Louann Terveer
These days I find myself yearning for uplifting stories—stories of people making connections and working in community on like-minded goals, of how their efforts blossom into something meaningful and useful. You, too? Then read on—
Something to celebrate
First, join me in extending kudos to three Macalester affiliates on Gleanings from the Field: Food Security, Resilience, and Experiential Learning—Dan Trudeau, Professor and Chair Geography Department; Bill Moseley, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography/Director, Food, Agriculture & Society Program; and Paul Schadewald, Senior Project Manager at Bringing Theory to Practice (formerly with Macalester Civic Engagement Center). They edited and co-authored chapters in this newly released open access title from Lever Press.
Gleanings from the Field is the culmination of their collaborative efforts to create ongoing, cross-campus and organizational connections through the development of a learning community–focused on food security and experiential learning:
We ultimately developed a program to bring together participants from different small liberal arts colleges in the ACM consortium, provide frameworks for understanding food security and experiential learning, and support each participant in designing an experiential learning activity related to food security and incorporating it into their curriculum.
At the end of the day, students across institutions benefit from the collective learning undertaken by their instructors and shared in this open access monograph. A collection of essays, together, these demonstrate multiple approaches to integrating experiential learning into the undergraduate curriculum, helping students to think about real-life pathways to solving issues of food security.
How did this become an open access book?
In fact, the connections that lead to this book being published and freely available on your screen spans out years earlier in a connected community-initiated story…
The story starts in the early 2010’s with a group of library directors lamenting about the state of publishing and the barriers to access of academic scholarship. Individuals from the Oberlin Group of Librariesconsortia (this includes the Macalester Library) had an idea that liberal arts colleges could be at the forefront of supporting and creating innovative open access publishing of quality scholarly work.
At one of the consortial meetings, one of the Library Directors boldly proposed:
…that the Oberlin Group establish an open access press, devoted to the production of peer-reviewed books, rigorously edited and distributed in electronic form without fees.
The idea was that small liberal arts colleges generally don’t have the capacity to support a publishing program on their own like the university presses of larger institutions. However, perhaps shared support and efforts could generate a press that would reflect the values and scholarly output of the liberal arts institutions.
Years of planning and consultant research resulted in a business plan in 2015 that established Lever Press—the only open access press led collectively by a group of North American academic libraries. Read more about its history in How Librarians are Advancing Open Book Publishing at the Lever Press.
How is this different?
The state of open access publishing is messy, to say the least. While open access publishing models open up access for readers, some continue to perpetuate inequities integrated into scholarly publishing and create barriers through fees charged to scholarly authors. Macalester Library is delighted to be one of the supporting institutional members of this open access model that breaks down barriers for both readers and authors. It democratizes the publishing process by centering the scholars, their work, and their institutions—instead of profit margins.
This is what Gleanings from the Field editors had to say about working with the folks at Lever Press:
Working with Lever Press was an outstanding experience. From the outset, their team clearly communicated expectations and formatting guidelines, and they were fully supportive of our project's goals. The peer review process was efficient and provided constructive feedback. After acceptance by the editorial board, production proceeded on schedule, characterized by clear communication from various members of the Lever Press team and meticulous attention during copy editing. Throughout, the team was responsive to our input and collaborated closely with us to produce a final product we are proud of. The book itself is visually appealing, and the open-access version is user-friendly and effectively incorporates digital media. We highly recommend working with Lever Press.
-Dan Trudeau, Professor and Chair, Geography Department
Lever Press was an absolute pleasure for us to collaborate with on this project. They grasped the importance of our initiative, facilitated a smooth peer review process, and ensured that we had a great publication in the end with quality copy editing and marketing. We especially appreciated the open access aspect that Lever Press offered as it was important for us to reach the broadest possible audience.- William Moseley, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography
Want to be part of this story arc?
Today, Lever Press continues to build capacity with 7 book series and 38 titles—10 of which were published just last year. Membership counts at 48 institutions and growing. In whole, the Lever Press titles have been accessed over 40,000 times in over 150 countries—all for free! See more usage data at Lever Press Impact & Dashboard.
If you are interested in learning more, check out Lever Press’ full list of titles, consider participating in the editorial board, or find out more about publishing with Lever Press and their proposal guidelines.
