Society for Scholarly Publishing Announced 2023 Fellows: Two Nigerian Librarians Awarded!

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) has announced that sixteen students and early-career professionals in publishing, librarianship and scholarly communications have been awarded the highly competitive Fellowships for 2023. According to the SSP "the Career Development Committee selected these outstanding individuals from a robust applicant pool based on their high level of engagement in their fields and a diverse range of skills in scholarly communications".

Two distinguished Nigerian librarians: Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti and Oyedele Abimbola Ojeniyi, Central Bank of Nigeria Center for Economics and Finance, University of Ibadan, make the prestigious award. 

The full list of 2023 Fellows are: 

• Andrea Blatz, University of Texas Press

• 

  SSP 2023 Fellows

  Anna Maltbie, Wiley
• Cassandra Larose, Royal Roads University
• Chen He, Wuhan University
• Chenyue Jiao, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
• Francesca Soldati, University of Aberdeen
• Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti
• Jamaica Jones, University of Pittsburgh
• Janaynne Carvalho do Amaral, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Mario Pallua, Libertas International University
• Mary Alice Keller, HCA Healthcare
• Nataliia Kaliuzhna, Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts; State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine
• Oyedele Abimbola Ojeniyi, Central Bank of Nigeria Center for Economics and Finance, University of Ibadan
• Rebecca Michaels-Walker, Toronto Metropolitan University
• Sarah Frances Gordon, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City
• Shriyaa Mittal, AIP Publishing

Congratulations!

See more details about the fellowship and SSP here

Towards Curing the Predatory Publishing Malady in the South: The TriangleSCI Facilitation

 

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari
Our team's project was accepted in June as one of the five teams (projects) to participate in the ongoing Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute in Duke University, Durham, NC, United States. Our project aims to mitigate the predatory publishing debacle through a community of practice (CoP)-developed toolkit and/or strategies. Members of our team have varying expertise in the core components and contexts of the project. The cross-regional team represents a good example of North-South collaboration of scholars/librarians from Canada- Prof Dan O'Donnell; Algeria- Prof Samir Hachani; Canada/United States- Dr. Nathan Woods; Bangladesh- Shaharima Parvin; Nigeria- Dr. Basiru Adetomiwa and Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari. Post TriangleSCI, we hope to expand the project to other regions of the Global South therefore recruiting more participants into a named community. 

So far it has been a wonderful experience participating in the institute generously funded by the Mellon Foundation. 

The participating teams and projects in the 2022 institute include:

• A Post-Pandemic Reckoning: Improving Metadata for Better Accessibility to Scholarly Archives for People with Disabilities by Erika Fülöp, Dene Grigar, Jarah Moesch, Richard Snyder
• Building a contextual alternative to scholarly journal un/safelists by Joshua Neds-Fox, Matt Ruen, Teresa Schultz, Brianne Selman, Leila Sterman, Stephanie Towery
• Equity Toolkit for Disability Inclusion by Karen Stoll Farrell, Kimberly Gladfelter Graham, Simon Holt, Sylvia Izzo Hunter, Erin Osborne-Martin, Stacy Scott
• Intercultural & interdisciplinary open resources supporting environmental justice by Nadine Aboulmagd, Alex Armstrong, Elena Berg, Jeff Gima, Fiona Glasgow, Antonio Lopez, Dalal Rahme
• Towards Curing the Predatory Publishing Malady in the South: Community of Practice Approach to Developing Local Strategies and Toolkits by Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari, Basiru Adetomiwa, Samir Hachani, Dan Paul O’Donnell, Shaharima Parvin, Nathan Woods

We would be leaving Durham energized to pursue the implementation of our project and by that contribute to the public good. We however express our profound gratitude to the TriangleSCI team, Paolo Mangiafico, Mellon Foundation and of course, our home institutions.

"Libraries on the Front Line of War": Iryna Kuchma's Narration of Libraries' Inspiring Roles during the Russia Invasion of Ukraine

Iryna Kuchma

Originally posted to EIFL blog

I am just a few kilometres away from Kyiv with my family and every   day I hear another story about how libraries are supporting their  communities. I hugely admire them. 

In times like these everyone is doing much more than they can. The Ukrainian Library Association reports that libraries are providing shelters, facilitating access to information and the internet, launching humanitarian hubs, documenting the war and supporting each other. 

Many libraries have turned their book storage spaces into bomb shelters for local communities - cozy with lots of interesting books around! Tea and support is also offered, so this is already considered a new library service. 

In more or less quiet parts of Ukraine, libraries continue to offer access to information - guides from local authorities, tips from psychologists for coping each day, motivational quotes from literature - and access to the internet. They also serve as hubs to collect goods and humanitarian aid for defence units and hospitals, and to sew medical gowns and knit camouflage nets. 

A national digital library kicks-off, recording the war - photo, video and audio facts that document the Russian aggression and the Ukrainian struggle; posters, memes and jokes showcasing creativity; information showing support from the international library community and drawing attention to fake news and information. 

A librarian self-support network is also being built, offering help and responding to requests for help. 

And planning for rebuilding of  damaged library buildings has started as well - together with the Ukrainian charitable foundation Library Country which is documenting the damage.

About the writer

Iryna Kuchma is a multilingual expert in open access, open data and open science. She works with EIFL as Open Access Programme Manager since 2008 where in collaboration with libraries and library consortia in more than 60 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, she advocates for open access to research results, facilitates the development and implementation of open science policies and infrastructures, and provides support and training. Iryna is based in Ukraine.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Re: Internationalizing Nigerian Journals Using OJS: Time to Act is Now!

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari 

With reference to my December 3, 2018 post titled "Internationalizing Nigerian Journals Using OJS: Time to Act is Now!", I am glad to announce the huge role I played leading to the online presence of two Nigerian journals and still counting. With my advice and expertise in conjunction with the technical prowess of a colleague and the goodwill of the editorial teams of these two journals we have now begun the journey to massively enroll more Nigerian journals online and consequently put them on the International map. The PKP's Open Journal System is the preferred choice of platform given its leading role in the sector and being a supporting infrastructure for Open as default (Open- Science, Access, etc) which I actively advocate for.

I hereby gladly present our two latest journals online as mediums of communicating credible research of scholars in cognate fields from every part of the world:

1. ABUAD International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (AIJNAS)

AIJNAS

AIJNAS is a university-based scholarly journal of the College of Science, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. The journal publishes research articles, based on theoretical or experimental research works in all the fields of natural and applied sciences. In addition to having a journal-level digital object identifier (DOI)- https://doi.org/10.53982/aijnas, every accepted and published article carries its unique DOI and indexed in many reputable scholarly databases and archiving infrastructures for persistent visibility and access. Authors are thereby cordially invited to submit original and unpublished full-length papers for the forthcoming issues of the ABUAD International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (AIJNAS). 

2. Fountain of Knowledge Journal of Library and Information Science (FKJOLIS)

FKJOLIS

FKJOLIS is a scholarly society journal of the Nigerian Library Association (NLA) Ekiti State Chapter. The journal is a peer reviewed publication that publishes scholarly articles and essays that contribute to knowledge and boost the frontiers of research in the areas of library and information science (LIS) scholarship and practice. 

In addition to these, we have improved capacity through experience in getting Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for published articles which will go a long way in giving Nigerian journals permanent footprints in the scholarly communications landscape.

Call it walking the talk, you are absolutely not wrong!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Alleged 'Plagiarism': Appeal Quashed, Justice Served for FUNAAB's Associate Professor and Assistant Lecturer

Nine years after they were maliciously accused of 'plagiarism' and unjustly dismissed by the authorities of Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Dr. Janet Bamgbose and Mr. Akeem Bamigbade have, for the second time in six years, received favourable court ruling on the case they filed suing the university. An Appeal Court sitting in  Lagos has on November 25, 2021 dismissed a case of plagiarism filed by the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, against them reported The Punch, Tribune and many other news media as the details of the court verdict emerged.

Prior to this round of legal victory for the victimized duo, Hon. Justice J. D. Peters of the National Industrial Court sitting at the Lagos Judicial Division in the Suit No: NICN/IA/ 371/2013 on the 1st of December 2016, granted the reliefs sought by Bamgbose and Bamigbade against which the university filed the failed appeal. Both  Bamgbose and Bamigbade were Associate Professor and Assistant Lecturer of Chemistry respectively before their acrimonious disengagement from the service of the university. 

It is hoped that the university will now do the needful and learn to follow due process especially shunning malice and vendetta when handling a serious issue like plagiarism. It would be recalled, however, that the illegality was perpetrated in May 2013 during the administration of the then Vice-Chancellor, Prof Olusola Oyewole.

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn- The Holy Bible