Comics Scholars Towards Significant Change in Academia: The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship and the Scottish Comics Unconference Dr Ernesto Priego Centre for Information Science, City University London British Consortium of Comics Scholar Symposium and Tea Party Sussex University, Saturday 30 May 2015 #bccs

Acknowledgements and License This deck of slides reuses slides on open access publishing originally created by Brian Hole Scottish Comics Unconference logo is by Damon Herd Open Library of Humanities logo is by the Open Library of Humanities How to cite this deck of slides: Priego, Ernesto (2015) Comics Scholars Towards Significant Change in Academia: The Comics Grid and the Scottish Comics Unconference. Slides presented at the British Consortium of Comics Scholar Symposium and Tea Party, Sussex University, Saturday 30 May figshare. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

RESEARCHER-LED STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE ACCESS TO COMICS RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS AND PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING ACTIVITIES

Kindly repeat after me… OPENING ACCESS AND WIDENING PARTICIPATION, SEEKING REFORM IS NOT AGAINST ACADEMIA IT IS PRO-ACADEMIA

Researcher-led Open Access Publishing

The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship

Most simply: No barriers to access or reuse Open Access Images by/via Brian Hole and Ubiquity Press

Open Access “By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.” -Budapest Open Access Initiative ✔ ✗ ✗ Adapted from Brian Hole and Ubiquity Press

Slide by Brian Hole and Ubiquity Press

2015 Reseacher-led Open Access Publishing: Returning Control to Universities! (and others…)

16 July 2012 The new policy, which applies to all qualifying publications being submitted for publication from 1 April 2013, states that peer reviewed research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils: RCUK announces new Open Access policy must be published in journals which are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access

Academic publishing is going to change  The UK has mandated open access publishing for all state funded research, EU and US are likely to follow  Academic societies want open access, but worry about costs and losing subscription income  Legacy publishers are unwilling and unable to lower fees for OA, so still very expensive (average charge £2,000 per article published)  Many universities want their own presses to make publishing more affordable and for prestige (although it is expensive and difficult to match the legacy publishers’ systems) Opportunity Challenges

4 levels of support for universities and their libraries 2Memberships - 10% discount - pre or post paid 4University press support 3Ad hoc publishing 1Open scholarship outreach & support

Slide by Brian Hole and Ubiquity Press

#dataspring Streamlining Deposit From Journal to Repository

Extended journal functionality

Revamped front-end (March 2015)

Research integrity  Full anti-plagiarism checking  Provision for open research data and software archiving with all publications  Rigorous peer review  Editorial guidance and training  Provision for open peer review  COPE membership for all editors  Close links with university’s ethics committee Slide by Brian Hole and Ubiquity Press

My Vision for Future Scholarship: Open Publication Outputs as Interoperable, Sustainable, Measurable, Rapidly Accessible, Reusable Research Toolkits

The Role of the Library Closer collaboration with researchers Role of librarian as curator and subject specialist Special collections in public libraries foster new audiences; audiences develop awareness, knowledge, aspirations Role of libraries as gateways to information; the less friction (obstacles, cost) the better

Opening Publications is not Enough Scottish Comics Unconference, Glasgow, 15 February

A Hashtag (Potentially) Amplifies and Fosters Engagement, Community  Twitter can also be an echo chamber but not as much as a completely closed-doors event

New academic cultures Strong resistance from senior management Misunderstanding of the positive, constructive role of interrogation and development of new forms of academic production, distribution and networking Libraries as natural allies of comics scholars as hosting venues but also research sites Comics have a wide readership; comics scholarship should be available (accessible) as widely

The Future is Open Less restrictions to access and reuse comics scholarship Greater public impact/relevance of comics scholarship due to the above Greater interaction between scholars and the public Greater interaction between scholarly authors and academic editors and publishers Greater interaction between librarians and comics scholars; comics librarians as scholars Scholarly authors engaging more actively in publishing and dissemination tasks Greater variety of networking events like today’s Technology and innovation at the heart of new developments; greater sharing and use of research data in comics scholarship

[shameless plug] #citymash Libraries and technology unconference Saturday 13 June 2015 City University London [Free, requires registration] More info at

How to cite this deck of slides: Priego, Ernesto (2015) Comics Scholars Towards Significant Change in Academia: The Comics Grid and the Scottish Comics Unconference. Slides presented at the British Consortium of Comics Scholar Symposium and Tea Party, Sussex University, Saturday 30 May figshare. Thank