In 2016 the Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ) was invited to participate, along with several other organizations, in the Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group (CSPWG), led by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) for the purpose of establishing a shared vision, principles and goals that would act as a framework for advanced, robust, sustainable, collaborative models for the Canadian dissemination of the scholarly record. CARL recently issued the final report of the Working Group.

CALJ is appreciative of having had this opportunity to work and hold discussions with the various stakeholders involved in this initiative and especially enjoyed the face to face meeting in Ottawa where members of the group openly shared their perspectives of the issues now facing scholarly publishing in Canada.

A common area of agreement during our meetings was the importance of wide dissemination of research; however, as alluded to in the group’s final report, there was not common agreement on how to attain that goal. The final report also acknowledges the importance of the diversity of business models and existing publishing organizations within Canada, but the recommended framework very much focusses on open access and a national journal platform. CALJ is issuing this communiqué to clarify its stance on the priorities of the journal publishing industry in Canada.

Journals are an essential component of our scholarly communication ecosystem, as champions of the peer review process, supporters of researchers and their desire and requirement to communicate their work, coordinators of Editorial Boards of world-renowned experts, and staunch advocates for credibility, availability, and sustainability of our Canadian research enterprise. To allow journals to carry on this work and compete in an international market, CALJ feels that financial sustainability needs to be their top priority. With that in mind we have developed a proposal for a Journal Innovation and Impact Fund for Canadian journals, also included in the framework of the report, as we feel very strongly that Canada should be striving to raise the professionalism, quality and international competitiveness of all its scholarly journals.

Whether subscription based or open access, journals need to take into consideration the ongoing costs of producing, marketing, and disseminating journal content, and it is essential that they have access to strong and consistent financial support to cover those costs plus development costs. Access to a healthy level of ongoing funds is especially important as the industry evolves and the digital revolution delivers both new publishing requirements as well as opportunities.

CALJ, which represents journals using a range of business models, also feels that a diversity of business models is integral to the health of the scholarly publishing industry, and that we should not overlook the fact that established subscription journals bring in substantial revenue from outside Canada and at the same time widely disseminate their content.

In summary, CALJ agrees that a national journal platform would be a welcome addition to the current journal infrastructure and would be an important tool for assisting many journals increase their level of professionalism. As the topic of open access continues to dominate journal publishing, we welcome the opportunity to continue to participate with members of the working group in discussions of how to attain a sustainable open access business model that would form part of the existing infrastructure in Canada. And, we anticipate that with ongoing discussions, new areas of collaboration will be found among stakeholders that will work to strengthen the publishing industry in Canada.

Suzanne Kettley

President

Statement from Association of Canadian University Presses

The Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ) has developed a proposal for the creation of a national fund (Journal Impact and Innovation Fund-JIIF / Sondage sur le Fonds d’innovation et l’impact des revues-FIIR) that it is circulating for comment and discussion. By means of this notice, CALJ is reaching out to members for feedback to gain support for and strengthen the proposal.

The JIIF would invest in Canadian scholarly journals to assist them in increasing their scholarly quality and reader effectiveness through innovation. The initial focus of JIIF would be on social sciences and humanities journals and it would complement and build on the support given by such agencies as SSHRC.

The full proposal can be found here. The CALJ executive would greatly appreciate hearing from as many journals as possible. The CALJ executive believes that a secure foundation of funding focused on innovation would assist Canadian journals in serving researchers, ensuring competitiveness in terms of both quality of presentation and audience reach with pricier international titles.

CALJ is pleased to offer 2 student scholarships to this year’s Annual Conference. Students interested should be involved in journal publishing or a related field of study.

Applicants should send a brief reply outlining their interest in attending.

Scholarship covers Congress Registration, and CALJ Conference registration (Breakfast and Lunch both days are included).

Dead line to apply is Friday April 21, 2017. Please apply by email – info@calj-acrs.ca

Programme

Publishing in an Alternative Reality: Where Do We Go From Here?

The future of scientific and scholarly publishing will depend on adapting its historical strengths and evolved qualities into an engineered media world consisting of unexpected financial, technology, and political realities. How science and scholarship are funded, supported in law and culture, and promoted all will make a difference. This talk will cover where we’ve been, what has changed, and where we might go. The speaker will discuss dealing with a fragmented media space, meeting new expectations, the role of governance, predatory publishing, fake news, innovation, and data publishing, as well as how publishing economics work to move science forward.

Kent R. Anderson: CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network & founder of “The Scholarly Kitchen.”

http://www.ideas-idees.ca/tags/congress-2017 

With a new investment of $4.1 million from the CFI, the Érudit dissemination and research platform hopes to expand its services to a wider Canadian community.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has awarded a new $4.1 million grant to Érudit as part of its 2017-2022 Major Science Initiatives Fund competition. Through this competition, the CFI wishes to contribute to the ongoing operating and maintenance needs of national research facilities, enabling Canadian researchers to undertake world-class research and technology development.

CALJ to Webcast parts of the 2016 Boot Camp Friday Nov 25. Registration is open to all members and will provide country wide access for those unable to attend in person.

The webcast is free to all CALJ members.

11:00 AM Persistent Identifiers: Jennifer Lin, Director of Product Management, Crossref
http://mediacast.ic.utoronto.ca/20161125-CALJ-1/index.htm

1:00 PM Have Content, Will Travel: How to Leverage XML for Scholarly Content Dissemination, Discovery, and Development: Mary Seligy, Business Analyst (IT), Canadian Science Publishing
http://mediacast.ic.utoronto.ca/20161125-CALJ-2/index.htm

Programme

Viewing instructions

The following sessions will be webcast live from this year’s Boot Camp. Registration is open to all members and will provide country wide access for those unable to attend in person. We hope webcasting will be an important new way of offering professional development to our members. The webcast is free to all CALJ members.

Please join us by register your participation: info@calj-acrs.ca The webcast is free to all CALJ members!

Friday Nov 25th - Time is EST (Eastern Standard Time)

11.00 – 12.00 Persistent Identifiers: Jennifer Lin, Director of Product Management, Crossref

13.00 - 13.45 Have Content, Will Travel: How to Leverage XML for Scholarly Content Dissemination, Discovery, and Development: Mary Seligy, Business Analyst (IT), Canadian Science Publishing

Programme

CALJ is pleased to offer 2 student scholarships to this year’s Editors Boot Camp. Students interested should be involved in journal publishing or a related field of study.

Please apply by email – info@calj-acrs.ca - Programme

Stakeholders including scholarly publishers, academic libraries, funders, and researchers have joined forces to develop a framework for advanced, robust, sustainable, collaborative models for the Canadian dissemination of the scholarly record.

Full Release

More than 140,000 Quebec students and teachers will continue to enjoy privileged access to one of the largest corpuses of journals in the humanities and social sciences in Canada through the renewed agreement between Érudit and the 50 CEGEP libraries who are members of the CCSR.

The renewed agreement confirms the CEGEP network’s strong interest in the scholarly and cultural journals published on Érudit. As a result, consultations on the Érudit platform from CEGEPs have more than doubled since the first agreement signed in 2012.

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