
• Library will not peer-review, proof-read or manage content
•

14. Dublin
Gastronomy
Symposium
• Diversity! Another format.
• Built out of need – like everything else
• Interesting format – conference papers are
published in advance, audience comes to discuss
• Better discussion, better conference.
• 15 Minute presentations, promotes intellectual
discussion of topics
• https://arrow.tudublin.ie/dgs/
• Led to the creation of the European Journal of Food,
Drink and Society in 2019
(https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ejfds/)
•
•
•

15. Darwin's Journals
Survival of the most sustainable

16. Case Study:
IJRTP
5 star journal
•
•
• The International Journal of Religious Tourism and
Pilgrimage is a high-quality, international, open access, online,
double blind reviewed publication which deals with all
aspects of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage.
• Founded in 2013 by an international group of researchers (the
Institute for Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage)
• The journal takes an interdisciplinary international approach
and includes all aspects of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage. It
is inclusive of all denominations, religions, faiths and
spiritual practices.
• Papers can include a variety of media elements including
audio and visual files, a range of image formats and hyperlinks
to websites and other online resources.
• Member of the DOAJ
• Free for authors, variety of CC licenses on offer, fully OA.
• Indexed in Scopus
• 2x Editors & Book Review Editor
• Editorial Board (35)
• Industry Advisory Board
• https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp/
•

17. Case Study:
Student Journal of
Energy Research
• An example of one that did not survive
• Could have continued
• Lack of commitment from Editorial
Board
• https://arrow.tudublin.ie/sjer/
•

18. Current OA Journal Situation

19. Looking
towards the
future
• Publishing is changing!
• RTÉ Brainstorm – expert opinion pieces
• EUt+ project will have an academic press – free textbooks
• Peer-reviewed OERs
• Island Research Journal in the works
• Small Irish Publishers and a National Academic Press?
• Hot topics and emerging areas. Discussion pieces, drive conversation. Ready for it!
• Videos for practical skills
• Academic publishing is not the only way! Play with formats.
• We're not Elsevier, never will be! Don't have a Team.
• High quality > just producing
• Have guides, recordings, posters at point-of-need. Give training as required. Create the
demand!

20. Top Tips from TU Dublin
• Work with academics – think sustainability. Get committed editors!
• Assess your institution to see what will work
• Good enough > Perfect
• Partnership and Content are key
• Set out a template and GO FOR IT!
• Set high standards
• Guidelines for authors, guidelines for Editors - make it seem less intimidating
• Don't publish in areas that exist – pick new areas or niche topics, niche interests. Where is a
desire?
• Get a user-friendly system – if it's hard to use they won't use it
• Endless benefits!
• GOOD LUCK!
•

21. Go raibh maith agaibh!
Thank You
Aisling Coyne
aisling.coyne@tudublin.ie
+353 1 220 7065