Sa while table, we'll explore the role of libraries in open access publishing both act and institutional and at a consortia level. We are all, I know, experimenting with and introducing new services, developing programs, infrastructure, that push, beginning to push that open publication dial. But we're all different. Thankfully. Felly nid oes ymweld i'n mynd i ddweud ymlaen nhw'n gweithio arall, ac yn ymweld i'r cwestiynau arall y cwestiynau. Felly, oherwydd, mae'n cael ei ddweud. Felly, rydw i'n meddwl i'n gweithio'r ysbyt iawn, mae'n Gilyn Daili.  Gyffron Yr Ystod, bydd Yr Ystod, na'n i gwael i ei ymrydau gyda hynny ac yn awe o'r ymgyrch cyfan gyntaf fel y lleithaeth ymgyrch, sy'n cyfeiliad a'r Minnewll ar ystyth, yn cyrraedd mewn llyfr y Llyfrgell. Ok, jillion. Yr ystod, yna'n chag mewn cyntaf. – Hi, Rhywbeth. – Rhyw i ddim i'r cytaf. I wish I could play a tune but unfortunately not quite mastered that yet, okay just let me shoe these slides and it always works perfectly well in rehearsal and then glitches when you go to do it in real life and just breathe with me a moment. Don't worry Julia I'll let you know if I can see them they're coming on now. They're coming up so I'll just change the view on that. Okay are we all good? Perfect. Okay thanks for that intro. So as Jane said academic libraries across Scotland are collaborating on an open access publishing platform that will be owned and managed by the participating libraries. We are using the working title of Scottish University's open access press but that is actually the subject of quite a heated debate at the moment so do watch this space and expect a bit of change there. Today I'll just go through the background to this project covering what we've set out to achieve and why and I'll look at how we've gone about our interpretation of setting up the platform, where we've got to so far and what we've got planned next. So as Jane's mentioned this project is being coordinated by SCURL and my role is with SCURL as executive officer is based at the National Library of Scotland as well. So the SCURL network has existed for around 30 years in some format so there's quite a strong background there in supporting each other but also in developing cooperative projects. So many people already be familiar with Sheddle which is one of SCURL's biggest projects which has been around for about 12 years now so I guess we had the experience there through collaboration from the Sheddle network and I guess that just gave us the framework and the foundation to start thinking about other scope for collaboration. So as with Sheddle this process began, the process towards developing the press began with the identification of a shared challenge so in this case we were looking at a clear and cost effective route for open access publishing that would satisfy funder requirements so very much keeping pace with all the recent policy developments in the area and looking to respond to that. Beyond meeting that immediate objective though there is appetite within the group just to explore alternative approaches to academic publishing to look at projects that are of the academy and are absolutely focused on the needs of the academy so this gives us the scope to do that. I'm sorry, I seem to have picked up an issue in my slides moving on, hopefully I'll be able to manage that. So as I said through Sheddle we already had that experience of working together in the confidence to look at and do other things. We know that at scale in Scotland we're a good size for working together in this way so from that background came this appetite to move on and to look at how we can develop the press. So it started with back in 2019 Scurl commissioned research to test proof of concept for a collaborative university's press. The resultant report was very favourable towards that prospect and discussions moved on from there. Alas the pandemic intervened which means that plans had to be refactored accordingly so it's turning out that 2022 is the big year of action for the press so that can explain why and why now. My slides have already taken the executive decision to move on to what so I'll try and keep pace with them. So in terms of what we're actually delivering overall we're seeking to produce an online publishing platform where digital content is freely available to all. As I say we're using this working title of Scottish University's Open Access Press. So in addition to the electronic version we're looking to provide an option for paid for print on demand too. In terms of scope the publishing will initially focus on monographs on any subject produced by academics at one of our 18 participating institutions and there they are. We're focusing on monographs in this initial two year phase because we know that there is the strongest need there in terms of approaches for publishing. We also know that we have to start small and then scale up to deliver within existing resources so there is an intention to expand the scope of the project as the press develops so we've already discussed looking at journals and perhaps e-text books as the press develops but we just don't have the capacity to do everything at once so as I said though we will cover all subject areas that receive submissions while being conscious that arts and humanities social sciences are likely to be more interested in monograph publishing. I think one of the big popular misconceptions or one of the big kind of questions that was around like as a Scottish University's press are we focusing on Scottish themed or topic material and that's absolutely not the case we're looking to cover the breadth of research coming out of Scottish institutions. The press will operate on a not-for-profit basis and our delivery model is to work through one of our partner institutions the University of Edinburgh will host the platform and through that we hope to really just to scope out what the true cost of publishing is. We want to have a fully featured professional publishing solution that will make authors want to come and work with us but this inevitably comes with a cost so it can't be that we're doing all of this for free but we are committed to finding the best possible solution to cover costs and we'll do that in consultation with our partner institutions and in a way that's completely transparent and through discussion. So those partners then 18 of them ranging from the larger research intensive institutions right through to small specialist institutions and we've also got the open university in there too and we recognise that the diversity you know it's great to have so many of the scurril membership involved but there are obviously some challenges about the diversity too and certainly challenges with these slides for which I apologise. We know that there will be considerable variation in the publishing needs and the publishing patterns of the different institutions and we've been clear about that from inception so we've developed an open and inclusive management structure so that all participants have an equal voice at a place around the table and an equal voice in decision making and for this reason our management board has one representative from each of the participating institutions so that board was just formed at the end of last year, met for the first time in December and they then met again just last week actually so it's still a very new group still found in its flow but it will be responsible for the strategic direction of the press and the members of that group will also be expected to make in kind contributions to the project so through participation in work packages and working groups where they have specific expertise. The management board is chaired by Hannah Whaley who's assistant director of the library at the University of Dundee and vice chair is Dominic Tate who's head of research at the University of Edinburgh library. On the first match we were also delighted to welcome our first full-time paid member of staff via Dominic Walker who's joined us for two years on secondment from the University of Glasgow and as June mentioned as well I've taken on the role of project manager and I'm responsible for the central coordination of efforts across that group and I think after today I will not be responsible for the creation of slides for the group. So moving on to how we've gone about this, as I've said our approach is very much dependent on contributions from our members or from our network so we're using the skills and expertise that already exist across the Scurril network to drive the project. So that's partly borne out of necessity since there isn't really an obvious route to support unless I've missed lots of funding opportunities flying around out there and that certainly didn't seem to be an option for us but this as well as being borne out of necessity there is an opportunity here there is a benefit to this and that because of the way we're working it mitigates the risk so no partner is contributing too much in terms of either resource or in terms of investing money so it means that we we kind of are able just to experiment more freely but also allows us to keep things small and simple while having the option to scale up over time. Crucially as I've already mentioned if we're keeping the activity within the network it gives us that freedom to scope out this kind of big question about what the actual costs are and what's reasonable cost for digital publishing so it gives us a real opportunity to understand that and to have control over some of those overheads. In terms of funding at the moment we have a two-year commitment from those participating institutions to contribute to the running costs we've tried to keep that as low as possible so that means dedicated staff and hosting the platform. The way we have managed this is that the governing body of scurril the business committee has set three bans and three contribution levels which are linked to the size of the institution. Participants are aware though that the overall journey towards establishing the press and getting the full setup is likely to be a five to ten-year project but we've been clear that member contributions are anticipated for at least them the first five years of that. After that point we'd hope to be in a position where the operating costs can be generated through the press activity rather from this standalone contribution. So we're doing that's a real focus right now we're doing a lot of work to scope out the financial model so that that's all in place and out there for discussion before the launch which will be towards the end of the year in autumn and as I've said that whole process is supported through discussion and negotiation with our management board. At the moment we have moved on to forming an editorial board so we put the call out for that very recently and that editorial board will be formed primarily of academic colleagues. We've actually been kind of blown away by the response to that call actually we kind of put it out there and you know as with any of these things you're never quite sure what will come back and I've been saying to colleagues that I had visions of the nanny recruitment scene from Mary Poppins where the housekeeper opens the door and there's like just one person there so I had kind of notions of that and horror visions of no support but it's been the exact opposite actually so we've had such a positive response that we're going to move towards a more structured recruitment process for our editorial board. In terms of how that board will be composed we're looking to have a good coverage of disciplines it will in the first case be a single editorial board covered in all submissions and we're conscious that as time goes on that might be a decision we need to revisit and include more specific boards but for now it'll be a single board looking to cover all disciplines and also looking for input from different types of institutions just so that all of our members are represented looking as well to have good geographical coverage. We've also discussed having a mechanism for supporting early career researchers to be involved in that and are quite interested in maybe mentoring to support that as well as you know being mindful of overall diversity within the group so really for us at the moment it's about getting that balance right it's about making sure the composition is right rather than setting an arbitrary number for members while being conscious that we still need to keep that realistic so as not to become basically an unruly bunch. Okay so as I said before this is the new platform is due for launch in autumn so we're looking at a very busy few months ahead on this slide there are some of the big kind of key milestones but within that there are several other work packages going on I've already mentioned the scoping of the financial model has been one of those and we're also looking at laying the ground work for the platform at the moment obviously that's not just going to materialise over the summer we're starting to scope that out at the moment and one of the big pieces of work we've just completed is to develop a comms strategy so we're conscious that we are a big group 18 institutions with various you know stakeholder groups coming off with their you know different information needs so we'll set out a communication strategy which hopes to you know support clear and consistent messaging throughout the project life and across all interested parties related to that we've been undertaking a partnership mapping activity to make sure that we connect up with all of the you know amazing work that's already going on around open access so because of our kind of our collaborative structure we've been working really closely with White Rose Press and really grateful for all the input from them I have to say as well that the JISC New University's publishing toolkit was a very timely resource which we've made very good use of so that's that really concludes where our plans have got to where we're at at the moment and the key kind of features of where we're at and I'm very happy to really look forward to taking part in discussions now and I'm really looking forward to those slides and stop moving by themselves brilliant thank you Julian thank you brilliant well done naughty slides um that was so thorough I certainly answered every single question I had about the initiative but I will remind everyone that to to please um Mel just put that in the chat please do share thoughts or questions in the chat and join the discussion later by by raising your hand but thank you Julian thank you um that was really thorough thank you okay so we now move on to our second speaker who is Rebecca Wojtorska um she's the open access publishing officer at the University of Edinburgh um in the scholarly communications team she's responsible for managing Edinburgh Diamond which is an open access hosting service which offers an alternative publishing solution for staff and students who wish to publish their own books and journals so Rebecca hi hi I will just share my screen and hopefully it will that's it I can see it coming up thank you lovely thank you um yep hi everyone I'm Rebecca Wojtorska um based on the scholarly communications team at the University of Edinburgh and I'm the open access publishing officer so um what I am going to go through for you today is information about our open access hosting service so I'm going to start by giving a little bit of background to the service I'm going to let you know about our brand new book hosting service which I'm very excited about um I'm going to give some details about our recent rebrand and share our plans for the future as well so just a little bit of background to start with um we did launch a journal hosting service in 2009 and we used open journal systems or OJS for those of you that don't know OJS is open source software from the public knowledge project or PKP there's a lot of acronyms I apologise in advance um we still do use OJS and we have a lot of in-house knowledge about this system uh we are a hosting service we're not a publisher and as such we have no responsibility for peer review or production etc that is all on the editorial teams instead uh we focus on empowering and equipping academics and students with everything they need to run successful journals and launch successful books so we focus mainly on hosting technical support and providing publishing expertise so the service is free of charge to staff and students of the University of Edinburgh but we do actually provide a shared service to other Scottish institutions through Scurll for a very small fee and that only serves to cover the costs so we don't actually make any profit from that and all money is fed straight back into the service we do have a service board and that is comprised of academics, students, journal editors, librarians and a representative from Edinburgh University Press as well in terms of staffing we have one full-time member of staff and that is myself and we also get one day a week of tech support so now on to the book hosting service itself so the service was very much led by academic demand we did have academics publishing books and content on you know sites like WordPress etc and they're not fully integrated with publishing workflows or existing metadata systems so we really wanted something that could ensure this amazing research just didn't fall through the cracks and instead was hosted somewhere that could be integrated with you know Crossref the directory of open access books etc and we also saw launching the book hosting service as another step in the university's commitment to investing in open access research in general and of course there is a rising cost of e-textbooks and we really like the idea as well that academics can tailor textbooks to their own courses and at no cost to the students and also research is becoming increasingly more online based so we're kind of accommodating that but it is worth noting of course that print does still have a lot of value especially in areas that have digital poverty issues so as we use RJS to host our journals we did look around but we did very quickly decide to use open monograph press or ONP which is also open source software from PKP so this basically meant that we could ensure that our branding was consistent between the two platforms and that any users of RJS would intuitively be able to use and navigate ONP. We had also installed ONP for an external partner in the past so we were vaguely familiar with it anyway. We created the framework using the existing one that we have in place for our journals so pulling together all that guidance was actually relatively easy for us so what does the service actually offer? We are for all of the following free of charge so use of the book hosting platform as well as ongoing technical support, preservation of content and upgrades. We offer training, documentation, advice and policies all to ensure books are in line with industry standards. We also offer the initial setup of pretty much everything with some limited customization. We dish out ISBNs these are as I'm sure you know quite expensive to purchase individually so we just get them in book from Nielsen. We also deal with chapter DOIs cross ref submissions and metadata delivery. We provide indexing support including finding and submitting to all the relevant databases and I think since 2020 we've increased discoverability through indexing by 1118% so we've made a lot of effort in that area recently. Finally we provide annual reports that help measure the book success but yeah basically we just do all the background publishing stuff that no one really likes to think about but which is crucial to dissemination and discoverability and it is what we were already offering the journals but you know ISBNs instead of ISBNs so we just kind of tweaked it the offering a little bit to match the books a bit more. So everything is fully diamond open access we use creative commons licences and we don't ask the book process and charges so we're keeping it open both ways. You don't pay to be published and you don't pay to access the content and this accessibility of diamond open access is a core component of inclusive publishing for us. So I've just included some pictures of two books one that we launched with and one that is in the work so anatomy is an illustrated textbook guide to the art of anatomy for medical students I love a good pun so I like that title. The students actually illustrated anatomy on real human bodies as you can see in the pictures so it's actually pretty cool and it's quite a unique book and then the book that we launched with is fundamentals and music theory and that's a collaborative e-textbook project by staff and students of both the reed school of music and the university's open educational resource service so yeah it's a fantastic book and I'm hoping this just gives an idea of the kind of books that we're going to be hosting different subject areas different types of books and we do have some more in the pipeline as well. I also mentioned that we recently rebranded we thought it would make sense to bring our service offerings under one name and that just helps with promotion and it also saves me from having to say journal hosting service and book hosting service all the time so welcome to Edinburgh Diamond you can see our new branding here including the logo and the website banners all in the university colours and we will be using the university logos on all materials as well as our new unlocked diamond logo and we chose the name Edinburgh Diamond literally because it does what it says on the tin it promotes diamond open access it promotes transparency and promotes high quality it's also what differentiates us from Edinburgh University Press as well so we launched both the book hosting service and the rebrand at the same time and that was during open access week last year so I thought I'd discuss the roadblocks of launching the new service in a little bit of detail so firstly our timeline was much longer than anticipated as we hadn't expected so many technological setbacks that were outside of our control you are of course reliant on many other teams who are all mega mega busy another core read book to ever come was and is incentivising academics to use a hosting service instead of a traditional publisher it's not something we've really struggled with to be honest but we are transparent about the pros and cons of each and we find that our job isn't so much to convince people that our route is the best but more to provide a brilliant service that would really benefit those who need it and of course we have the same issue with battling all perceptions of open access content as somehow lower quality and we combat that through implementing industry standard policies including publication ethics guided by Cope and peer review policies among other things and we also aim to get our journals and books indexed in prestigious databases you know such as the DOAJ the DOAB as well as scopus on the web of science just to name a few promoting the service was slightly easier than it could have been purely because we had the same networks in place because of the journals so i emailed journal editors just to see if they had any projects i've been liaising with academic support librarians who are still in the process of recommending the service to their contacts at the relevant schools and indeed we have already got one book from from these connections the scholarly communication team already offers ISVNs to academics so we realise that was an opportunity to promote the service to requesters so just in case they need a hosting solution we've had some interest that way as well which has been great we have a new set of web pages and they reflect the service in the new brand and we try to link to it from any university web pages that have anything to do with open access open research or publishing um and finally we use and will continue to use the old fashioned word of mouth so i shout about it to everyone i meet and talk about it in pretty much every presentation including this one so um i just thought i'd include a little bit of feedback from the the book service users um i just wanted to ask them why they chose our service and what they thought of the system so i won't read them all out because um limited time and everything but comments ranged from thinking the service would be convenient and valuable to respecting the university step and i now commitment to open access and making the world a better place so um i love that comment personally don't we all want to make the world a better place um so one user noted the service felt timely in the face of rising book costs and the pandemic and they also said the service will benefit the university by reducing textbook costs benefit staff by providing access to easily customizable open textbooks and benefit students by providing a free high quality digital learning materials um finally a user commented that downside is having to generate all the different formats manually such as pdf html e pub etc we don't offer that as part of our service at the moment not for books or journals just because of a limited resource so um that is a fair comment so i wanted to look to the future quickly um we will continue to develop service strategies and policies just to ensure we're always compliant with industry standards as well as funding legislation um we aim to promote and grow the service and more people are aware of the research they can access freely or the service that they can benefit from i did mention indexing so we'll be working on that and we'll be seeking further opportunities for involvement in teaching and learning so that the service as it grows becomes tailored to academic and student requirements um and finally we will we will just be gathering more feedback again to grow the service according to user need so by way of concluding i would say that omp is integrative and particularly useful if you use rjs already uh don't feel the need to launch with a huge portfolio just one or two key titles will be enough to draw people in be clear about your mission and strategy like why you launch in the service who will benefit uh this is obviously important because running such a service requires funding obviously and you need to be able to demonstrate its importance to staff and students talk to your fellow librarians academics researchers and students again this is to ensure that you're not being overly prescriptive with your service um and instead you're ensuring that it is molded by requirements and demands um i would also say you're going to need people with publishing and tech expertise working on the service as journal and book editors often require guidance when it comes to things like publication ethics publishing best practice indexing workflow management just to name a few um the tech expertise is given considering your service will require someone to develop and maintain an omp installation the server upgrades all things like that um this is in my opinion what's needed to make a service like this a success just to ensure that your users are really fully supported and then that in turn um incentivises them to stick with diamond open access so finally plan way way way way way way in advance setting up a new service takes time and there will likely be technological setbacks so it actually took us well over a year just to get everything as we wanted it before um before launching the service so um yeah just remember it's better to launch with a finalised high quality product than to rush something out um although that applies to everything in life i think so thank you very much for listening and if anyone has any questions just let me know and do followers at edin diamond thank you rebecca that was brilliant equally just get on with it but underpinned by really good strategy um um planning thank you thank you so much um okay so we will take questions at the end as i've already said um but we're now going to move on to our third presentation uh this is from Suzanne and Bethany University of Sussex Bethany Logan is the research scholarship librarian at the University of Sussex managing a new project to build an institutional open publishing service um Suzanne Tatham is an associate director at the university leading on library strategy for open research Suzanne and Beth so i'm going to share my screen can you see that Jane all good yeah all good thanks there so i'm going to kick off and then Beth's going to um take over halfway through um so just a few thoughts really about the approach that we're taking at Sussex i think as you know the previous speakers have highlighted um libraries have got an important role to play in helping to shift institutional culture around open publishing and i feel like there are lots of things that we have to do around open publication which are about compliance but actually where we really want to focus our energies is in looking for ways to develop the infrastructure for open publication um at Sussex we don't have institutional structures in place such as a university press and we're not a large university um but we're developing an approach which we hope will be successful and sustainable so we're experimenting at the moment um and we feel that this is giving us an opportunity to build knowledge and develop an evidence base to hopefully leverage institutional support but also enthusiasm for this and we've already supported some institutional open publications such as this book by the active learning network using the ffocrin platform and also a Sussex humanities lab publication and these have been very helpful for us in terms of developing our knowledge and our experience um so in the absence of a university mandate and for us to develop a service um we've sought strategic level buy-in from the university's education committee and we've also engaged with the university's leads for education and scholarship career pathways and we feel that supporting um open scholarship aligns well with the university's aims to raise the profile of academics on these career pathways and strategically this approach also fits with our longer term aim to redirect budget away from pay to access to pay to publish and we're starting to look at our acquisition budget in a different way so actively looking for ways to support open infrastructure beyond journals and transformative agreements to all types of research and scholarship outputs so we're making an investment here but we can see potential benefits I feel like the the long-term health of open publishing ecosystem relies on diversification and as libraries as well as supporting alternative models we can help to broaden the landscape and the conversation and also that open has just as much value for education students as it does for research so there are definitely reputational benefits to be gained for institutional publishing for the individual and the institution in terms of potential reach citations potential impact and also recognition from text of adoption by other universities there's also the issue of value and suitability feel that current models and for access to content are not flexible enough and tend not to offer good value for money and at the extreme end of this we find ourselves buying back Sussex generated content year on year so inspired by NUI Galway's libraries open press we set about lining up the requisite parts and players at Sussex and this includes a subscription to the press books publishing platform we gave ourselves a year to develop our open publishing capability to identify structural requirements and explore the library's role within the publication process our intention from the start has been to build internal capacity and capability to harness existing expertise and to expand skill sets we work closely with an academic in the school of psychology to capture requirements and we've established a project team within the library we've also secured the services of a scientific illustrator and have sought commitment from both internal and external authors for chapter contributions and editing and reviewing work we're aware that our approach carries risk and obviously we're aiming for success but from the outset we've acknowledged that the project may fail but that what we learn from the experience will have value it's been an opportunity for us to explore a different type of e-text publication so rather than publishing a finished project a finished product we'll build it incrementally adding new sections each year i'm going to hand over to Bethnau some more detail about that. So thank you Suzanne, so I'm going to talk about some of the practical aspects of this project and for this pilot we also drew on discs new university press toolkit it was enormously helpful as our starting point and particularly the sections around production as this is where our skills really needed the most development so we took that toolkit and really adapted it for our own context building in flexibility as we went along. One thing that was particularly interesting the university's contract team were not keen on the idea of issuing contracts to aesthetics authors because they already have a contract with the university but they did suggest that we asked our external authors to sign contracts and immediately this kind of uneven approach just didn't feel in keeping with the ethos of the project so instead of going down that route we just decided to be really kind of sparing with our plans and our schedules to talk to our authors about their commitments and the potential benefits of the projects we work from the start. We worked really closely with our colleague Catherine Hall in psychology so it was her initial idea to create this book and so in her role she retains academic oversight and editorial control of the content while the project team in the library picks up the administrative and the organisational burden and really quickly it became clear that there was a bit of a blurry line between these two roles so for example making decisions around including pedagogical devices so learning objectives at chapter level or boxes that spotlight community terminology that sort of fits somewhere between academic oversight and production admin and it really wasn't something that I'd thought about right at the start of the project so we needed to develop a style guide in collaboration with our academics. Working with an illustrator is also something that's new to us in the library but our authors did have experiences to draw on and often this was where they had experiences working with slightly better resource publishers so expectations were a little bit different and at the moment we're in the process of finalising the illustration requirements from our authors and I can see this from what's been submitted I know we're going to have to be really careful in balancing expectations while also ensuring we get a really high quality product that has consistent design throughout. In contrast our authors' experiences of peer review processes have been enormously enlightening and they're really keen to help us develop an approach that gives early career researchers opportunities and this is really important to honour the review contributions of these colleagues. Also at the moment we are looking at a spring term publication date with a view that this title will be used in psychology teaching for first and second years straight away. So is it working? There have been a number of challenges along the way but each of them has also been an opportunity to reflect on what it is we're actually trying to do. That has been a lot of learning on the job there are things that we were really confident about you know our existing librarian knowledge of copyright and licensing metadata delivery but actually we find ourselves spending more and more time on testing the press book functionality and things like organising graphs and tables we weren't really expecting to need to do that but it was of course important. Some delays from our authors to changes to the illustration requirements have also been a bit of a challenge and this has meant that our project plan has already been revised a fair bit so it is extremely agile but on the one hand well we do have some slightly unresponsive authors to contend with but also finding that word is spreading within a set of community. Researchers from other disciplines are approaching us to talk about additional projects that they've got going on and I think this is it's really exciting and it's testament to the value of the pilot and I think to the good relationship that we have with our academic community but it's also a challenge helping researchers with what we love to do but we haven't been able to say yes to all of these projects partly because of resources but also because our experimental approach isn't going to be the right fit for everyone just yet. So what we haven't had the chance to get into some of the practical details around peer review just yet having the chance to take a good look at the process has been really interesting and we're looking at exploring how we can engage with students with this which is something that I'm really excited about we're particularly keen to get that input around additional features such as quizzes and kind of interactive elements to the textbook and lastly yes the timetable is certainly ambitious and some days we feel more confident about it than others but the iterative process really gives us flexibility so our chapters are ranked in order of priority based on when they're going to be needed in the term for teaching so this is really beneficial for authors because it means that they don't feel that we're constantly bombarding them with nudges about submission dates it also helps the project team that we can stop up the workload into into different chunks. So thinking about what's next for us and actually just hearing from the others on the panel has already got all of the cogs going but this is a really exciting time for us we do have a few different projects on the horizon and it's really hard to resist these opportunities but we definitely need to learn to walk before we can dance so in addition to our psychology book we are working with authors from the Active Learning Network which is a cross-institutional collection of researchers as Suzanne said we've published some of our titles before on the Falkham platform they're moving these over from Falkham to Pressbook so it was a nice opportunity to do a bit of stress testing and at the moment there is finalising a project called 100 Ideas in Active Learning and for this project we're taking a very different approach so instead of us managing all of the administrative side of it we're giving them direct access to the platform which is going to be much less hands-on for us so it's a different kind of experiment with all sorts of different challenges and they are hoping to publish that in April which is very soon I just realised. As these projects come to an end one thing we're really keen to do is to examine our processes so Suzanne said at the start we know that things may go wrong failing but failing fast has really huge value as we will learn so much and so whether we succeed or fail or most likely something in between I think our evaluation is going to be coupled with author consultation and a bit of journey mapping we can go on to form the basis of a service design if or when we look to scale up and establish our library press in whatever form that may be. Thank you. Thank you Beth. That was really that was great and I love I love the idea of learning on the job developing our staff and our existing staff to work in these new areas I think we all know that this you know recruitment is difficult at the moment and actually developing working with our staff to learn these new skills is great. Thank you, thank you both. Okay so we're now moving on to questions so if everyone would like to turn their cameras on okay I know there's a question here there's a question in chat from Stuart Dempster which I think is for Jillian rather than Rebecca so and it's a question that was on that I've I had thought about which is about non-scale universities being able to utilise the service in the future I think we're all a little bit jealous of Scotland and and wealth but the fact that you can work together in so many diverse institutions can work together so yeah are you able to answer that Jillian have you even thought about it? So we have already been asked about that and have thought about that I think at the moment we feel like 18 institutions is like a big enough task so we are focused on making it work for those girl member institutions at the moment and I would think that you know just given what we've got planned over the next five years or so that that would be enough of a task but beyond that we're certainly open to expanding further so we've not set any limits we'd love to be able to do that but have to be realistic about what we can successfully deliver within the resources we have at the moment. Have you so just a follow-up question for me have you had any discussions about this girl and I wonder how that fits and interacts with the individual initiatives that are going on within the universities? Yeah so we have had a lot of discussion around that particularly obviously because one of our key delivery partner is Edinburgh University and obviously Edinburgh University Press is very active as well so we've got kind of dialogue going but I think what we're trying to achieve is different we're working in very different ways so there's we would see those things as existing as part of the bigger ecosystem and that there's scope for both the existing and distinct needs. Okay thank you I wonder if I could persuade Kate Price to come in and ask her question on the round table but in the meantime Suzanne and Beth, why did we move from ffocrum to press books? Have you got an answer to that? We might have a slightly different answer actually. Do you want to go first Suzanne then? So mine's about money that'll be more interesting. So with focrum you've got a cost for publication with press books obviously we've taken out a subscription but we can do any number of applications within that obviously factoring in staff resource which does cost something and academic time which so there are costs but it's not there's not an APC basically but Beth you'll have more interest in that. Our mindsets about DOIs well at the point at which we did it we weren't it was such a lovely platform to use focrum it was really easy we couldn't get capital level DOIs and I think the amount of importance that we put in that when we talked to researchers about being able to share their work it made it really difficult when they're like okay so where are our DOIs and then I believe it's in their roadmap but it hasn't come to light yet so. Okay thank you thanks Beth and thank you Kate. Do you want to ask your question? Thank you for that Jay. I'm sorry I think you've already started actually just articulating some of this but I'm quite interested to know about the relationship between Edinburgh Diamond and Edinburgh University Press and how the the levels of staffing maybe communicate how you've kind of strategically placed those two different areas and also how that works in the academics minds as well. Yeah of course so the remits of the two kind of services are very different Edinburgh University Press I actually used to work there before I moved over to the library. Edinburgh University Press are a traditional publisher and they support well anyone could submit to EUP and go through their rigorous you know peer review process. Edinburgh Diamond was set up very much to support the staff and students of Edinburgh University and also we don't have kind of rigorous peer review if you want us to host your content we'll just do a quick check make sure it's not you know offensive or contravene any characteristics protected by law but you know other than that you know we will support all academics and all students regardless of the subject matter. It also means that we might catch things that might not be commercially viable they might not be profitable and therefore might not be taken on by either commercial publishers or other presses so the remits and target audiences I think or target users of each are very different and as I mentioned we do have a representative of EUP on the board so we do we like to think we work closely with them just so that they're always aware of our activities and they do a lot of open access stuff as well but the reason we rebranded to Edinburgh Diamond was because Diamond is what sets us out as different that is one thing we offer that that EUP don't well that's the other thing we offer so um yeah I hope that clarifies it a little bit for you. Thank you Rebekah and thank you Kate and there's a load of good questions coming in as I'm going to remind you raise your hand so we'll bring you in. Okay Janet or Coq great question any thoughts on how you might include and reach out to early career researchers and support them with their first monograph publication so um any of you want to answer that Gillian Rebekah Beth Susanne? Yeah I can start off on that so we've through the editorial board already started thinking about how we might include early careers researchers there and you know that kind of part of an ongoing process to make sure that that they're involved but in terms of how we would look at publishing so at the moment we're still scoping out our model but we have had discussions about whether we would make opportunities to encourage particular publications from particular groups to come through so we're really just at too early a stage to have anything solid on that but it is forming part of our thoughts and discussions through the management board. Rebekah? Yeah so I do a little bit of outreach um the University of Edinburgh we have a library bite size sessions where students early career researchers can come along and find out about a topic so I present on kind of publishing your first journal article or kind of how to work on a monograph mining your thesis basically um so we do a little bit of outreach we are still in the early stages of promoting our book service so um maybe Gillian and I can put our heads together and come up with a few strategies for that but um but yeah at the minute it's just a little bit of outreach. Beth Susanne? I was just going to come in I think this is a little bit broader than the early career researcher but it was what I referred to earlier in terms of um at the University of Sussex we've got this education and scholarship pathway so it's for academics who are focused on teaching but they have a scholarship part of what they do as well so for us it's particularly keen to reach out to that group um at the moment because like I said I think um you know producing you know textbooks or other types of materials that teaching but on an open platform is a really it's really supportive of the work that they're trying to do with the scholarship part of their career pathway so that's the that's that particular group of people who were who were reaching out at the moment because we see a lot of value there for them. I was just going to add that I think it's been really interesting in the last few years the number of ECRs that are coming because I'm talking about open access monograph publication and it's been a real shift and I alluded in my presentation I alluded to not being able to take on all presentations of all project rather and we have been approached by a couple of ECRs which is brilliant but I'm not to say anything bad about our pilot project but for some people if that's going to be your first monograph um our service isn't quite going to do um it's justice for some people at the moment so I have turned a few people away because of that and then pointed them towards you know there are so many great other open access publishers out there as well so it's not just that we want to grab everybody that we have at Sussex and pull them into our service it's also about making sure that ECRs know about the border landscape as well. Yeah of course um sort of a clarification from Stuart Dempsey Rebecca you may have seen this um so uh did you say that Diamond offered a service to skill members for a modest fee and if they do might this be extended to non-skill members in the future? Yes so we do actually currently have an external partners programme that runs alongside the skill one um skill partners do get a 20% discount on the fee I think it's around because we're very transparent about everything it's around 1600 for external partners per year and that includes um onboarding migrations kind of setting everything up and ongoing support we have one external partner at the minute and that is the um journal of European health libraries I do believe um so what we do ask if people would like to chat to us about becoming an external partner um we do ask for journals that are themed some way to libraries or open access or Scotland just because with our resource staffing and otherwise being quite low at the minute we we can't take on too much um we are hoping to grow in the future but for now those are the kind of prerequisites we have for our external partners programme. Okay and Rebecca while I've got you go I was going to ask you a question about branding um so so uh did you it's a challenge to brand and and can take a lot of resources how did you go about it did you use your did you have support from the institution to create that brand? So we had support um to go ahead with the rebrand and launch it um I actually designed the logo myself I did it on Photoshop because we all know budgets are tight so yeah and um my colleague came up with the name so together we we kind of rebranded it ourselves but we had the go ahead from senior management on that yeah yeah good thank you um okay so the metadata question um managing identities from Jane Kelly uh managing identifying metadata for ebook publications on smaller OA platforms is a it's a challenge um as we all know how are panellists dealing with providing mark records for their OA books shall I start with you Jillian? Yeah so again we're not at that we're not at the stage yet where we're approaching that practically but that'll actually be something that is provided through our our partners in Edinburgh so it's maybe better to move on Rebecca on that one Rebecca yeah so this is something that we're starting to encounter now but we're starting to get books um OMP is great but it isn't actually currently it doesn't have metadata exports for anything other than onyx and I think it's onyx 3.0 so we can't actually export metadata in the formats that we would like at the moment such as crossref mark and and otherwise so we are looking at um there's an open open source program called Thoth that we're currently looking at where you input your book metadata and then you can export it in lots of different formats so um yeah that's kind of where we're at at the minute where we're trying to find a solution to so I don't have an answer at the moment I'm afraid Beth? We're even earlier in the process so um it's it's a note on a spreadsheet um we've had some conversations about it um I think we'll definitely be reaching out to the the the list community when we advertised um this part where so we have a part-time project post working on this and advertised it on Twitter there was so much response from the community and lots of people getting in touch to say if you need a hand with metadata come and talk to us about this and so um I will be taking advantage of those generous offers Do you feel a community of practice coming up? Look James has joined us I took the hint, Melanie. Get on the screen and ask your question. It's a fairly straightforward question as interested Rebecca I think you said yeah you kind of developed a polished product and then put it out there in the Sussex approach was an agile you know get it out there and keep iterating and I was just interested as to why you both chose your respective approaches and you know what's worked and what hasn't about the different ways of going about it because I think certainly from my sense the the Edinburgh approach is the more traditional library one and agile is is a newer thing for libraries Rebecca? Yeah so I think this partially comes because obviously I kind of manage the service and then I get support um I'm a bit of a perfectionist so it's probably a personality thing but one thing I did like about it is that I could get everything in place before launching such as policies and so and guidance and inclusion criteria so that when I start getting um you know queries I have the answers um which is good um as I did say in my presentation though I did leave some things because I want it to be molded by user need and that's probably one better thing about the agile method compared to mine and I was going to say something else and it has completely oh the other thing of course is I needed at least one book to launch with I didn't I didn't want to launch with with no books at all so but I also didn't want to keep delaying it as well so that's how that's how the time in worked out for us anyway. Suzanne? Yeah so a couple of thoughts um I think one is it's it it um the approach that we've taken suits the way that we work so that was interesting what you were saying Rebecca about maybe how you direct things according to what suits your personality so I think we've definitely we've definitely done that for better or worse but also working with the um the psychology academic they were really keen to have a publication which could easily be added to and revised and new sections put in year on year so I suppose it's much more um it's much more the sort of OER approach I suppose rather than that you know launch of a final product I mean what we're intending is that at the end of the year there will be something which looks like an online book but with a view to adding a whole extra chapter which I suppose traditionally might have been like volume one volume two but it it would just be adding to that removing things changing things so that they have a resource that they can work with in their in their teaching so I think it suits that approach but it might be for future publications we will we will take a different approach because that won't always be needed. Okay um thank you James. Nikki? Just remembering to unmute yeah nice to see you yeah so um I was just wondering um because Rebecca was talking about inclusion criteria are there any types of books that are out of scope for any of your initiatives and what made me think of this is I come from a very traditional STEM background um and when I first got involved in REF I was really surprised to see that people could submit creative writing as a research output so did have you factored this into your planning at all or has anyone asked if they could they could publish fiction? Shall we start with Gillian? Thank you Nikki. Hi Nikki thanks for that um no we've not had requests about fiction specifically but we're kind of conscious that obviously one of the things that we've got on the Scurril network is a really diverse range of institutions so we've had a lot of questions from the Glasgow School Art in particular about what we can support in terms of non-traditional types of monograph and we have scoped that out and are really committed to producing anything that that's possible I think where we might run into issues around if we're offering a print on demand option and things like that so we're scoping all that but our intention is absolutely to be able to publish as widely as we possibly can according to the needs of participating institutions. Thank you Gillian Rebecca. Yeah so we're not putting any kind of limitations on that so one of the first journals we launched is a community journal that isn't peer reviewed or anything they don't desire to be indexed and they publish poetry among other things so we do already host that content and the next book we'll be publishing hopefully this or next week is called Food Without a Cooker and it's a cookbook for people to be able to actually well make food without having to use a cooker and it's for people who perhaps homeless or don't have the means or access to to certain kitchen appliances so yeah we're going to be very open to see what's coming in and we do want to use it to you know publish things that are of social value as well as academic value so that's very much our position on it. Thanks Rebecca. I was going to say I think for us we'll need to see where we're at at the end of this pilot when we're looking at developing a service as Suzanne said we're looking at supporting peaking materials kind of primarily and so haven't had yeah haven't been asked about poetry or creative writing but we have had queries about case studies for the business school which is really exciting and if we can get it in there that's a whole world of very expensive textbooks that we'd love to replace and also some interesting kind of new approaches to publishing through teaching whereby maybe the students are actively engaging with the platform and then they're publishing the work to be examined in the form of a monograph a collaborative monograph so that would be very exciting but that's you know post pilot. Thanks Beth. Thanks Nicky. That picks up on there's a comment there actually from Stuart Dempsey about business and flipping the more expensive textbooks. I wonder if whilst we're on textbooks I wonder if I can ask a question that's on there from Keira McCaffrey which is around has the panellists this is about textbooks really so for those of you doing monographs have anyone encountered concerns from academics around loss of royalties from traditional textbook publishing? Suzanne I wonder if we could go to you. I think so far I suppose in some ways for obvious reasons the people who have approached us are the people for whom that isn't an issue but I know from conversations that we've had with some of our directors for teaching and learning particularly some who have I suppose unusual academics and that they have money making textbooks that's quite a different question for them and I think the chance is probably for them to switch to an institutional platform they're less like to do that but they're a tiny minority really of academics certainly at Sussex I think that for you know most academics don't feel textbooks are money making for them and are therefore quite interested in the approach that we're taking. Thanks Suzanne anybody else want to come in on that? Yeah I just wanted to well yeah agree because I think royalties are so low because the print runs are so low for textbooks and well mainly monographs but yeah I think a lot of academics as far as I'm aware do tend to donate them back to the like for example to university presses anyway so I've not heard anything from that but in terms of journals it's definitely more of an issue I think because obviously journal royalties would usually go towards copy editing costs and things like that and because our service doesn't provide that and it's diamond open access that's definitely a gap that a lot of the journal editors do notice so they have to look at funding from colleges and schools so it's more admin in that sense so I don't so much have a point as like isn't it just an observation of what I've been approached about yeah. Okay thanks Rebecca I've got a question here for you from Massoud are there any plans concerns about sustainability of Edinburgh Diamond based on potential exponential growth? Yeah so the university recently invested in Edinburgh Diamond by bringing on a full-time member of staff who was my predecessor who is now me obviously and there is a commitment to investing in open access and I think as long as the service is valuable and well used and we can demonstrate that then I wouldn't worry about the sustainability but maybe growth I think you're right that could be an area where we might struggle we might at one point have to put a cap on the amount of books or the amount of journals we can host unless we can get more staffing and resource so I think it'll be a situation where we're just keeping an eye on it and ensuring we're not overburdening ourselves and growing at a rate that's sustainable. Thanks Rebecca I can't see any more there are there's lots of there's lots of chats in the chat I can't see any more questions if anyone feels that I've missed their question could you pop it in again I have got a final one from me which is about RLUK really so we're all talking about either creating our own infrastructure using open source or other infrastructure I just wondered if if there's anything you think RLUK could do to help or funders could do to help with this because we're all plarring our own little furrows and that's great because we need to turn that dial but is there anything you think RLUK could do to help I'll give you time to give it a bit of thought anybody wants to come in Rebecca. I wonder if some kind of like library publishing working group or something might be useful because even just this panel I've learned so much about these other initiatives and it's making me think oh what can I apply to mine and I love conferences like this for that reason so maybe something that focuses on library publishing that RLUK could facilitate I think that would be useful. Thank you Rebecca anybody else Chazelle? Yeah this is going to sound like I'm volunteering to do lots of work I think post studies are really helpful they don't have to be long ones but I just think like you say sometimes you have to wait for some a conference like this to hear about some of the really interesting stuff that's happening and sometimes I feel that again it's that thing about us not wanting to share something until we've got like a perfect and finished result and actually I think case studies where you're can sharing things that maybe we're just starting on or that you're in the middle of are really useful and I think particularly for some institutions that maybe are a bit smaller or perhaps a bit less research intensive who's sort of a really sort of feeling their way with this I think seeing what other people are doing and maybe seeing what other similar institutions are doing is quite helpful for than thinking about actually is that something that given the staffing and the resource that we've got that we could do as well so I think case studies but that aren't like big polish things that are almost just like something a little bit more blog post work in progress yeah okay anything Beth Gilliam? Yeah no I just agree with both of those and thinking the idea of a network or bringing people together and which Becca mentions a really good one and I was just thinking in terms of like that when you start out how daunting that can be and how difficult you know the the risk aversion can be to manage I think I noticed that flashing up in one of the comments that came through there this notion about you know how traditionally academic libraries are risk averse so why are we now acting and I do think like you know there's a lot of contextual stuff obviously the policy landscape is a big impetus for action but it is interesting to think about like what you need to let go of in order to do something like this so Bethan I think you had mentioned about how you define failure in the notion or threat of that and how you work within that and I've been kind of consumed with thoughts about that throughout the course of developing this project because conscious that when you've got you know 18 partners there and you really don't want it to go awry at all but I think it's that there needs to be a kind of awareness that you know none of these projects are are purporting to solve everything or be you know that the final solution that makes academic publishing easy straightforward cost effective and you know everybody skips around joyously because of it like we can't do that with one single project but we can iterate and move towards a more favourable environment by all working together and maybe releasing some of that notion of like seeing anything different to exactly what you set out to achieve is failure just be embrace that as something that's got things moved on so that's maybe turned into more of a a journey into my psyche than it needed to be but I think like that the point going back to the original point which is around how a network could support that because sometimes just knowing you know that you've got a sounding board and that you've got other people that you can rely on can be really effective in moving things forward and giving that degree of confidence. Yeah yeah well Michael Williams who asked that original question about risk taking risks says it's not really about OA but about institutions themselves we are our institutions are risk averse and I think well certainly what we've learned at Sussex it's about a a level that you take it to within that's what is within your gift and then you can use that to evidence taking more of a risk but we've certainly seen a change I don't know if that's the same for everybody else and Graham Stone Susanne says he'd love to add case studies to JISC's new university press toolkit so there is that which I'm sure you're all aware of there's lots of support for networks a a question from from Francesca Francesca Daltis sorry if I said that wrong this is how this is about quality actually so how can you expand on how you engage academics and in particular peer reviewers quality publications is given by the quality of the reviewers how do you guarantee quality which is a perennial open access challenge isn't a challenge to open access anybody want to answer that one I'm super keen to hear what William has to say because this is again we're right at the start of this and it's been really exciting eye-opening hearing from our authors saying we've loved it when it's been like this we've hated it when it's been like this but yeah we're not really sure how to put that into a process just yet yeah um so as I mentioned we're a hosting service and not a publisher so we don't deal directly with peer review but we do try to provide guidelines and there's much support for the journal editors so that they handle peer review appropriately so we always try to encourage um well we have a publication ethic statement for peer reviewers and for editors in managing that peer review um we ask them to create peer review statements and guidelines and also just to be mindful that a lot of this work is done unpaid and just be nice to peer reviewers um so we just we just try to um provide as much support as possible but as I say we're not directly engaged in the peer review itself thanks Rebecca Julian did you want to add to that um no so I guess we're just not again we're not at the stage where we've got our peer review um process in place we are just recruiting our editorial board and I think as we've put out that call um we're kind of keen to make them see it as contributing to that that process it's not about that there will be um clear ideas imposed upon them but we would want to see that that first editorial board almost involved in a kind of start-up phase of setting that in place so that's all still up for discussion as far as we're concerned okay thank you Julian um a question from Rosie Higman uh so this is about message and probably talks to the brand stuff that that you've spoken about Rebecca um so it sounds so each initiative is offering slightly different services under the umbrella of publishing presumably alongside data and publication repositories is there a concern about this being confusing for academics how do we clarify what type of publishing service is being offered and you must have had to dealt with that deal with that Rebecca with your branding um do you want to go first yeah sure so um again this was one of the many reasons we did rebrand and give our service a name because we are based on the um I say we I am based on the scholarly communications team um who also deal with repositories and open access in general so um I think having a strong clear brand and a name is good um because that helps people differentiate it and the clearer the name is the better um and also just outreach just telling people the different options what they're for I think there is confusion um as Rosie has mentioned for academics and also for ECRs and students who are maybe starting to get to grips with it so I think just creating hubs any kind of resource um is always a good thing although I'm aware universities have so many web pages and they can be very difficult to navigate sometimes but um but yeah I just think clear branding resource hubs and outreach has been helping us with with our rebrand yeah anybody else want to come in on messaging sorry Julian do you want to go first no no on your courses Anna it was just a quick comment I just I think um I just think there's a huge variety with what academics are after and their their reasons for wanting to do an open access publication so I just think like the two examples that we drew on earlier there was we had a a researcher who just just wanted all of the hosting and all of the stuff thought it out for her she just didn't really want to have to think about it but she just needed her publication to go live so that she could do this whole other bit of work around it she was doing she just wanted all the hassle taken out of it and they're not was the other end of the scale we've got an academic who wants to absolutely be in there doing it using this um new software because they can see value for what they're doing so I just I think there's a really big spectrum when it comes to researchers in what they might go for and their reasoning behind it and we won't I don't think certainly with what we're doing we won't meet everybody's needs but I think we are just part of the we could be part of the infrastructure but I don't think we would be claiming to fulfil everybody's requirements we've got what we're doing thank you jilliam yeah I was just going to say so we've just completed a comm strategy which is quite a detailed piece of work because we're really conscious that getting the message right is key to all this I think there is already quite a lot of confusion from academics about how they meet funder requirements around open access in the first place so you don't the last thing we want to be doing is creating another layer of complexity so how we're managing that is that all of the communications are produced centrally okayed by our management board and then sent out to partner institutions to use as a template or to suit their own local context but it keeps the core messaging the same so that we're not having different notions of what we're trying to deliver spread around there so that's the approach that we'll be embedding throughout to try and try and manage those issues thanks jilliam um there's a there's a comment there from Graham Stone telling reminding us all that there's a new if you're a special interest group on library publishing with a link um a comment from Steven Fidevic from Southampton saying that there are reputational risks associated with not having formal structure policies and guidance it could be a good idea to become appealing to the risk averse sides of universities and certainly from my experience um uh uh it's it's that's a good comment uh from my experience uh the the library is a trusted service uh and trust we are trusted to deliver um and so uh yeah in that respect we are we are more appalled appealing than say IT um but every single institution as I said right at the beginning of this presentation is going to have a different flavour and a different culture um and so yeah it's going to work differently in it which is why this is really interesting um I have a question uh about discoverability of outputs um so so does anyone see a risk to discoverability of outputs in the future for those initiatives with limited time frames is that something you're building into your planning jilliam um so we've been really fortunate to have um the support from the National Library of Scotland basically saying that anything that anything that is produced will be brought into their their processes so that we've got that kind of long-term preservation security built into the project uh beyond that we that's you know that's obviously a great thing to have um but beyond that we've not um looked at any any more specifics around around that rebecca um yeah so we have started hosting more and more conference papers and we are looking into um launching a conference hosting system as well so a lot of these are just one-off um papers um they're not cereals so they don't need ISSNs or whatever but we do for all our content we have our own preservation system at Edinburgh we also have an arrangement with LOX the lots of copies keep stuff safe and we're in the process of registering our content to the pkp preservation network so we're just doing as much as possible to prevent link rot or to prevent um content from getting lost web pages just dying away never to be seen again so um it's something we very much have in mind and the more that we do host those one-off projects including some of the books and the conference proceedings um yeah the more we'll we'll ensure everything's preserved and archived appropriately thank you Rebecca Beth yes so it is a concern particularly for a pilot project so we don't necessarily know what's going to happen and it may be that we don't develop a service um on a very kind of um narrow local level the fact that we know that this is going to be for essential teaching for um a mass of cohort psychology of cohorts at 900 students so it's going to get looked at which is brilliant and if it becomes embedded in the central part of that teaching as we saw then that sort of guarantees the fit of longevity but on that local kind of level but of course that we're making sure that we have authors contributing who are um also working at um BPA accredited what's it called British Psychological Association that's it yeah accredited institutions and so hopefully then the title can get picked up there and then that then hopefully then build in some longevity for the title but yes there are bigger bigger things to be thinking about and tender preservation for us okay thank you there are still questions that we I'm afraid we'll be able to get to answer but I'm going to finish with one final one I'll give you all a chance to answer it which is about staffing um uh so from Claire Grace how could I ask how you are staffing your publishing services I know some of you've mentioned this in your presentation does staffing come from within existing capacity or are you creating planning to create new posts and there's an additional one there how important is the experience of commercial academic publishing to the excess of your endeavours um Gilliam yeah so we're kind of a mix that the vast majority really um of work so far has been sourced from across the scurril network but we just took on a publishing officer on the first march so she's um just been imposed for a couple of weeks now um we were also looking at um another role to support the the hosting of the platform so we will have a mixed model between dedicated staff but actually for you know and an initiative of that size that's probably not it's not very many paid staff so that the kind of input of the network will still be really important throughout the course of the project thanks Gilliam Rebecca um yeah so as I mentioned our service launched 10 years or so ago and it was some part of someone's role as they did their main job so it was only in the last um fourish years where they created a role specifically to grow this service or implement first and then I've come on to to grow the service so um yeah and one day a week of tech support as I said so in terms of the experience of commercial academic publishing so I was in academic publishing for almost eight years before joining the library and I would argue that I do feel um I'm going to toot my own horn I do feel I have brought a lot of value to the role with that knowledge um I've implemented publication ethic statements um annual reporting indexing um ensuring the journals really are industry standard and high quality um although a lot of work around that had already been done which gave me a great you know um starting point so I would argue it is important but I don't see why librarians couldn't learn it as well like if you look at Alps they do plenty of um workshops where you can go and learn about academic publishing and then apply that knowledge to your services so I do think maybe not experience of it but knowledge of it and um a commitment to learning about it is important um personally. Thanks Rebecca I would agree. Beth Suzanne? Beth Suzanne? So we have a fixed term part time person um and it's a lot and um it's difficult to guess what because James is down around the call and I just hope that they might be able to expand their doubts that well we can discuss that later um but it's definitely a lot and I think an agile approach for us makes it when you're thinking about um staffing resource a bit more tricky to plan in because things will change and requirements um increased um I've read Claire's question about the experience of commercial publishing complete like so are completely differently um so I'm just going to say that the academic experience of commercial publishing and increased awareness of textbook costs has probably what's got people excited about what we're doing so that experience is very helpful. Thanks Beth and Suzanne the last word. Yeah I was just going to add that um Graham Stone mentioned earlier about the new university press toolkit and again you know we were starting this without anybody in the team who had worked to the publishers or had that experience so actually that toolkit was really really helpful for us and just thinking about actually what are all the things that we need to be thinking about that so I'd recommend that to anybody who's starting out and wanting to think about what what they need to think about with this sort of project. And I will add if I may in response to what Beth said that one of the things we want to do in order to continue with staffing our publishing service is to think about what we do with our Elsevier savings so to make sure that that gets pushed into an open access infrastructure.


I have an interesting malware sample here. It's interesting because it's easy to do dynamic analysis of its memory. So look at the strings in memory, look at and do a dump. Let me show you. So this is the sample, it's an executable. I'll make a copy like this and let's execute it. You see it elevates and it has a digital signature. Now this, let me move this to the side and we get an error. My connection to server error. It's not able to connect to its CNC server. Now the interesting thing now is that this malware is actually still running so the process still exists. So we can look now at memory easily with process explorer from sysinternal. So let me run this. I also elevate it otherwise it will not be able to look into the process. So let me point to this process and here we have malware and I can look at the properties. In the properties I can go to the string tab and here you have all the strings that are found in the file which is obfuscated. But here you also have all the strings that you can find in memory. Here the strings are no longer obfuscated. So for example if I search for .ru I will find here two domains. While if I search for this in the file itself I will not find it. I find another one but I did not find the one we found in memory. You can also save the strings to disk like this. Let's put it on the desktop and then you have a file here with all the strings. This was one thing looking at the strings. You can also make a memory dump. By right clicking here you can say create mini-dump or create full-dump. Here let me also put it on the desktop like this. So now here we have a dump which we could for example analyze with the debugger or also just look for strings into it. Let me close this because there is just one more thing that I want to show you. We can do with sysinternal tools also very simple. So I click OK here, the sample terminates and it also erases itself. malware.exe is no longer present. How did this happen? Let me show you. I'm going to run Procmon from sysinternal like this. It's running here and now again I make a copy and I execute it. So it elevates, it initializes, we get an error, click OK. And after a couple of seconds the exe will disappear like this. So now we can stop Procmon like this. Now if we go into tools, process tree, we will see a tree of all processes that run on this machine. If we go down here we can see malware that started malware and it also starts command exe with a timeout. If we look at command.exe you can see here the command. So command.exe is passed an argument timeout tree and after that a delete of the file itself. So what's happening here, the malware launches this command with a timeout of 3 seconds and then it will delete the file. And when the command is launched the malware stops executing and that's how the malware can delete itself from disk. Now if you have this process tree view, we can select here the malware, right click OK and say add process and children to include filter. And when we do this, the filter only selects the processes of malware and its children that it launched. And by doing so we can again go into tools and then for example look at the file activity. And here you can see all the file activity for the malware and its trial processes but not of any other. And here write bytes, if we sort this we see that this process has not and its children has not written anything to disk. We can look at network activity, here is the activity we see. So we don't see that Russian domain and registry 2 you can again sort on writes and here you can see that there were writes to the registry. And if we take a closer look you can see that it may changes to the internet settings. We can for example select this one here and then we have a filter here of all the commands. Write set value here and a D word was written with value 1. This is a quick overview how you can exploit this malware that face to function how you can exploit it to easily dump its memory, look at strings and also see its activity with the process monitor.


All right we got Caesars Wish asking, I have songs I wish I could post cause I think that they have their own unique qualities but I made them a minute before I had the actual sound quality mixing mic quality etc of my music got better. I like them but I wouldn't be comfortable posting them on Apple Music Spotify etc. I wish I could do a soft drop or something and in the old days that would simply be a soundcloud drop but I don't feel like soundcloud is enough anymore. Do you have any ideas? Well, I mean man you said I don't want to really do it on soundcloud then you also say you don't want to do it on Apple Spotify etc I mean what do you I mean put it on the CD and hand it out I don't know man but no honestly to be real there's a couple of options number one you could not overthink this whole Apple Spotify thing you know I understand there's a whole an official perception of that you could drop it and honestly people overthink that people probably aren't paying that much attention if they check it out they like it they like it if they don't they don't that's one route and also you can put it on your YouTube audio page right not your YouTube audio page but as an audio on your YouTube page that is something else that you can do and then just say and think nothing of that maybe if you see enough feedback you do something more with it that's a couple of options that you can do where you don't have to overthink and really do much promotion of it at all of course you can post on your web page like social media all that stuff organically and see what happens but that's about it all right now option number two this is where we get a lot more creative with it in thoughtful right because what you have to realize is no matter what you do it's all about context and this is when branding comes into play so let's say you have a considerable fan base that really rocks with you and they're used to a specific sound all right let's say there's that so there's even more pressure and you know for a fact that 1,000 people are going to listen at least whenever you just drop this song no promotion or not number one I'm still pro put it on Apple Spotify all that stuff like put it on there don't don't you know stress that part out but when you do it it's about context so how do you let people know that this is some old stuff and I'm releasing it now right because that's gonna take pressure off you and is gonna create some some managing of expectations right so you can name it my first songs right or old stuff there's there's things that are contextual to your brain that'll make it make more sense however you name it but you can create a story around it where you let people know yo there's some music when I was just discovering myself or this is I wanted to give you all a sense of who I used to be right before I found my sound to show a little encouragement right you can be it bring a whole narrative of hard work and and improvement all that stuff can work right you can name it um I don't know let me see you can name it like mom you know old days or something like that there's so many creative names you can come up with I definitely suggest if you can name it a small piece of project right and then create that story around the project it'll it'll do wonders and it makes things so much simpler you could just push the story but a lot of people will miss the story it makes it even stronger when you put it in a small package of a project whether that's three or five songs that some kind of EP and if you put some kind of name that alludes to it right um you know what's like old me I don't know it's obvious but you can come up with something far more creative and whatever makes sense for your brand but just think about the the point of what I'm saying the narrative right think about the the concept that you can create around it the narrative that you can create around it that makes it clear that this isn't who I am anymore sonically right but you also have this context to let people know why you dropped it now right and maybe you have to lie a little bit maybe you just really just want to drop it because you feel like you want to drop it in and you didn't want to have any songs wasted in the chamber all right maybe that's it but you can create a whole story outside of that and just make it you know connect connect us you're an artist you're a storyteller do that all right then there's also the legit straight-up story of hey I had some old songs I wanted to release them show the world it is what it is you can take whatever approach you want to but understand that look one review the options one drop it no one ever knows about it cuz you never really promoted it or it is a very likely chance to you can post it as an audio on YouTube so people can hear it and if you see enough feedback you know maybe maybe you do something a little bit more with it and you can also promote that YouTube clip on one of social media right that's the second option then third is creating a narrative around it right some kind of context around it that lets people know why it's dropping now or just takes the pressure off so you didn't have to say this is why I'm dropping now but you can just let them know clearly this is not who you are by whatever you name it and a small piece of story that that you attach right that simple I hope that's clear if we ever need to go in any more details we'll do that in another episode all right


As far as Jimmy Dory annihilating the young Turks, indeed, the young Turks are pure garbage. Anybody that's been watching them and hasn't consumed any other information has been propagandized to up the yin yang. They are totally brainwashed. I've had discussions with people, political discussions with people, who actually turned to me and say, yeah, I'm informed. I watched the young Turks. I'm like, you're informed because you watched the young Turks? Whoa. Like, that's like, I don't know. I don't know what that's like. Like, there is no comparison. Someone that turns to you and says, I know what's going on in the world because I watched the young Turks. Like, seriously, what's the closest comparison to that? Sitting down and talking to an aunt about quantum physics? Like, they are delayed, right? In the French term that you can use in English, but you can't say on Twitch.


Alvarez knocked on the open door and stepped into the office. You asked for me, sir? Dr. Gears looked up from the files on his desk, fixing his gaze on the young security guard. Yes, I've been trying to contact Dr. Kleffel evening, but he's not answering his phone. I'd like you to locate him to make sure he's all right, and tell him I have something urgent to discuss with him. But sir, it's Friday night, Alvarez said, suddenly uncomfortable. If you'll recall, oh, I see. It's his. Yes, and he can't. He's left instructions that he's not to be disturbed under any circumstances. That's right, sir. Well, I suppose things can wait until tomorrow morning, then. Very well, sir. Alvarez left the office. Dr. Alto Kleff sat in a dining room of his site 19 suite. The place was lavish by any standards. Gold embossed wallpaper, ornate oak paneling, 18th century furniture, the table set with priceless china and the finest silver. An antique Ming vase sat on a pedestal nearby, gleaming in the warm glow of the crystal chandelier. An original Caravaggio hung on one wall, a Vermeer on the other. Barry White played softly in the background.  The fennel soup was exquisite. D-12130 really outdid himself tonight. He gestured to one of the several D-class personnel in attendance. More wine, D-23897. Right away, Dr. Kleff, the man in the orange jumpsuit said, nervously, stepping up to the table and refilling his glass with a particularly crisp chardonnay. Kleff lifted the glass to his mouth, took a sip, and sighed with satisfaction. This is nice, he said, smiling at his guest. We should do this more often, don't you agree? Across the table, SCP-173 stared back at him, unmoving, silent. Five D-class personnel were positioned around the living statue, their eyes fixed on it, cold sweat dripping down their faces as they struggled not to blink, not to break eye contact, not even for a second. A sixth man stood directly next to 173, trembling with terror as he lifted spoonfuls of fennel soup up to its face, smearing the contents where its mouth should have been. May I just say how lovely you look tonight, darling? Kleff said, his eyes moving appreciatively over the black evening dress, curving the statue's curves, the blonde, lustrous hair of the wig on his head, its rouged stone cheeks. I was going to wait until later, but seeing you like this, I just... I...  I don't know what it is about you, you've always had that effect on me. SCP-173 looked on, its stone picture is blank, impassive. Anyway, Kleff said, I've got you a little something to show you how much I appreciate you being here, sharing this evening with me. Kleff reached into his pocket and took out a small, flat box, handing it to D23897, who was standing nearby. The man took the box and went around to the other side of the table, his heart rate rising as he approached 173. Open it, darling, Kleff said, D23897 opened the box, revealing a gold necklace inlaid with dozens of small diamonds. It should be the right size, I had it made especially for you. Go ahead, put it on. Kleff smiled, D23897 removed the necklace from the box and reluctantly tied it around 173's neck, wincing as his fingers brushed against the cold, hard cement surface. Kleff was momentarily at a loss for words, it suits you to perfection, he said at last. God, you're really beautiful, I feel like I never want to take my eyes off you.  Kleff felt his heart flutter. It's our song, he breathed, as Barry White's rumbling voice filled the air. Kleff found himself staring into 173's alien, painted on eyes, losing himself in their depth. You know, he said after a moment, his voice now a little more than a husky whisper, I'm suddenly not hungry anymore. What do you say we retire for the night? Kleff was lying in his ample bed, 173 at his side, the lush satin sheets in disarray around them. The D-class personnel were standing in a circle around the bed, 10 pairs of eyes that have not left the statue for the last two hours. I can't tell you how much these little trists of ours mean to me. Kleff was murmuring in 173's ear, running sight 19, all that responsibility, all those lives depending on me, it gets so exhausting, you're a miracle rookie you know. Really? His train of thought was interrupted by a series of hushed whispers. Two of the D-class personnel seemed to be having an argument. Kleff cleared his throat loudly. Do you mind? D-23897 snapped to attention. I'm sorry sir, it's D-45931, he hasn't slept in a couple of days and he was starting to nod off. I told him he had to keep his eyes open. Oh, I see, well actually that's not necessary. D-23897 frowned, confused. But sir, the statue. I won't deny she can be a feisty one, but with those fiesta states of hers, but as long as I'm around she won't try anything. So there's no danger? D-23897 asked. That's right, no need to worry. Now if that's all, Kleff said, I'd like to get back to- Then where are we here? D-23897 nearly shouted in disbelief. Why did you make us stay? Kleff gave the man a strange look, the hint of an unhinged smile playing on his features. I just like it when people watch. And a file. To learn more about the SCP Foundation, subscribe to SCP orientation today and turn the notification bell on so you don't miss any of our videos.


I picked the Army because I was more interested in that over the Navy which was offered as ROTC at the university that I went to and I chose to serve because it was a way for me to pay for my education. The question is why did I continue to serve for 29 years and that was because I really enjoyed the soldiers and leaders that I was working with. I felt that I was making a contribution to the military and to the defense of our country and I felt like I was making a difference. As we come into the month of November and I think about Veterans Day, Veterans Day means to me a time to reflect on the history of our nation and the people who came before me in the military that gave up a part of their life to defend our country and our way of life. It also historically reflects on World War I, we're coming into the 100th anniversary of us coming into the war in April of this year and it will be the 100th anniversary of Veterans Day next year at this time. It's just a chance to thank our vets. The Korean War is called the Forgotten War. Not a lot of people realize that we had quite a few service members serve there and in Vietnam, our Vietnam vets weren't thanked at all. So it's my opportunity to thank a fellow vet and I think it's a good way that American can help recognize the sacrifice of those that are still with us who served. So Veterans Day actually was derived from Armistice Day and Armistice was signed on November 11th at the 11th hour of 1918 and it marked the end of combat in World War I. As you know, World War I was the war that was called the war to end all wars because it was such horrific carnage that they wanted to remember that hey, we got through this and as a world, first world war, we always tried to bring the world back together. Armistice Day kind of transitioned more into Veterans Day after the Second World War as a way to honor the servicemen and women who fought for our country and again fought for our way of life. So that's how it kind of morphed Memorial Day. We're actually supposed to remember the people who died for our country.  You know, just saying thank you, you see a lot of the guys with the Vietnam patches or their veterans from Vietnam. I always go out of my way to say thank you to them because I feel that they weren't thanked enough for the contentious time that they actually served in a war that wasn't real popular. And I think, you know, just being respectful to the flag. It should be something, be respectful to the nation. It should be something that we should do throughout the year, not just one day of the year.