We’re proud to showcase what we do with our community in our new Resources section of our website which is built, designed, and maintained in collaboration with the Canadian library publishing community and aims to grow with input from all our collaborators.
From the very beginning of our website redesign project, our intention was for our site to be useful to the amazing community with—and for—whom we work. With the new Resources page, we are now able to surface this work and the collaborations that make Coalition Publica possible, by showcasing materials that help build capacity for diamond open access publishing in Canada.
The resources we highlight are developed by Coalition Publica, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), Érudit, the CARL Library Publishing Community Engagement Team and other community partners to support journals, the libraries who support them, and researchers to adhere to best practices in digital scholarly publishing.
Reference materials and tools for open access publishing
One of the resources listed on our website is a Roadmap for journals looking to transition to diamond open access. Created to assist journals applying to the SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Journals program, it provides expert guidance to any journal looking to make the flip. The Roadmap provides check points and reminders for all the steps a journal may wish to undertake to adopt open licences, apply for the DOAJ and analyse their financial situation to make informed decisions. With more than 1,000 consultations, this checklist has been widely shared within the community as an invaluable tool for anyone looking to adhere to best practices in diamond OA publishing.
In creating our website, we put accessibility at the forefront, and we are proud to support others in making their work accessible to the greatest possible audience by pointing to guides such as the PKP Creating Accessible Content: A Guide for Journal Editors and Authors. The Creating Accessible Content guide covers the general principles of creating universally accessible content published on the web. It highlights techniques to address specific limitations for the use of assistive technologies, such as screen readers for people with visual impairment or sign language for those with auditory limitations.
Making your journal accessible to others applies to clarity of information on your site as well. The University of Alberta Libraries provides a helpful Journal Policy Toolkit for Journals Using OJS which provides template language for important policies for any open access journal to have such as copyright and creative commons information as well as deposit or self-archiving policies and how to apply these in OJS.
Coalition Publica also highlights research that supports the development and understanding of scholarly publishing in Canada and internationally. For example, Réseau Circé recently published a report on new practices for evaluating scientific articles including open peer review. It draws on existing scientific literature and reports on the results of a survey conducted among scholarly journals in Canada and Quebec. In particular, this survey provided insight into current practices within the Canadian and Quebec scholarly publishing ecosystem and gathered perceptions regarding evaluation practices and their potential for openness. The full report is in French, but a microsynthesis in English is available on their website.
How to Access and Contribute to Our Resources
We invite you to explore our resource collection that includes articles, guides, tutorials, webinar recordings, reports, and templates. Using our tag feature, you can target the most relevant resources for library staff, journal editors, or researchers.
Many resources on our website are deposited into our Coalition Publica Zenodo community, furthering the preservation, discoverability and reach of the work being done in our communities.
Our goal is to continue enriching and maintaining this page with contributions from our collaborators and the entire open scholarly publishing community. By sharing your practical knowledge and tools, you are supporting open, collaborative, sustainable publishing for the common good. If you have a resource to suggest, let us know about it by contacting us at info@coalition-publi.ca.
