Conference on Electronic publishing (ElPub): proceedings as open access book
MaltaElPub Conference
This was the 19th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (Elpub), and it was held in the historical city Valletta, from 1-2 September. It was the first time I attended an ElPub conference, and the capital of Malta showed to be a wonderful setting in September by the way; Valletta will be the European Capital of Culture in 2018. The conference had a very nice format, not too big, not to small and attendants were all very active.
There were three keynotes:
- Gowan Dawson, Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture (historian), University of Leicester – Constructing Scientific communities : citizen science in the 19th and 21st centuries
- Prof. Gail Feigenbaum, Getty Research, USA, Electronic Publication: Intended and Unintended Consequences
- Adrian Hillman, Group Managing Director, and Donald Tabone, Chief Technology Officer, The Times, Malta, The modern days challenges of disruptive technology: a case of evolution rather than evolution?
Interventions that I attended were:
- Monica Duke, University of Bath, Lay summaries for research articles: a citizen science approach to bridge the gap in access
- Mauro Fazio, Italian Ministry of Economic Development and Borje Justrell, National Archives in Sweden, Civic epistemologies: development of a roadmap for citizen researchers in the age of digital culture
- Constance Rinaldo, Harvard University; Jane Smith, Natural History Museum London, Collaborating on open science: The journey of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
- Caroline Martin, National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (Irstea), France, Connecting researchers and professional users in environmental sciences: a case study of open access e-journal ‘Sciences eaux & territoires’
- Timo Borst, ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Sustainable Software as a Building Block for Open Science
- Pieter Heyvaert, Ghent University, Using EPUB 3 and the Open Web Platform for Enhanced Presentation and Machine-Understandable Metadata for Digital Comics
I also attended the Minute madness of posters and demonstrations as well as a panel session on The Future of Publishing. Some were parallel sessions, like Finding the Law for Sharing Data in Academia and Open Data in Global Environmental Research: Findings from the Community but nearly all are now available online.
The Book
The conference papers were recently published as an open access book entitled New Avenues for Electronic Publishing in the Age of Infinite Collections and Citizen Science: Scale, Openness and Trust (edited by Birgit Schmidt and Milena Dobreva) with IOS press (CC-BY-NC).
Research and scholarly communication is increasingly seen in the light of open science, making research processes and results more accessible and collaborative. This brings with it the chance to better connect research and society by introducing new avenues for engagement with citizens. It explores the interplay of two dimensions of electronic publishing: the ever growing volume of digital collections and the improved understanding of the widest user group, citizens. This exciting theme encompasses human, cultural, economic, social, technological, legal, policy-related, commercial, and other relevant aspects. Echoing the conference agenda, the book covers a wide range of topics, including engagement with citizens and professionals, enhanced publishing and new paradigms, discovery and digital libraries, open access and open science, as well as the use and reuse of data.
Call for Papers ElPub 2016
The next ElPub will be the 20th and will take place 7-9 June 2016 in Göttingen, Germany on Positioning and Power in Academic Publishing: Players, Agents and Agendas. Its proceedings will also be published open access by IOS Press, and selected papers will be published in a special edition of the Journal Information Services & Use.