Commentary

Coming in the Back Door: Leveraging Open Textbooks To Promote Scholarly Communications on Campus

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Abstract

In 2007 I was assigned the responsibility for creating a scholarly communications initiative at Temple. Though lacking deep knowledge of the issues, I committed to a serious effort to raise awareness, build collective support, and contribute change to scholarly publishing practices at my institution. As a first step, I attended the ARL/ ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication,¹ where I improved my understanding of the different components of a scholarly communications initiative, and learned strategies for engaging faculty on a variety of levels. However, there was a problem: I was ready, but no one else was. Efforts to engage our faculty in campus-wide change received scant attention and virtually no support. A vast lack of awareness presented a huge barrier; many faculty members I encountered had no understanding of the issues. The rising cost of STEM journals was simply of no consequence to their work. As our dean liked to relate, one health sciences faculty member asked, “What crisis? The library provides access to almost any full-text article I need for my research.”

How to Cite:

Bell, S. J., (2012) “Coming in the Back Door: Leveraging Open Textbooks To Promote Scholarly Communications on Campus”, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 1(1), eP1040. doi: https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1040