Charleston Video - Librarians Positioning Preprints for Success: The role of preprints in future scholarship, training, and publishing Recording

Librarians Positioning Preprints for Success: The role of preprints in future scholarship, training, and publishing

Thursday, November 17, 2022 4:00 PM EST

Preprints have become paramount to promoting early dissemination of scholarship, emerging as particularly imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic, where swift communication of a sheer volume of research findings enabled more efficient research and public health decisions. Preprint servers demonstrate far higher use compared to before the pandemic, and, the number of preprints is expected to grow with launches of new servers that cater to specific research interests. Though they have limitations to consider, preprints are a critical avenue for accelerating scientific communication, with many benefits for authors including early attention to their work and an increased potential to find multidisciplinary collaborators.

An engineering librarian, a science and research impact librarian, and a preprint content director from the publishing sphere are collaborating to share their perspectives, vision, and practices around preprints in a dynamic panel. This session will address how librarians are educating their constituents about understanding and using preprints, and how publishers enhance preprints to make them more discoverable and impactful. The changing dynamics and workflow between preprint authors and publishers will be discussed, as will the librarian’s role and partnership in this process. The panel will address preprint limitations, including challenges to adding preprints to the scholarly communication landscape as an additional version type, and the cleaning of preprint data for indexing in peer-reviewed literature databases and preprint servers. Preprint metrics will be discussed including what attention measures are available, with panelists sharing how preprints serve a different use case from a version of record, and the process publishers employ to elevate articles from preprint to final status. Taken together, attendees will gain valuable insight into how they can educate patrons on their use and production of preprints, their value and impact, how preprint metadata, quality, and indexing have improved, and their important role in the changing research landscape.

Librarians Positioning Preprints for Success: The role of preprints in future scholarship, training, and publishing

Thursday, November 3, 2022 4:00 PM EDT

Preprints have become paramount to promoting early dissemination of scholarship, emerging as particularly imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic, where swift communication of a sheer volume of research findings enabled more efficient research and public health decisions. Preprint servers demonstrate far higher use compared to before the pandemic, and, the number of preprints is expected to grow with launches of new servers that cater to specific research interests. Though they have limitations to consider, preprints are a critical avenue for accelerating scientific communication, with many benefits for authors including early attention to their work and an increased potential to find multidisciplinary collaborators.

An engineering librarian, a science and research impact librarian, and a preprint content director from the publishing sphere are collaborating to share their perspectives, vision, and practices around preprints in a dynamic panel. This session will address how librarians are educating their constituents about understanding and using preprints, and how publishers enhance preprints to make them more discoverable and impactful. The changing dynamics and workflow between preprint authors and publishers will be discussed, as will the librarian’s role and partnership in this process. The panel will address preprint limitations, including challenges to adding preprints to the scholarly communication landscape as an additional version type, and the cleaning of preprint data for indexing in peer-reviewed literature databases and preprint servers. Preprint metrics will be discussed including what attention measures are available, with panelists sharing how preprints serve a different use case from a version of record, and the process publishers employ to elevate articles from preprint to final status. Taken together, attendees will gain valuable insight into how they can educate patrons on their use and production of preprints, their value and impact, how preprint metadata, quality, and indexing have improved, and their important role in the changing research landscape.

Emily K. Hart

Emily K Hart is the Science Librarian and Research Impact Lead at Syracuse University Libraries. She is a subject librarian who provides research support, instruction and outreach services to several science departments in the College of Arts & Sciences; and leads a team of librarians focused on bibliometrics, research information management, and equitable research reporting across the University.

Jay Bhatt

Jay Bhatt is the Engineering Librarian in the Scholarly Connections Department at Drexel University. He has three master’s degrees from Drexel University, including an M.S. in Library and Information Science, an M.S. in Instructional Design and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also earned an M.S. in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jay is responsible for building library collections in engineering subject areas, as well as outreach and teaching information and research skills to faculty and students in Drexel’s College of Engineering and College of Biomedical Engineering. He provides individual and small group consultations, instructional sessions and workshops, and online research support for students in on-campus and distance learning programs.

Jay is actively involved with the Engineering Libraries Division of the American Society for Engineering Education. He is a member of the Engineering Division, Science and Technology Division, Philadelphia Chapter, and Asian Chapter of the Special Libraries Association (SLA). He is extremely passionate about experimenting with innovative applications of emerging technologies to enhance information literacy among faculty and students. He is passionate about participating in conversations and raising awareness about Open Access, Open Data, and Open Educational Resources in Engineering, among faculty and students. He has published and presented papers extensively in the area of information literacy for engineering students. He particularly loves mentoring and working directly with students, and he believes that the best learning occurs when it involves the mutual sharing of ideas, knowledge, and experiences. He also was invited as presenter and invited speakers at several library related international webinars.

Accomplishments:

Jay had partnered with a team of Drexel University engineering students to co-create the Engineering Academic Challenge, an online research game based on transdisciplinary grand challenges of civilization that has reached thousands in hundreds of universities worldwide.

In 2022, Jay received SLA Science-Technology Community's Ann Koopman Science-Technology Community Achievement Award, In 2017, Jay received the Engineering Librarian of the Year Award from the Engineering Division of the Special Libraries Associations. He received the Homer I. Bernhardt Distinguished service award from the Engineering Libraries Division of the American Society for Engineering Education in 2010. In 2016, he was nominated for Drexel University’s Presidential Award for Excellence for Professional Staff. He received the outstanding staff award at the 2016 Graduate Student Association Awards from the Graduate College at Drexel University and the Exceptional Service Award from Drexel University Libraries in 2014. He was awarded the Learning Partner Award from the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems at Drexel University in 2014. In 2013, he received the Outstanding Staff Mentor Award from the Graduate Student Association of Drexel University. He received IEEE's mentorship award and a Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of outstanding leadership as the Drexel University IEEE Graduate Students Forum Partnership Coordinator and Student Branch Liaison in 2018 and in 2006-2007. In 2003, he received Drexel University's Harold Myers Distinguished Service Award.

Professional specialties and areas of interest include: Engineering Information, Teaching Information Seeking Skills, Collection Development and Management, Outreach to Faculty and Students, Mentoring, and Data Information Literacy.

Personal interests

Jay has a lifelong passion for trains and is a member of the Indian Railways Fan Club. He loves to read and write poetry, including a Gujarati language blog, Bansinaad, in which he occasionally writes his poems. In his spare time, Jay enjoys researching new initiatives that highlight U.S./India/global collaborations in areas such as engineering education and libraries.

Natalie Farra, PhD

Dr. Farra is Regional Marketing Manager for North America at Elsevier. With a background in academic publishing, she previously served as a Senior Acquisitions Editor for Neuroscience Books for almost a decade. Prior to joining Elsevier, she completed her PhD degree at the University of Toronto, developing a stem cell model of autism spectrum disorder in her doctoral thesis.

Shirley Decker-Lucke

Shirley Decker-Lucke is the Content Director at SSRN, where she ensures the platform supports content and researcher needs for the dissemination of early-stage research (preprints). Throughout her career she has built innovative approaches to merging content and technology and better serving research and those who rely upon it. One such example is the creation of a Coronavirus Research Hub to quickly share preprints in support of global efforts to fight the pandemic. Before this role she was Publishing Director at Elsevier.