Equity in Scholarly Communications – join us for TriangleSCI 2019

Scholarly Communications @ Duke 2019-08-20

Readers of this blog may know that since 2014, Duke University Libraries have been hosting the Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute, in partnership with our colleagues at NC Central University, NC State University, and UNC-Chapel Hill, with financial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Each year we invite proposals from teams (rather than individuals) to work on projects they define within their own team and across other teams working on projects around a common theme. This happens across four days in October in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and expenses for participants whose proposals are selected are covered by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

We’ve recently announced this year’s theme – Equity in Scholarly Communications – and invite proposals from you! You can find more details in the announcement below and on the trianglesci.org web site, or by following @TriangleSCI on Twitter or seeing what others are saying in the #TriangleSCI hashtag.

Teams from past years have gone on to launch programs such as these, initially developed at TriangleSCI:

Join us and develop your own project! Proposals are due on April 24.

The Scholarly Communication Institute invites you to participate in SCI 2019, its sixth year in North Carolina’s Research Triangle region. This year’s theme will be Equity in Scholarly Communications and the program will take place October 13 through 17, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Triangle SCI is not your typical academic conference – it’s four days of concentrated but relaxed time with a diverse cohort of individuals who have come to start new projects they have proposed, in teams they have built and with advice and contributions from participants on other teams and a set of interlocutors and experts who work across teams.

You set the agenda, and you define the deliverables – TriangleSCI provides the scaffolding for your team to develop its project. If your team’s proposal is selected, SCI will cover all the costs for team members to participate, including travel, meals, and accommodations, including for international participants. For more information about how TriangleSCI works, see the FAQ and links from previous years of SCI.

Probably the best way to get a sense of what it’s like is through the words of participants from past years: they have described TriangleSCI as “One of the best scholarly experiences I’ve had.” and “an amazing incubator of ideas, innovation and collaboration. Grateful to be a part of this incredible experience!” Learn more about TriangleSCI from the perspective of participants via this podcast (with transcript), this summary blog post, and other highlights from SCI 2018 and previous years.

This year’s theme is Equity in Scholarly Communications, described this way in the page about the theme:

Discussions around scholarly communications, at this Institute and elsewhere in North America and Europe, tend not to account for the wide range of factors that influence whether and how different communities create and access scholarship: not all stakeholders are from well-resourced institutions or nations; not all of us speak, write, read, search, and think in the same language; not all of us enjoy robust support for scholarship, or reliable access to the Internet, or modern research tools, or easy access to libraries, or means of keeping in touch with colleagues and abreast with global developments in our disciplines. Too many platforms, standards, systems, publications, projects, and discussions move forward with only some of us in view.

For the 2019 Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute, we invite proposals from teams that aim to build a more inclusive and equitable global network of scholarship. SCI is an opportunity to spend a few days with a diverse set of people to investigate challenges, develop plans, test processes, come to agreements, and launch initiatives. SCI is an ideal place to bring together perspectives and expertise that may not normally intersect, and to build understandings and new models based on them. We encourage pragmatic, proactive optimism, and hope participants will use SCI as a platform to nurture positive change.

We especially encourage teams with participants from the “global south”, historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, community colleges, K-12 schools, independent scholars, and other institutions and backgrounds whose needs and perspectives are often overlooked in discussions about scholarly communications and the infrastructures and processes that support it.

Please see the theme page for more information, including some ideas of who you might bring together to form a team, and questions you might address – we’re looking for a broad and diverse set of perspectives, and teams that will address both specific and general problems and opportunities. This is a great opportunity to launch a new project, have some concentrated time to develop an existing project with a broader set of collaborators, or just to begin to explore and experiment with ideas that are difficult to pursue in your usual work context. Remember that if your proposal is selected, your expenses to participate will be covered by SCI, so this is a great opportunity for potential participants who might normally find traveling to such a program cost-prohibitive.

To participate, form a team of 4 to 6 people, and submit a proposal along the lines of what’s described in the Request for Proposals (RFP). Proposals are due by the end of the day on April 24, 2019.

If you have questions about any of this that aren’t already answered in the FAQ, please contact scholcomm-institute@duke.edu and we’d be glad to help. You might also find some people you know in TriangleSCI cohorts from past years, and you can ask them about their experience and get tips from them about what made their proposal and project successful.

Thanks as always to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for continuing to provide funding for the Triangle SCI and making all of this possible!

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