> > > LIBREAS. Library Ideas # 38

Annotate via hypothes.is

Download PDF
doi:10.18452/23480 (edoc HU Berlin)

The Library’s Contribution to University Scientific Journal Publishing and Promotion: Practical Review

The article describes the library’s contribution to editorial and publishing support and promotion of thirteen new scientific journals, published by the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts (Ukraine). The article provides an analysis of the mission, objectives, and editorial staff of scientific publications as well as the journals’ status and stage of indexing in the international lists and databases. In order to establish the journals, at a first stage, the Ukrainian arts and culture scientific journals market has been monitored. At a second stage the Scientific Library turned into an active participant of the publishing process and the editorial support for thirteen scientific publications. At a third stage all journal content is included in international indexing systems. The insights into the new scientific journal publishing process, experienced by the University, can be extremely beneficial to other libraries. The authors offer their vision of the prospects for the development of journals and a list of activities to achieve their goals. The activities of the scientific library in the future are seen in the development of information-analytical monitoring and bibliometric analysis of the university’s communications system; development of an algorithm for presenting the profiles of scientists in search engines and international abstract databases; promoting the inclusion of university scientific journals in the international Scopus and Web of Science databases.


Zitiervorschlag
Yurii Horban, Viacheslav Lukianenko, Olena Skachenko, "The Library’s Contribution to University Scientific Journal Publishing and Promotion: Practical Review". LIBREAS. Library Ideas, 38 ().

Introduction

The objectives of modern higher education are mostly considered as a process of teaching scholarly thinking and developing a new level of knowledge for students and postgraduate students. This process is structured in curricular programs, academic research and educational work. Additionally, corporate values, joint projects of various departments, international programs and cooperation are applied to shape the image of a world-class university, i.e., an academic environment, which can be created only via face-to-face communication between scientists and their students, who are developing scholarly traditions together.

A highly topical issue of international scientific library conferences over the last decade is a theme of overall scientometrics and the respective features of library staff’s new competencies involved with scientific and scholarly journal publishing in Universities.

This article provides an overview of the library’s contribution to development of editorial and publishing workflows for thirteen new university academic journals. All journals were founded in 2018. The objectives of the article are to explain and frame the mission, tasks, the editorial board working group, and scientometric indicators of those new scientific periodicals of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts.

Traditionally, a world-class university was not only a leading institution of higher education of the city and country but also a recognized centre for research, well-known scholarly traditions and the domain of experts capable to develop and apply creative ideas, to disseminate scholarly knowledge, to share experience, and to communicate their insights to the scholarly world.

Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts is a relatively young institution of higher education of Ukraine. However, it seeks to obtain the status of a leader among humanities-focused universities in the Ukraine.

A substantial tool to achieve this goal is to widely present the research results, for instance at international conferences or in the form of published scholarly work in collections and journals that are indexed in scientific databases.

The modern university should share the information on new scholarly findings, research results, and a discussion of current developments of arts and culture. The information environment’s transformation changed the formats of production, distribution and use of information, and updated the need for innovative technologies implementation, digital library services, and support services for research provided by the university library. The work with the scientific periodicals of the university, their publishing and editorial support has a top priority. This is emphasized by Suzanne Stapleton’s statement: Academic libraries provide unique perspectives and opportunities in scholarly publishing as a result of their mission to support the research and education agendas of their scholars.1

Kiev The Main hall - The Library’s main hallway

Scientific Journal Publishing Process

Stage 1

At first, the field of scholarly journals for arts and culture in Ukraine was monitored. As a result, the need to create multiple publishing platforms to present results of unique research on audiovisual, choreographic, stage, film and television arts, design, digital communications, etc. was established.

To determine the mission, objectives, readership of potential journals, a list of researchers as potential authors, editorial boards members and reviewers was created. We also considered the journals’ future role to make research more visible through the international scientometrics databases.

When developing the growth and promotion strategy of the publications we focused at providing the following issues journals require:

  • international editorial board and authors,

  • standardized name in English,

  • the ISSN number for print and online publications,

  • digital object identifier (DOI),

  • high quality content,

  • conclusive English texts and a convincing print design,

  • an established publication frequency,

  • ethical research standards,

  • indexing in bibliographic citation databases, journal lists and international search engines.

Taking the above into account, it was decided that the main functions of the newly-established journals should give an idea of the following:

  • research trends in Cultural Studies, Art Studies, Social Communications that describe major research findings,

  • the level of research integration into the global scholarly community,

  • the quality of Ukrainian scientific journals of the related subjects, in comparison with the international ones,

  • publication activity of authors of Ukrainian higher educational institutions,

  • academic affiliation of scholarly institutions,

  • the publications’ ranking according to international citation databases.

Stage 2

At the second stage, in October 2018, the Scientific Library turned into an active participant of the publishing process and the editorial support for thirteen scientific publications.

It should be noted that the functioning of scholarly publishing is intended to arrange a well-organised connection between the author, the editorial board, the editors, the publisher, and the reader. The effectiveness and success of the journal’s work – its rankings depend on these links’ state of being organised2. Taking into account the recommendations of the Mohylanskii Protocol, which states that the owner (founder) of the journal and the editorial staff are responsible for the journal as a reliable source of high-quality scientific information on a specific subject3, there are selected chief editors and members of the editorial boards of scientific journals. The academic prestige of the scientists, their active profiles in Scopus or Web of Science and their articles in these citation indices were taken into consideration.

Participants of a seminar called Library.Book.Science in 2018

Scientific Journals: An Overview

Six out of the thirteen journals under discussion are subject matter series of the Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts scientific papers collection.

1. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. Series: Audiovisual Art and Production.

Published by: Faculty of Film and Television. Brief description: general theoretical, artistic, historical, and practical topics on audiovisual art and production, the results of artists’ work studies, archival researches, and bibliographic reviews4.

The editorial board: 26 members, of these, 4 are scientists from Kuwait, Spain, Poland, and Belarus. The editor-in-chief: Alexander Bezruchko, Doctor of Art Studies, Professor.

2. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. Series in Management of Social and Cultural Activity.

Published by: Faculty of Event Management, Fashion and Show Business. Brief description: theory, history, culture and art issues of management, its socio-cultural achievements and future development in Ukraine and all over the world. This is a scientific platform designed to exchange the ideas and share opinions on the development trends of management in the social and cultural field5.

The editorial board: 24 members, of these, 5 are representatives of the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, the USA, and Portugal. The editor-in-chief: Yaroslav Martynyshyn, Doctor of Economics, Professor.

3. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. Series in Museology and Monumental Studies.

Published by: Faculty of Information Policy and Cybersecurity. Brief description: theoretical, historical, applied issues of museum studies and the monument conservation; collective memory, politics of memory; innovation in the development of museum studies, promoting them6.

The editorial board: 13 scientists, of these, 5 are from Sweden, Moldova, Poland, Belarus, and Georgia. The editor-in-chief: Serhii Pustovalov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor.

4. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. Series in Musical Art.

Published by: Faculty of Musical Arts. Brief description: theory and history issues of Ukrainian and world musicology, theoretical, creative and methodological problems of the development of musical arts under contemporary conditions. It covers the results of studies of artists’ work, archival research, and bibliographic reviews7.

The editorial board: 15 members, of these, 4 represent art scholarly traditions of Slovenia, Azerbaijan, Australia, and Poland. The editor-in-chief: Tatiana Humeniuk, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor.

5. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. Series in Stage Art.

Published by: Faculty of Performing Arts. Brief description: theory, history and practice of world and Ukrainian performing arts8. The objectives are to promote the creation of open information space for communication between leading scientists, young scientists, and experts.

The editorial board: 31 scientists. Of these, 9 are scientists from Kuwait, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Latvia, India, and Lithuania. The editor-in-chief: Martinas Petrikas, Doctor of Art Studies, Associate Professor (Republic of Lithuania).

6. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. Series in Tourism.

Published by: Faculty of Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant Business. Brief description: topical issues on the theory and methodology of tourism, the scientific backgrounds of tourism for sustainable development, the key features of the information and innovation activities in tourism and the management of tourism industry agents, the cultural issues of tourism development in modern conditions9.

The editorial board: 15 members. Foreign schools for science are represented by scientists from Belarus, Slovakia, and the People’s Republic of China. Chairman of the editorial board is Volodymyr Antonenko, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, Professor.

7. Demiurge: ideas, technologies, perspectives of design.

Published by: Faculty of Design and Advertising. Brief description: design development, a platform created for searching models and ways to solve them. The objectives are to cover the problems of theory, history, practice and the prospects for the development of design and visual practices in Ukraine and the world10.

The editorial board: 13 members, two of them represent art schools of Poland and Italy. The editor-in-chief: Liliana Vezhbovska, PhD in Art Studies, Associate Professor.

8. International Relations: Theory and Practical Aspects.

Published by: Faculty of International Relations. Brief description: international relations, public communication and regional studies related to historical and theoretical questions of international relations; foreign policy and diplomacy; international law; world economy and international economic relations; public relations and language support of international activity; social research in the field of international relations11.

The editorial board: 17 members, of these, 4 represent foreign academic schools of Poland and the Czech Republic. The editor-in-chief: Valerii Lastovsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor.

9. Restaurant and Hotel Consulting. Innovations.

Published by: Faculty of Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant Business. Brief description: development of hotel and restaurant business, as follows: innovative development of hotel and restaurant places; current issues of culinology, enogastronomy, anthropology of food and serviceology; theory and practical aspects of the food technologies of functional purpose adoption; the issues regarding the food ecology and hotel and catering services; economy, marketing, management, competitiveness, modern IT solutions within the hotel and restaurant business. The publication aims to advance scientific studies in hotel and restaurant business12.

The editorial board: 22 scientists, 6 of them represent institutions of science in Poland, Sweden, Azerbaijan, Turkey, USA, and Bulgaria. The editor-in-chief: Hryhorii Deynichenko, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor.

10. Dance Studies.

Published by: Faculty of Choreographic Arts. Brief description: theory, history and practice of Ukrainian and international choreographic culture; interdisciplinary issues regarding the choreography13.

The editorial board: 14 members, 4 of them represent dance schools of Spain, Belarus, Slovakia, and the USA. The editor-in-chief: Olexander Chepalov, Doctor of Art Studies, Professor.

11. Ukrainian Journal of Library and Information Sciences.

Published by: Faculty of Information Policy and Cybersecurity.

Brief description: theory and applied aspects of library science, bibliography, archive science, document science, information technology, information, library and archive practices14.

The editorial board: 15 members, 5 of them are representatives of institutions of the science of Belarus, the USA, and Poland. The editor-in-chief is Tatiana Hranchak, Doctor of Social Communications, Senior Researcher.

12. Ukrainian Information Space.

Published by: Faculty of International Relations and Journalism. Brief description: the analysis of development and activity practice of the Ukrainian information space in social and political realities of Ukraine and within the world context; theory, practical and historical aspects of the main components of the Ukrainian information space: press, radio and TV broadcast, online platforms and printed editions15.

The editorial board: 16 scientists, 4 of them are representatives of institutions of the science of Lithuania, Poland, and the USA. The editor-in-chief: Mykola Tymoshyk, Doctor of Philology, Professor.

13. Digital Platform: Information Technologies in the Sociocultural Sphere.

Published by: Faculty of Information Policy and Cybersecurity. Brief description: theory and applied aspects of information technology, computer science, graphic visualization, information and communication technologies in the socio-cultural sphere16.

The editorial board: 11 members, including representatives of schools for the science of Bulgaria, Austria, and Lithuania. The editor-in-chief: Ata Ovezgheldyev, Doctor of Engineering Science.

The frequency of issues in all journals is twice a year (June, December). All materials are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The authors retain copyright and publication rights without limitation.

Collaboration with editorial boards

Collaborating with the editorial boards of the journals between 2018 and 2019, the library undertook the work of obtaining the publications’ ISSN (each for print and online) and ISSN ID certificates in the International Centre (France).

To ease the findability of scholarly publications within a wide range of scientific databases, there is an assignment procedure of DOI for the articles. As of 2020, all articles of periodical publications of the University have a DOI.

Since a key element of a new scientific publication promotion is an informative and well-designed website, which is a journal’s landmark in e-science space, the IT department of the Scientific Library created and managed the website for each edition using Open Journal Systems (OJS). This includes metadata publishing of journal articles, homepage preparation of the journal issues, integrity ensuring of the database and the landing pages of the scientific journals and regular backup copies.

There is a support service to provide the scientific editorial staff and authors with full tutorial instructions on how to use OJS. It coordinates efforts and unifies the editorial policy of all thirteen journals.

The websites of the journals currently use an Open Journal Systems 2.4.4.1 open-source software package, which serves the processes of management and publication. The package is developed, maintained, and distributed for free by the Public Knowledge Project under the GNU General Public License.17

Stage 3. Indexing in international databases

In 2018, we began to integrate the new university journals into international databases and reference lists. This process lasted in 2019 as well. Now, all scientific journals and collections of scientific papers are indexed in Crossref cross-publisher reference, in search engines and the databases of BASE, Google Academy, Central and East European Index, WorldCat and in the Scientific Periodicals of Ukraine information resource by the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.

All journals are indexed in the international databases of Academic Resource Index (ResearchBib), Index Copernicus Journals Master List18, Polska Bibliografia Naukowa (but International Relations: Theory and Practical Aspects).

The journal Ukrainian Information Space is additionally presented on the research portal ResearchGate.

The scientific journals’ websites are placed on the platform of the Ukrainian research and academic network URAN, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), one of the most famous search services in the world that provides information to open access materials and indexes both journal and scientific article titles; as well as on Ulrichsweb (Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory), an authoritative international database of periodicals.

Future stages

In the future, to promote the University’s scholarly publications in prestigious databases, lists and search engines, the library will provide training and workshop sessions for authors of articles. The program includes lessons on how to write abstracts, on shifting to e-publishing system-based networking between the author and journal team; to train authors basic principles of using digital article preparation tools offered by Scopus and Web of Science and therefore also to use Mendeley and EndNote.

An important task will be the development of the system into open access defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI, Budapest Open Access Initiative) via:

  • participation of the University’s scientists in international projects of scientific communication,

  • registration of the university’s repository in international search engines,

  • listing of all scientific journals of the University in open access directories,

  • articles’ compliance with the requirements of scientometrics databases (peer-reviewed, English language, with structured abstract, references and relevant metadata).

Installation near the library’s checkpoint

Conclusions

Thus, the Scientific Library of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts is completing a complex process of redesigning its role and tasks within the system of scientific communication of the University.

The article has presented the library’s contribution to the editorial and publishing process, as well as to the promotion of thirteen new scientific journals of the University. It has provided a description of the mission, objectives of scientific publications, editorial staff, stages and promotion results within the international databases and lists.

Looking ahead, the Scientific Library’s activity will be focused on the development of information-analytical monitoring and bibliometric analysis of communication systems of the University; a design for the representation of scientists’ profiles in the search engines and the international scientometrics databases; facilitating the indexing of scientific journals of the University in Scopus and Web of Science as international databases.

Priorities include the support of e-publishing and the development of individual awareness of lecturers for scholarly research based on international scholarly resources.

Providing the scientific and educational work with information support, the library transforms its role and objectives, reinventing itself from the auxiliary research element to an active participant of scientific and educational work. It boosts the scientific ranking of institutions of higher education and researchers’ brand names as well.

  1. Suzanne Cady Stapleton, A Team Approach: Library Publishing Partnerships with Scholarly Societies, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 7(1), (2019)  http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2326.↩︎

  2. Yulia Didenko and Anna Radchenko, Publishing activity as a way of scientific communication and pursuit of ratings, Bulletin of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 9, (2017): pp. 82–98. https://doi.org/10.15407/visn2017.09.082↩︎

  3. Sergei Nazarovets and Tatyana Yaroshenko, The Mohylanskii Protocol: Recommendations for Improving the Editorial Policies of Ukrainian Scientific Publications, Science of Ukraine in the world information space, 11, (2015): pp. 56–59.↩︎

  4. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, Series: Audiovisual Art and Production, http://audiovisual-art.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  5. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, Series in Management of Social and Cultural Activity, http://sociocultural.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  6. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, Series in Museology and Monumental Studies, http://museum-monument.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  7. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, Series in Musical Art, http://musical-art.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  8. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, Series in Stage Art, http://artonscene.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  9. Bulletin of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, Series: Tourism, http://tourism.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  10. Demiurge, http://demiurge.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  11. International Relations: Theory and Practical Aspects, http://international-relations.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  12. Restaurant and Hotel Consulting. Innovations, http://restaurant-hotel.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  13. Dance Studies, http://dancestudios.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  14. Ukrainian Journal of Library and Information Sciences, http://librinfosciences.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  15. Ukrainian Information Space, http://ukrinfospace.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  16. Digital platform: information technologies in sociocultural sphere, http://infotech-soccult.knukim.edu.ua/↩︎

  17. https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/↩︎

  18. https://indexcopernicus.com/index.php/en/parametryzacja-menu-2/journals-master-list-2↩︎

Yurii Horban, PhD in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor, Scientific Library, Director. Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, 36, Yevhena Konovaltsia St., Kyiv, 01133, Ukraine. E-mail: . ORCID: 0000-0001-5837-4409.

Viacheslav Lukianenko, Scientific Library, Head of IT Department. Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, 36, Yevhena Konovaltsia St., Kyiv, 01133, Ukraine. E-mail: . ORCID: 0000-0002-6519-1253.

Olena Skachenko, Scientific Library, Head of Sector. Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, 36, Yevhena Konovaltsia St., Kyiv, 01133, Ukraine. E-mail . ORCID: 0000-0003-3827-5985.