Schol Comm @ UBC Blog

Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office Impact Report 2018/19




Recently the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office released its 2018/2019 Impact and Activity Report, showcasing some of the year’s highlights and accomplishments.

For more information, or to share feedback please contact scholarly.communications@ubc.ca

Read the Report.

New Open UBC Site Focuses on Open Scholarship

The new Open UBC site has launched today on Aug 26, Monday morning.

Goals for the site relaunch

There were three goals for the site relaunch. We wanted to:

  • Broaden the site focus by including Open Access and Open Research as major themes of the site, since they are important component of the open scholarship movement.
  • Include and point to resources that are available on other UBC websites.
  • Improve the user experience of the site so that the resources are easily accessible by faculty members, students and staff who are interested in open scholarship.

Process

May 2018 – Usability Testing

poster of open ubc website UX session

Poster of Open UBC Website Review (by Rie Namba, CC by SA 3.0)

On May 22, 2018, we hosted a small usability test event for the Open UBC site. During the usability testing, we asked participants to bring their own device (for ex: laptop, tablet, mobile) and go through the user testing survey provided. Two faculty members, one undergraduate student, one graduate student and one staff participated the usability testing event.

Overall, we found out from the usability testing that:

  • Some users were confused with some of the terminology of the websites (For example: Open Practice).
  • Some users had hard time finding resources due to the structure of the landing pages.

Many users accessed the “Project” (now it is called “Examples”) page to see what their colleagues were creating. Learning from the feedback we received during the usability testing, we aimed to create a new website that is more simple and improves user experience.

Oct 2018 – Card Sorting Activity

card sorting activity

photograph from the Card Sorting Activity (by Rie Namba -CC by SA 3.0)

On Oct 2018, with a small group from the Library and CTLT (Erin Fields, Cindy Underhill, Will Engle, Lucas Wright and Rie Namba), we designed the new architecture for the new Open UBC site, and did a “card sorting activity” to map out existing pages in the Open UBC site to the new architecture. As a result, we had gaps with resources in Research, Data, and Access sections.

March 2019- Sprint

On March 2019, we organized a sprint and invited a group of expertise (Erin Fields, Stephanie Savage, Rie Namba, Will Engle, Leonora Crema, Matthew Vis-Dumbar, Sarah Parker, Alex Kuskowski, Eirian Vining) to create a “Get Started” page for “Research” “Data” and “Access”. The summary of the sprint can be found in the wiki page below:

Open UBC Website Sprint March 2019

March 2019 ~ Aug 26 – Iteration

During this period of time, we worked on an iteration of the new Open UBC site. We asked feedbacks for the new Open UBC site from the Open UBC Working Group , which is a working group that supports emerging and ongoing open projects at UBC and beyond. We then edited the new Open UBC site according to the feedback.

Give us Feedback and Contribute to the Open UBC site

If you are excited about contributing to the Open UBC site, there are various ways that you can contribute to the site:

 

Updated Canadian Author Addendum and Author Rights Guide Available




CARL, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries recently released an updated version of the Canadian Author Addendum along with an Authors Guide that supports the use of the addendum. Author addenda help authors insert legal language into their publishing contracts that allow them to retain rights in their work. This may be particularly useful in cases where grants require authors to make their work open access.

For more information and links to the resources, refer to the CARL news release.

New Checklist on Deceptive Publishers from U of Toronto

Check out this new resource to help you identify ‘predatory’ or deceptive publishers

 

Celebrate Fair Dealing Week


Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week is an annual celebration of the doctrines of fair use and fair dealing — a perfect opportunity to reflect on what is quickly becoming a pivotal period in the history of copyright in Canada. York University has appealed the decision in its case with Access Copyright, the statutory review of the Copyright Act is still underway, and the USMCA free trade agreement promises to extend the term of copyright protection by twenty years. In this climate, building increased awareness about user rights such as fair dealing is more important than ever before.

This Fair Dealing Week, SFU, UBC, Langara, KPU, Douglas, VCC and JIBC invite you to an afternoon of presentations and discussion aimed at demonstrating the value of fair dealing in a modern Canadian context and highlighting the perspectives of diverse copyright stakeholders.

You are also invited to join us for a pub night hosted by the BCLA Academic Libraries Section, to unwind and play Copyright the Card Game.

Details and registration for both events are available here.

Under Creative Construction: A TLEF Supported Project

November 7th featured an event celebrating the launch of Under Creative Construction: A More Just World, an instructional video and the second Open Educational Resource (OER) created with the support of a Library Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) grant. This grant has allowed the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office to work closely with UBC faculty and partner in the creation of open educational resources.

The video explores the importance of creativity in social and environmental justice movements around the globe. Dr. Farah Shroff talks with prominent local activists Morgane Oger and Dale Edwards about the roles that creativity and art have played in their activism, and the potential they hold in supporting justice movements. The launch was attended by students and members of the community and was simultaneously made open, allowing the work to be shared with the public.

Zachary Foote, a Graduate Academic Assistant with the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office, worked closely with Dr. Farah Shroff in making this project a reality. This has been a great opportunity for library and faculty to explore different kinds of open educational resources, and the creativity that can be brought to their creation. One of the most surprising results of this has been the abundance of media-based projects that faculty are developing for the classroom, along with open textbooks. The creation of the instructional video with Dr. Shroff shows the breadth of paths that OERs can take, and ways that the library can support those efforts.
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