Open access and promotion and tenure evaluation plans at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire

Department and program evaluation plans at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire were examined to see if these documents provide evidence that could be used to justify supporting the publication of peer-reviewed open access articles toward tenure and promotion. In an earlier study, the authors reveal that faculty members at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire are more unaware of open access publishing than their counterparts at larger universities. These findings dovetail with other studies that show that faculty members are reluctant to publish in open access journals because of concerns about the quality of those journals. The existing body of scholarship suggests that tenure-line faculty fear publishing in open access journals because it could adversely impact their chances of promotion and tenure. The authors of this current study sought to determine if department and program evaluation plans could influence negative perceptions faculty have of open access journals. The implications of this study for librarians, scholarly communication professionals, tenure-line faculty, departments, and programs are addressed

Know Your Rights: Publishing and Author Agreements

Presentatio

Taking Journal Clubs to the Next Level: Video Conferencing & Information Literacy

Our university recently purchased a subscription to BlueJeans, a cloud-based videoconferencing service that is compatible with all major computing platforms, including mobile devices. This new technology will allow a team of two librarians and a nursing faculty member to deliver a Nursing Journal Club as a continuing education course, thereby addressing the informatics competencies incorporated into nursing education. The course will consist of an information literacy session followed by four sessions with authors of the various articles teleconferencing in for part of the scholarly article discussion. Existing research on journal clubs has shown that they are effective in influencing individual nurses and healthcare providers’ perceptions of the value of medical research, as measured by informal questionnaires. This research project seeks to measure any increase in practicing nurses’ beliefs in the value of evidence-based practice (EBP) as measured by the EBP Beliefs Scale. This presentation will enumerate the challenges and benefits of using this software platform, as well as the initial findings of this ongoing research project

Reports of conferences, institutes, and seminars

This quarter’s column features reports from the New England Technical Services Librarians Spring Conference, entitled “iLibrary: Digital Futures for Libraries,” and held May 3 in Worcester, MA; the Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge, held May 18-21 in Timberline Lodge, OR; the North American Serials Interest Group Conference, entitled “Creating Harmony from Dis-Chord,” and held June 7-10 in Nashville, TN; and, a National Information Standards Organization Webinar, entitled “Making Better Decisions with Usage Statistics,” and presented June 13. © 2012 Elsevier Inc