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Lisa Nickel
Taking a Proactive Approach and Encouraging Faculty to Publish
Librarians strive to help teaching faculty and their students connect to information resources best meeting their needs. More than that, we try to build relationships of trust and expertise to create opportunities for collaboration across campus. In spring 2005, librarians at UNCC’s J. Murrey Atkins Library were looking for projects to get faculty more fully engaged with the library. We wanted to be more proactive, and market our services more aggressively to faculty.
Challenge Leads to Outreach
A great outreach opportunity arose as a new dean for the College of Health and Human Services joined the university. This new dean, Dr. Karen Schmaling, contacted the library regarding how to encourage college faculty to publish. The college includes the departments of nursing, kinesiology, social work, and health behavior and administration. Publishing in the “right” journals has always been, and presumably will always be, a concern for reappointment, tenure and promotion all over campus. However, in some areas like the health sciences, where professionals often become academics after working for years in the field, writing for publication can be especially challenging.
Library liaisons to the college worked with the dean, university librarian and head of collections and technical services to brainstorm ways to assist faculty in their research and publication efforts. Librarians already provided journal impact factors,
citation analysis and research advice to faculty, but such service was always on a request basis, in individual consultations and largely publicized by word of mouth.
We had recently begun publishing library newsletters — customized for particular departments — which detailed new resources and services we provide, but again, this provision of services was reactive. So, with this sign of interest from the new dean, the library aimed to build a more meaningful connection with teaching faculty by implementing a pilot project focusing on faculty publishing. By taking the opportunity to design a new library service based on a high-priority need of the college, our library moved to a more proactive approach and added value to content already available but underused.
Librarians, Faculty and Elsevier Publisher Participate
This pilot project involved providing College of Health and Human Services faculty with a newsletter listing research and funding resources on campus. Among resources listed were relevant library holdings including:
- Research databases, such as ScienceDirect, CINAHL and MEDLINE/PubMed, and links to streaming tutorials to refresh faculty members in their use.
- Prominent journals categorized per departmental fields and ranked by journal impact factor (available from ISI).
- Data services such as provided by the US Census and ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research).
Also as part of the project, the library hosted a panel discussion focusing on academic issues in publishing, as well as personal citation analysis and journal impact factors. By concentrating on issues critical to academic faculty, we generated a high level of interest, excellent attendance and lively exchange. Indeed the discussion emerged as a highlight of the project so far.
Our panel discussed how journals are formed and editorial boards put together; how to select journals appropriate for
article submissions; what constitutes peer review; how faculty can participate in peer review for journals; indices of journal quality; and what reappointment, tenure and promotion (RTP) committees and administrators consider when judging journal quality and impact.
The panel featured three speakers. Dr. Andrew Harver, the chair of UNCC’s Health Behavior and Administration Department, addressed the role of journal quality in reviews for reappointment, promotion and tenure. I addressed currently used quality
metrics, such as the Web of Science and journal citation rankings. Josh Spieler, a publisher with Elsevier, addressed the roles of the publisher, editor, reviewers and authors.
A very active question and answer session covered issues like open access publishing, the importance of departments using elements other than impact factors when evaluating faculty publishing efforts, and how to become an editor and find a mentor. Additionally during the discussion some library collection development issues, such as journal cost and selection as well as publisher negotiations, arose.
Exchange Generates Positive Feedback
Deans, department chairs and faculty who attended provided extremely positive feedback. Almost immediately, librarians experienced a flurry of requests for citation analysis and journal citation reports from faculty who attended or from
colleagues to whom the information was passed along. Our future plans include offering smaller sessions to individual departments, and including as speakers more departmental faculty members who are widely published. 
