Effective March 10, 2021, UC authors can make their research freely available for anyone to read through three new transformative open access publishing agreements with The Royal Society journals, Canadian Science Publishing (CSP), and The Company of Biologists (CoB).

These new, cost-neutral agreements will apply retrospectively to articles accepted after January 1, 2021 and will run through December 31, 2023. The contract with CSP is the first such agreement for a Canadian journal publisher.

The agreements achieve both of UC’s key goals for transformative open access journal agreements: controlling costs and providing for open access publishing in the full portfolio, including hybrid (subscription-based with open access options) and open access journals of The Royal Society, Canadian Science Publishing, and The Company of Biologists.

UC authors can now publish an unlimited number of research articles immediately open access. The CoB agreement covers all 10 UC campuses, while SCP and The Royal Society agreement are available to all campuses except UCSF. Under the agreement, the UC libraries will automatically pay the first $1,000 of the open access fee, or article processing charge (APC), for all included UC authors who choose to publish in a contracted journal.

Authors are asked to pay the remainder if they have research funds available to do so.

Authors who do not have research funds available can request full funding of the APC from the libraries, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish open access in these journals.

By combining funding from the libraries with authors’ grant funds, the agreement provides a model for how research-intensive institutions can create a sustainable and inclusive path to full open access.

Publishers are exploring how to shift from subscription-based business models to models that make it easier and more affordable for researchers to publish their work open access.

The agreement also provides researchers on participating UC campuses with unlimited access to the full portfolio of Royal Society journals, Canadian Science Publishing journals, and The Company of Biologists’ journals and their archives.

For more detail about these agreements, please see:

• The Royal Society open access agreement
• The Company of Biologists open access agreement
• Canadian Science Publishing open access agreement

About UC’s Transformative Open Access Agreements:

Transformative open access agreements support UC’s mission as a public university and advance the global shift toward sustainable open access publishing by making more UC-authored research articles open to the world, while maintaining journal affordability. UC seeks to partner with publishers of all types, sizes and disciplines to jointly advance a worldwide transition to open access across the entire landscape of scholarly journal publishing. For more on these aims and principles, see UC’s Call to Action for Negotiating Journal Agreements at UC, the UC faculty Academic Senate’s Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication, and UC’s priorities for publisher negotiations.

UCR Library is proud to congratulate our Outreach & Public Services Librarian, Robin M. Katz for receiving the James Harvey Robinson Prize from the American Historical Association.

The James Harvey Robinson Prize is awarded to the creators of a teaching aid that has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history for public or educational purposes. Robin and Julie Golia, her project partner at Brooklyn Historical Society, were recognized for the excellence of their work on TeachArchives.org. The award ceremony was held in Colorado at the Sheraton Downtown Denver on January 4, 2017 during the AHA Annual Convention.

Robin and Julie received a three-year grant for the US Department of Education through the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), which was intended to spur the development of innovations that improve educational outcomes and develop an evidence base of effective practices. “We wanted it to be about more than just our primary grant audience,” Robin stated. “We wanted to help educators to get their pedagogical practices up-to-date.”

They used the grant to support a program called Students & Faculty in the Archives (SAFA). "One of the great things about the project that gave birth to TeachArchives was that Robin was an archivist and I was an historian, so we brought very different perspectives to the work," said Julie. Over a period of three years, SAFA worked in partnership with three colleges that were in walking distance from the Brooklyn Historical Society, each of which did not have special collections in their own libraries.

Robin and Julie’s goal with SAFA was to bring students in to use the archives for hands-on learning. “Anyone can come use special collections,” Robin said. “We wanted the students to have a more meaningful use of the archives, more active and hands-on learning, where they could apply themselves to a problem using the collection.” From 2011 to 2013, they collaborated with over 1,100 students, 18 partner faculty, and 65 courses over four semesters on three different campuses.

They measured and assessed the impact of their program and found that the students who came to use the archives were more engaged, had better academic performance, better retention, and higher rates of course completion than their peers. The overall findings of the program determined that learning in archives can positively affect students.

“We were really passionate about getting more and more students in, and we were in a spot where we really got to focus on it, so that was a nice luxury,” Robin explained. “Our intention was to share universal lessons with a wider global audience and engage and empower educators from elementary school to graduate school with practical how-to articles, case studies, and sample exercises with agendas, lesson plans, and handouts, as well as documentation for the grant project.”

According to Robin, the grant called for dissemination to share what they had learned, so she and Julie gave countless conference presentations and published several articles to share their findings. They also advocated to create the TeachArchives.org website to make the information available online for free to a global audience.

"At the AHA awards ceremony, I had the opportunity to speak to a few of the people who did the peer review process for the award," explained Julie. "It was terrific to learn that the processes, the articles, and the other tools that we created on the website are being used at all different levels of education, from primary schools to colleges. That it is exactly what we intended it to be. It wasn’t just the design how we saw it in our heads, but it was great to see that was how it was playing out across the country. That was incredibly gratifying.”

Now that Robin is at UC Riverside, she hopes to expand on her work with TeachArchives through the instruction project that she is helping to build by bringing this new method of primary source instruction to Special Collections & University Archives.

The prolific scholar of comparative literature and science fiction helmed the world-renowned Eaton Conference.

By Bettye Miller

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — George Edgar Slusser, whose determination to develop the study of science fiction as an academic discipline led to the growth in size, scope and international reputation of UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy, died November 4th at his home in Highland, California. He was 75.

Dr. Slusser, curator emeritus of the Eaton Collection and professor emeritus of comparative literature, joined the UCR Library in 1979 and, beginning in 1991, held a joint position as professor of comparative literature until his retirement in 2005. Under his leadership the collection – formally known as the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature – grew from 7,500 volumes to the internationally renowned collection it is today, a collection that includes books, journals, fanzines, comic books, authors’ manuscripts, media and memorabilia. He taught the first courses in science fiction studies at UCR and originated the Eaton Conference, which he chaired for more than 20 years. The conference drew — and still draws — scholars from around the world

Rob Latham, professor of English and co-director of UCR’s Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies program, said Professor Slusser’s contribution to SF studies was significant.

“Over three decades, George Slusser built the Eaton Collection up from a small core of titles into the world-class archive that it is today,” Latham said. “The field of science fiction scholarship owes him an incalculable debt.”

Science fiction author and UC Irvine astrophysicist Gregory Benford described Professor Slusser as “a fine man, insightful critic, innovative educator, buoyant spirit. His criticism deeply emerged from his own vast knowledge of science fiction in several languages, uniquely in the field. Without George, Eaton would not remotely approach its present importance in the literary world.”

Howard Hendrix, a Science Fiction author who earned his Ph.D. from UC Riverside, called Slusser a mentor and friend. “George Slusser showed me that science fiction is worthy of serious intellectual study, and his example encouraged my own work as both a science fiction critic and science fiction writer,” he said.

“George was a true and loyal friend of many, a lover of life, and a lover of the life of the mind,” added SciFi author and scholar Eric Rabkin. “All conversations with George shone with his belief that everything had deeper meanings, significance, and the capacity to bring us wonder. Science fiction was a fit genre for him, and a genre whose worth he demonstrated continuously in the collection he guided to preeminence, the people he helped, and the powerful body of criticism he produced. He was a generous and important collaborator in ways small and large for so many of the people in his chosen field. I am honored to be among them.”

Dr. Slusser, a San Francisco native, earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, his Diplôme d’Études Françaises from the Université of Poitiers, and his Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University, where he wrote his dissertation on E.T.A. Hoffman, a 19th century German Romantic author of fantasy and horror.

He was widely known for his scholarship in the field of science fiction, writing or editing nearly 40 books and more than 100 articles. In 1986 he received the Pilgrim Award, presented by the Science Fiction Research Association for lifetime achievement in the field of science fiction scholarship. He also was the recipient of the Harvard Traveling Fellowship and Fulbright Awards to Germany and France. He also received the Edward A. Dickson Emeritus/a Professorship Award from UCR to support research by emeritus faculty.

Among the scholarly books he wrote or edited were “Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in His Own Land,” “The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. LeGuin,” “The Bradbury Chronicles,” “Harlan Ellison: Unrepentant Harlequin,” “The Space Odysseys of Arthur C. Clarke,” and “The Delany Intersection: Samuel R. Delany Considered as a Writer of Semi-Precious Words.”

He and his wife, Danièle Châtelain-Slusser, an associate professor of French at the University of Redlands, co-authored several books, including “Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind,” a 2012 translation of three novellas by Belgian science fiction writer J.H. Rosny aîné (1856-1940). The book included an introductory essay that explains the writer’s place in the science fiction canon and within the context of evolutionary biology. They also published a well-received translation and study of Balzac’s “The Centenarian.”

In a 2000 interview published in UCR’s magazine — then known as Fiat Lux — Professor Slusser described the significance of science fiction literature and the Eaton Collection in particular.

“Science fiction is the natural bridge between things scientific and things artistic,” he said. “On these shelves are treasures for scholars in the ancient sciences, art history, religious mythology. … (Science fiction) is the one real international literary form we have today, and as such has branched out to visual media, interactive media and on to whatever new media the world will invent in the 21st century. Crossover issues between the sciences and the humanities are crucial for the century to come.”

Robert Heath, UCR professor emeritus of plant physiology and biophysics and a longtime friend, co-taught an undergraduate Honors seminar in science fiction with Slusser that focused on both the scientific and literary aspects of time travel, aliens and robotics. “He often was outspoken about the need for SF studies and felt that he was ‘a Stranger in a Strange Land’ in that he was fighting the classical ways of thinking about science and humanities,” Heath said. “He never gave up, however, and today UCR is moving vigorously in the direction where he was pointing for so long.”

Professor Slusser is survived by his wife, Danièle Chatelain-Slusser. No arrangements have been made.

• Read more about Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Grant

Save the date! On Tuesday, December 3, UC Riverside will host its second annual Day of Giving.

Day of Giving is a unique, online fundraising opportunity that lasts only 24 hours.

For Day of Giving 2019, the UCR Library will highlight these three funds:

• Student Success Fund

• Creat’R Lab Fund

• Library Development Fund

There are two ways you can help.

First:

Post on social media about the Day of Giving. Tag us (@ucrlibrary on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook) and include the hashtag #GivingTueUCR in your post, so we can interact with you. (Hint: Also tag some fellow Highlanders who love the library.)

You can use the “Share” buttons (above right) to share this story easily by email, Facebook or Twitter.

Second:

Make your gift early using the button below (scroll down to "Library Development Fund"). All charitable contributions are tax-deductible and will directly benefit everyone at UC Riverside who uses the UCR Library.

The UCR Library has recently acquired access to three magazine archives, which will expand UCR Library users’ access to important historical and cultural content covering a wide range of topics.

The three magazines are:

Ebony (1945-2014)

Originally published by John H. Johnson beginning in November 1945, Ebony has served as an influential African-American magazine promoting stories important to the black community and focusing on the achievements of African-American leaders. This archive includes more than 800 issues covering African-American culture, business, civil rights, entertainment, fashion, history, and politics.

Life (1936-2000)

The Life magazine archive presents an extensive collection of the famed photojournalism magazine, spanning its very first issue in November 1936 through December 2000 in a comprehensive cover-to-cover format. Published by Time Inc., the magazine has featured story-telling through documentary photographs and informative captions. Each issue visually and powerfully depicted national and international events and topical stories, providing intimate views of real people and their real-life situations.

Time (1923-2000)

The Time magazine archive includes more than 4,000 issues of the prominent news magazine, dating back to its first issue in March 1923 through December 2000. This weekly magazine contains reports of national and international current events, politics, sports, and entertainment. Capturing the relevant news for a given week, the magazine remains an important resource for researchers studying just about any aspect of Twentieth Century history and life.

The Ebony, Life, and Time magazine archives are available on the EBSCOhost platform and may be searched simultaneously with the UCR Library’s other popular EBSCOhost databases, such as Academic Search Complete. Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate the information they seek.

For more information, contact Carla Arbagey, Arts & Humanities Collection Strategist Librarian at carlar@ucr.edu.

The UCR Library remains committed to supporting our students as they prepare to take their spring quarter final exams.

This is the reason why we present our Finals Week Stress Relief (FWSR) event series. This quarter, like this past fall and winter quarter, we took a different approach due to the continuing campuswide COVID-19 closure.

Our FWSR committee curated an extensive list of free, online activities that we hope R'Students will enjoy, including:

• Virtual Therapy Fluffies (including live webcam videos from various wildlife organizations and aquariums)
• Story Time with two of the UCR Library's staff team
• Guilty pleasures
• Escape rooms
• Relaxation
• Virtual tours
• Fun and educational videos
• And campus resources to support student wellness.

In addition to the web-based activities, the FWSR committee is hosting three interactive Zoom events or games plus a social media contest where students will have opportunities to win gift cards, UC Riverside souvenirs, and other prizes. Please RSVP to save your seat using the links below:

• Bingo - Tuesday, June 1 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
• Therapy Fluffies - Wednesday, June 2 at 12 p.m. Co-sponsored by The Well's Active Minds.
• Kahoot! - Thursday, June 3 at 11 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m.
• Instagram contest - Tuesday, June 1 - Friday, June 11, starting at 9 a.m. each weekday. Co-sponsored by UCR HUB Programs.

Visit the Finals Week Stress Relief activities page and click on each of the category tabs at the top of the page to see all the options.

UCR Libraries to host events that will teach Inland residents, campus students, scholars and staff to write entries for online encyclopedia

By Bettye Miller

Wikipedia edit-a-thons sponsored by UCR Libraries will make use of archives such as the Eaton Collection, the Water Resources Collection and the Tuskegee Airman Archive. Pictured above are a fan magazine from the Eaton Collection, a photo by Walter Leroy Huber of the junction of the All American Canal with the Coachella Canal, and Tuskegee Airman Clarence D. “Lucky” Lester.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — UC Riverside Libraries will host three Wikipedia edit-a-thons this fall during which Inland residents and university students, scholars and staff may make use of library resources to write articles for the free, online encyclopedia.

The first of the all-day edit-a-thons is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 12, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Box lunches will be provided for preregistered participants. Free parking will be available for community residents who preregister. Email carolem@ucr.edu to register for each of the three dates. Additional edit-a-thons are scheduled Oct. 26 and Nov. 23.

Veteran Wikipedia editor Adrianne Wadewitz will attend the Oct. 12 event and teach participants how to write articles that are polished and designed to face fewer challenges for accuracy and neutrality. Wikipedia trainers will attend each edit-a-thon.

Participants may access a variety of UCR Library resources, including documents housed in Special Collections and University Archives, to research articles of their choosing, said University Librarian Steven Mandeville-Gamble.

“We want this to be fun, but there is also a serious goal of enhancing Wikipedia as a platform of information exchange,” Mandeville-Gamble said. “These edit-a-thons will give students and others a chance to write in a public forum and learn how to create a well-crafted information article. It also is an opportunity for us to forge stronger relations with community members beyond UCR’s borders.”

Wikipedia describes itself as a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation that is based on an openly editable model. Content is produced collaboratively by anonymous volunteers who write without pay.

Two years ago Wikipedia launched its Wikipedia Loves Libraries initiative to collaborate with galleries, libraries, archives and museums in an effort to make the online encyclopedia a more accurate and useful resource, Mandeville-Gamble said.

The UCR librarian introduced Wikipedia edit-a-thons when he worked at George Washington University. The project was so popular that it continues on a monthly basis.

At UCR, participants in the edit-a-thons will be able to research topics that make use of UCR Libraries collections such as science fiction; the Tuskegee Airmen; author and former UCR Chancellor Tomás Rivera; historical figures in the political, cultural, and social life of the Inland Empire; water resources in California and the West; or Native American literature, art and culture.

“Participants can write about any topic, not just ones we suggest,” Mandeville-Gamble said. “This will be a safe place for people to learn to write Wikipedia articles, receive feedback, make their articles more ‘bullet proof,’ use citation tools and information boxes, and effectively utilize images. Our libraries have tremendous resources that can enhance Wikipedia articles, particularly those that relate to our unique collections and local history.”

A reception held on May 26^th at the Riverside Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties concluded a year-long series of programs for The Latino Americans: 500 Years of History grant, which the UCR Library received from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the American Library Association.

Under the hashtag #LA500, the grant included free screenings of three episodes of the six-part landmark documentary, “Latino Americans,” and special events that were open to the public. The series aimed to explore local Latino and Chicano history and heritage, and to celebrate the Latino and Chicano community’s largely under-recognized role in American history.

University Librarian Steven Mandeville-Gamble welcomed guests to the reception by highlighting the rich Latino and Chicano American history, from the pre-Colonial era to the present day. Mandeville-Gamble ended his remarks with “Sí, se puede,” a motto among Latino and Chicano activists that originated from the United Farm Workers movement. In a lovely moment, the crowd echoed his call.

The reception featured an extraordinary performance by the Mayupatapi Ensemble led by UCR Professor of Ethnomusicology, Dr. Jonathan Ritter.

Following the musical performance, the three founders of grant partner Spanish Town Heritage Foundation, Nancy Melendez, Darlene Trujillo Elliot and Suzanne Armas spoke about the significance of the Trujillo Adobe, their ancestral home. Located in the La Placita area of Riverside, the Trujillo Adobe is a local landmark that connects regional Latino history with Southern California family history.

Riverside Community College District’s Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties hosted this culminating reception. The center was also one of UCR’s partners in the grant, in addition to UC Riverside Chicano Student Programs, the Riverside Public Library, and the Spanish Town Heritage Foundation.

Latino Americans: 500 Years of History has been made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.

When local doctors and nurses needed more protective face shields to treat the surge of COVID-19 patients in early April, the UCR Library’s Creat’R Lab rose to the task.

Over the last four weeks, Maker Services Coordinator Ray Gonzalez has been 3D printing parts for face shields around the clock. Each piece took between two to three hours to print, depending on which 3D printer he used. On Tues., April 28, Gonzalez delivered 100 headpieces to Dr. Chiayu Chen at Riverside Community Hospital, where hospital staff assembled the face shields. Dr. Chen requested an additional 75 parts for face shields on Tues., May 5.

Chen had already been 3D printing mask parts on his own, but he asked UC Riverside’s Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) to enlist help from other campus departments in order to meet the demand more quickly. Chen’s request landed in University Librarian Steven Mandeville-Gamble’s inbox on April 3, after finding its way via Bourns College of Engineering and the Athletics department.

It was an easy “yes” for Mandeville-Gamble, who tasked the Creat’R Lab to put their three 3D printers on full-time mask-making duty for the next month. “It is the UCR Library’s small contribution to support the brave doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers treating COVID-19 patients on the front lines,” Mandeville-Gamble said.

Gonzalez added, “The Creat’R Lab is an innovative and collaborative space for the entire UCR community, no matter what discipline you are. A lot of the technologies that we have, such as the 3D printers, laser cutter, CNC machine, Virtual Reality, etc., are often viewed as ‘engineering’ equipment. However, they are very much discipline-agnostic and can be applied to any field of work. The 3D printing of face shields parts is a great example of this.”

Dr. Chen will continue to obtain updated needs assessments from Riverside Community Hospital, and the Creat’R Lab will continue to assist, as needed, Gonzalez stated.