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Melissa: Great. Hi everybody. Welcome to the Open Education Network's Pub101. Thank you for joining us for today's session. My name is Melissa Chim and I am the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Excelsior University, and I'll be your host and facilitator today. So before we get started, I did have a quick opening reflection for you, so please feel free to go into the chat. And the theme of today's session is Call for Proposals and MOUs. So our opening reflection for today is, what makes you want to respond to a call for proposal? So what makes you want to participate in that project? It could be maybe a motivating hook in the proposal, very clear details, maybe they're offering some expert support. So we're interested in what makes you want to respond to a call for proposals. So soon I'll be handing it off to Karen Bjork who is the Head of Digital Libraries and Publishing for Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries and Carla Meyers who is the Assistant Librarian and Coordinator of Scholarly Communications for Miami University Libraries.
As always, we'll leave time for your questions and conversation. There may be many of you who have experience with this topic in addition to our guests, and we invite you to share your experiences and resources. So here are a few housekeeping details. We have an orientation document that includes our schedule and links to session slides and recordings. If you can't make it to a session for whatever reason and want to know what you missed, please check this document. I'll grab that shortly and put it in the chat. Please remember that there is a companion resource for these sessions, the Pub101 Canvas curriculum, and that's where you'll find the resources and templates mentioned. We are recording this session and we'll add it to our YouTube Pub101 Spring 2025 playlist. We're committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone aligned with our community norms. Please join us in creating a safe and constructive space. And finally, all links to the resources and everything that I mentioned, there is no Linktree, but we will have some documents for you. So now I will hand it over to Karen and Carla.
Karen: Thank you so much. So I will be starting our session and then passing it to Carla, and then Carla will be passing it back to me and then I'll pass it back to Carla and then we'll have open questions. So this is a brief overview of what we will be covering during this session. And just as a brief sort of introduction, prior to working at VCU Libraries, I oversaw the open textbook publishing program, PDXOpen at Portland State University. So some of the experiences in which I'll be sharing come directly from that prior work experience. So we're going to be looking at call for proposals as well as memorandum of understanding, what to include, some author challenges and lessons learned. These two topics very much mirror each other, so you can't do one without the other. Next slide please. So we have a poll. What I am curious to know is, have you ever been involved in creating or managing a call for proposal? It's a pretty, wow, 64% have not. Well, I'm happy you're here and I do hope that all the information we share will be helpful. All right, so next slide.
So the call for proposal informs your author agreement, your MOU. So these two should mirror each other in terms of authors and program requirements. So the call for proposal is typically how faculty first hear about your initiative. It provides the opportunity to set selection criteria and priorities, expectations such as the use of Creative Commons license, levels of funding available to awardees. It really helps to define your services that are going to be offered and your program capacity. What a finished product will look like, do they need to have completed text? Or is the grant designed to get folks started on a project? The call for proposal also includes who, if any, of your internal external partners are going to be involved and it's a way to be able to market your program.
So I'm going to be going into each of these in more detail in the upcoming slides. There are many, oh, sorry, can you go back one slide? Sorry. Thank you. So there are many open textbooks and OER publishing call for proposals available. So it's always a really good idea to review what others have done. So this is what I did at my previous institution when I first got started because there's really no reason to reinvent the wheel on this. And I continue to look at how other schools approach their call for proposals. There's always some really great new initiatives, new ideas that's really worth looking at to see maybe you could apply as well. It's also so important to revise your call for proposal with each new round. Priorities shift, lessons are learned, budgets are different, and there's always something you missed or points that need more clarity or detail. So I always recommend taking a look at what you had done in the previous year and revise and revise and do some more revision. Next slide please.
All right, so as I mentioned in the previous slide, before you release your call for proposal you'll want to consider and decide on the focus of your grant program. This is really, really important. So you always will need to ask yourself, who will you be encouraging to apply and whether your program has a specific focus. So for example, will you be encouraging faculty who teach first-year courses? Is your focus on high enrollment? Will your program focus on a particular discipline or area? Or are you looking to work with a department or a degree program rather than a single course? So when I worked at Portland State University, our focus was to target high enrollment courses. So we designed a call for proposal around that goal.
So one of the things we needed to do was define what we meant by high enrollment. So this took a bit of work and a lot of consultation with the registrar's office and other institutional partners, but we were able to define high enrollment courses and then we added that information into our call for proposal. We also targeted our outreach to the faculty who taught those courses. So although it took us some time to determine how to identify it, it was actually really worth it in the end and we got some really great partnerships out of it. So at our most recent call for proposal at VCU, we decided not to target a specific audience.
We really were starting to establish great relationships across the university, so we wanted to cast as wide of a net as possible to really see who was interested. However, we created a call for proposal that had very specific requirements within it, so we were making sure that the people that were applying had very well thought out programs that they were wanting to or well thought out projects that they were wanting to do. Next slide.
So what are... Wait, I got myself mixed up here. Can you go back for a second? Okay, I got myself mixed up. I'm going to go back to the requirements. So what are the program requirements? So it's important to include what CC license the project teams will have to agree to. Also with the new Title II ADA requirements, what do you expect your faculty authors to complete such as, are you ensuring that the documents meet accessibility standards? That audio and video materials must include closed captioning? Will you require one-on-one check-ins? Will there be monthly or group meetings and workshops? How will grantees share their successes or talk about their challenges? This is also important for building community and ensuring that these projects are completed on time. So at VCU, grantees are required to participate in a summer cohort kickoff meeting, a one-on-one check-in, and bimonthly group cohort meetings.
The kickoff meetings offer grantees the opportunity to meet one another. They learn about their self-publishing, they do copyright, accessibility, and open pedagogy. For us, the focus is on building a community of practice of learning where the cohort gets to know each other and become comfortable asking questions of one another. It's also about being able to foster positive relationships, particularly as projects continue for longer periods of time than anticipated. You really need to establish those levels of trust as faculty may hit challenges and barriers and you really want them to come to you as soon as possible. You also need to make sure you're really clear on will your OERs have peer reviewers? Is it going to be open peer review? Is it going to be closed peer review? If it's open peer review, who's going to be select or even closed, who is selecting the peer reviewers? At Portland State, we said as part of our call for proposals that we require the books to be reviewed by three people.
Two of them have to be outside the institution and one has to be within. We actually also said that the authors select their reviewers. They are the experts in their field, and so we really wanted them to find folks that could look at the book in different angles. We weren't seeing it as a closed peer review. We were really seeing it as a way to enhance the book and ensure that it was meeting the teaching requirements in the pedagogy. We also need to set project deadline dates. So the issues with project deadline dates is the fact that things happen. So projects may have an anticipated deadline date of a year, but really projects usually are going to take double that amount of time. However, setting dates is important because you can have conversations about what is realistic. Can a faculty member actually teach their full load of courses on top of writing four chapters? These are conversations that you need to have throughout the project and they also are really important when doing the MOU. All right, next slide please.
I think I'm on track. Yes. Project scale and funding. So what type of projects will you support and at what financial level? So will you do mini grants and support ancillary materials only? Or will you support adopt and adapt grants? Will you just focus on creation? Will you focus on early stage projects where the goal is to assist with the development of the project? Or provide funding for projects that have already been published and require additional support to be updated? Your overall budget and the number of projects you can support will help you determine this answer. So when my program had very limited funding, I designed a call for proposals around adapting and adopting only. Even with the limited funding, we were able to provide the opportunity to support faculty flipping their courses to open.
So at VCU, we're doing something different in the fact that we don't actually set amount of funding that we will distribute to each project. Instead, we say that the funding amounts vary and we actually ask each applicant to set their own budgets. We do, however, say that the awards are typically between $1,000 to $2,000 for smaller projects. Individual course projects can be up to $15,000 if it's a larger departmental one. So we kind of give people a bit of a range, but we have them set that. And we actually find that this opens up the possibility of being able to support the larger departmental projects, but it also provides the opportunity to consider, what funding levels do projects really need? We all know that we cannot fully support the labor that it takes to create an open textbook, but what we can do is have faculty say to us, "How much could they get paid in the summer?"
It becomes then part of a conversation much more so than just, "Hey, we're giving you money to do this." And so we have actually found this to be a very successful way to navigate this. Unfortunately, this year for example, we have far more proposals that like, our funding levels are far higher than what we can support. So part of our selection process is also having an in-depth conversation about how much money should we be giving to projects. Next slide please. All right, budget. So there is a lot to consider with the budget, and this is probably one of the most complicated areas. So before you release your call for proposal, I cannot stress enough to meet with your library's fiscal office to understand how funds can be distributed. So at Portland State University, the library distributed the funds to the authors directly. This required regular meetings with our library's budget budget analysts to ensure that we were on track and stayed on budget.
We set up spreadsheets and documents that guided every decision we made. We also met with our central HR to assist with drafting contracts to ensure that we were not violating labor laws or contracts, and then if your institution distributes the funds directly, here are some things. So yeah, so we set up all of this before we even did our call for proposal because we needed to know what we could actually provide to the faculty. So it was to were we able to give people a lump sum or did we have to distribute it out during an academic year? Could we only pay them in the summer when they were off contract? What happens if a faculty member's on a 12-month contract, how do we navigate that? Were we offering departmental buy-out? Who was going to cover the OPE or the other payroll expenses? So employee paid taxes such as social security and Medicare. So if we were offering a stipend of $2,500, was the faculty actually going to receive the $2,500 or would they actually receive $2,000 after taxes and OPE were taken out?
How will your institution hire or handle contracts? Would the faculty member be able to hire a third-party vendor, for example, to do copy editing or to do design work? Who is going to handle that contract? And then what type of expenses can and cannot be paid for? So we had a whole running spreadsheet that said as we learn things, we would continuously update it and then I would share that with the faculty as an FAQ just because there were so many ins and outs. So at VCU Libraries, our funding is actually dispersed to awardees departments at the beginning of the fiscal year. So how and when the funding is spent is at the discretion of the department, which means it's a lot less work for us, but it's more work for the faculty member because we clearly state that the faculty member has to know how their money is going to be distributed and they have to have a conversation with their fiscal officer before the distribution happens.
We've unfortunately run into issues where faculty haven't spent their money in time or they were under the impression they could spend their money one way only to find out that they couldn't do it. So it leads to a lot less headaches on our end if faculty have that conversation up front with their fiscal office and they know what they can do with their money before they actually receive their money. Next slide please. All right, services and support. You must clearly define what services your program is going to provide. So here are a few questions I recommend answering to help you decide on what services your program has the capacity to support. And capacity is key to all of this. So will your open textbook authors just write their book or will they be responsible for editing and designing it? Will authors be responsible for clearing copyright or will your program provide assistance with this?
So at Portland State, many of our open textbooks were supported, were in language education and it required international copyright clearance. So while we worked really closely with the author to drop the copyright permission letters, we actually required the authors to reach out. During the author creation process, will the library assist with pedagogical questions or does your university have instructional designers? Do you have any in-house expertise? Is there staff at your library or university that could do copy editing or design? Does that person have capacity to take on that extra work? If you don't have in-house expertise, will authors be responsible for finding editors and designers by themselves or will you be able to assist with that? Again, how will you handle peer review?
I talked about that in our previous slide. If you decide to do open peer review, will the authors need to find those reviewers? Will authors be required to set aside a certain amount of money to be designated for editorial or production services? This is something I've done in the past. It hasn't run as smoothly as I would like, because you can only estimate how much it's going to cost, whereas most of the time the reality is it costs a lot more. So trying to have those conversations of, "Oh, you only set aside $2,000 and it's actually now going to cost $4,000" is tricky to have, but something to really consider.
It's also just really important to lay it all out. Unfortunately, what this means is that your call for proposal, as you can only imagine, just keeps getting longer and longer, but having all that information there is going to set up expectations, which is really important. Next slide please.
We're getting near the end. So what will your completed textbook look like? Will you define the number of pages, number of chapters? Will each chapter have a set structure? And you also want to think about what constitutes a final product and finished product. So you should prime authors to think about their long-term project sustainability. Plans for revision are really, really important. You just don't create and forget. Authors constantly have to be updating it. A lot of our projects, we don't have the money to support those updates, so it's, what does this look like in two years? What does this look like in five years? How do you plan for making these adjustments? Also, what is the spirit of the project? If something were to happen to the author where they don't have the capacity to finish it, could you create and say, "This is done, we could work with this, we could teach with this." And then eventually somebody or that author could go back and restart it again. So it's really important, because you do at some point need to just cut projects off and say, "We're done." Next slide please.
Carla: Okay. So hi everybody. My name is Carla Myers. I'm the Coordinator of Scholarly Communications from Miami University, which is in Ohio, and I'm so excited always to talk to this group in general, but especially this collaborative presentation between Karen and I. Because not only is Karen fabulous, but these two topics, the call for proposals and the memorandum of understanding once proposals are selected are so closely related to each other, it's nice to kind of build upon that. So you've done your call for proposal, you put it out there, you get some great projects, you decide which ones they're going to be able to support, and now is the time to sign a memorandum of understanding as a communication tool and as a project management tool.
Okay, so we're going to have another poll. Let me launch that. So have you signed an MOU before? It can be related to open textbooks or open textbook publishing. It can be related to acquisitions, it can be related to anything. I'm curious, how many people have engaged in this process before? Let's share these results out. So about 30% of you have signed one before, about 50% have not, and about 20% have been part of the process even though they weren't the person signing. So I think that's pretty reflective of what we commonly see in this area. Thanks to everybody for engaging with that. So what is an MOU? MOU stands for memorandum of understanding. It is a formal though, not necessarily legally binding, although it can be legally binding, but it's a document that outlines an agreement between two or more parties that they have reached between this discussion and negotiation.
It can be as short or as long as you need it to be. Generally, you want it to be as short or as long as it can be to effectively reflect the needs of the particular project or to clearly outline the understandings in different areas. I've seen MOUs that are barely a page long, I've been a part of an MOU that was almost 30 pages long, so it really kind of just depends on the projects. I would say for open textbook publishing, they usually range from about three to eight pages long. So why have an MOU? What's the point? And somebody asked me this once, they said, "Everything was kind of spelled out in the call for proposals, why do we need this next document to move forward?" And there's a couple of different reasons for that. What we put in the call for proposals can be flexible based on different projects.
It could be flexible based on the budget. Some projects have very set budgets. No matter what you're doing, you get X amount of dollars. Others kind of do what Karen mentioned. "Well, tell us how much money you think you need." And maybe one group thinks they need $2,500 and maybe another group thinks they need $20,000. Now maybe you might find out, "Oh, I think you're underestimating with your $2,500. Let's bump you up to $5,000" if you have the capacity to do that. Or you might say, "Yeah, $20,000 is a little bit beyond our scope. Here's what we can offer you." That can also go in terms of the support that somebody is seeking. Some projects may need support in different areas than others. So it really kind of just establishes the expectations for everybody involved in that project, who is going to be doing what.
And I think what's really important is it provides a source document that you can consult when there's confusion or there's goals not being met. For much of my career, I worked at the circulation desk, so public facing. And I think with most libraries, circulation policies and procedures, we have to set policies, but you can interpret those differently in different situations. But when somebody got upset by a policy, "Well, what do you mean I'm being billed for the replacement when I return it two and a half years late." It was nice to be able to have a document, a policy online or somewhere in the library that you could go back to and say, "This is the basis of the decision or the discussion." And I think that's one of the great things about the MOU is you can go back to that source document and say, "Here's what we agreed upon. What do we need to do to get to this area? Or where might we need to change things in order to accommodate a need of the project?"
Who is in the agreement? It depends. Generally, it's going to be between those creating the OER. So that could be the library, it could be the larger academic institution. If your institution or a library has a publishing arm, it could be them. It could be with a group of authors if it's a group project. It could be with what we call corresponding author, maybe the lead author of that project. Sometimes we need to have a conversation with them, "Okay, you are going to be writing it, but you're going to be bringing this person to create some ancillary materials like a test bank online or a website or things like that. So do we need to bring that person into the MOU to plan that part or are they going to kind of be like a subcontractor, you're going to work with them on behalf of the project?"
Something else we have to think about is could union representatives be involved? If your institution has a union that covers faculty, there could be something that contract that says for these types of projects, as Karen mentioned earlier, if the work is being done while they're on contract, if they're nine months that there has to be a union consultation or whether it's going to be the summer, that might be a little bit different. So it could be that somebody from the union has to be part of that conversation too. What is in your MOU? And chances are it's going to be a lot of what was in the call for proposals, but more specifically, what are those different categories specific to this project?
The big things are, first off, what are the authors going to be delivering? Writing the text, are they going to be responsible for finding images, creating figures? Are they going to be responsible for clearing permissions when they're needed for third-party works? But then also making it very, very clear, what is the library, the institution delivering? Are we finding contributors or peer reviewers? Are we the ones providing the copy, editing the layout, things like that. Are we the ones doing the formal publication of the book? So very clearly spelling out who is responsible for what. And this is important because you could have an author who says, "Wait a minute. Well, you said there had to be reviewers, but I was thinking you were going to select them." When under either the call for proposals or something else, we outlined their responsibility for that. So this is just making sure before everybody kicks off, we kind of know what to expect from the different parties involved.
Your timeline. What are the due dates for the deliverables for the projects? Whether it's chapters, whether it's figure creation, whether it's remediation for accessibility, but then also that from the author, but also the institution itself. Once they get you the text for the book, what is your turnaround time going to look like to get that back to them? Once you have proofs, what's the expected turnaround time for getting that back and forth? So very clearly spelling out those due dates. And then copyright considerations, there can be different considerations if there is a single author, if there are multiple authors, if they're going to have students contributing to the open work, we might have FERPA considerations.
So FERPA is the law that protects the privacy of students. I've worked with instructors who really want to have students collaborating to get that student voice and perspective in the OER, but if that is part of a graded assignment here at Miami University, we number one, have to get a FERPA clearance and number two, have to make it clear we cannot compel them to place an open license on work in which they are the copyright owner. And in those cases, if the student doesn't want to contribute, is there an alternative assignment that they can engage in? We might also have work made for hire situations, which is a category of copyright law.
So we are hiring you to create a work. At some institutions that means the copyright is actually going to lie with the university, even though that faculty member retains rights to reuse it in different capacities. For some of these contracts, the copyright remains with a faculty member, they're putting an open license on it, but also agreeing to language that makes it very clear if updates need to be done in the future or like Karen said, life can happen. All of a sudden they find a need to pause or end the project that we can empower somebody else to help us finish it off.
This one I've learned is kind of unique to Miami University, certifications and indemnities. Some institutions do this, I think it's pretty rare. So a certification is usually saying, "I'm the person who created the work. I'm the author of it. I have the right to enter into this agreement with the institution." And indemnities, "If I mislead you on anything, if I'm unscrupulous and have stolen this work from somebody else and that person sues the institution, because I certified I was the author, I've indemnified the university against legal liability, but I will take that on if I misrepresent anything here." Sometimes also saying, "I'm not including any libelous materials, things that portray somebody or an institution in an organization in a way that could bring about legal liability." Miami University is great because they really empowered me in this work, but I think they're also conservative when it comes to the law and dotting their I's and crossing their T's and making sure this language is in there.
And then also of course, the open license. Here at Miami University, we give a faculty the ability to choose from three different open licenses out of all the ones the Copyright Clearing Center offers. Some programs say you can choose any of them. Some institutions say you will put on this one, making it very clear what open license is going to apply to that project or what their options are for choosing one, and if so, which one they want to choose. What is the budget? And I'm just going to emphasize again how important it is to have this conversation upfront. How much are they getting for the project? How will that be distributed? Will it all be upfront? Will the money be awarded in stages? Will the library be paying the bills? Will the library be transferring the money to that person's department for them to take care of it?
And what type of expenses can be paid? One of the ones we have to be most careful of here is third-party contracts. So if they want to go out and hire somebody to create some images or figures or something like that, because then the university probably is going to have to get involved in agreeing to that contract. It can be done, it just adds in an extra step that we have to make sure the faculty member is cognizant of and takes in order for us to be able to reimburse that expenses. So we're also very upfront on what the budget is and how that is being managed. How will the materials be submitted? I was a journal editor for 10 years and I can tell you this is so critical. What format? We would probably assume most people would submit it in Microsoft Word. I've had things submitted in OpenOffice, which doesn't play nice with a lot of editorial publishing tools that are out there.
I once had a faculty member give me something in a locked PDF and when I was like, "Oh wait, there's a problem here." They're like, "Well, I don't want anybody altering my work without my permission." Yeah, yeah. "So you can just note your changes and then I can decide what's going to be made." That was kind of a reflective conversation on what is an open access work, even though I thought we had covered that clearly, that we had clearly said up front, "We need this in a Word format." Image and graphic file formats, what types do you need those to come in? And citations. Number one, what all needs to be cited because you would sometimes be surprised where they think they need citations and where they don't and what format you want those citations in. I say this with love in my heart, a lot of times what I get is citations coming in in multiple formats or they're using either maybe a tool from a journal or a tool in Word to create those citations and those are notorious for causing errors.
So we have a conversation that you can use those tools to get you started, but that you have to check those yourself to make sure they are actually correct, not only the content they need, but actually the formatting itself because that's just so much work and our small group that supports this doesn't have the capacity to do this. Something new with citations that we are navigating here at Miami University is the use of AI in the creation of open works in any capacity. AI is an emerging tool and we want to support faculty in using it where it is practical, but we also want to be upfront in communicating where they used it or again, recognizing that AI is far from perfect. So if you used AI to create a case study, number one, being upfront that that case study was authored by AI, but number two, making sure they're going in and reading it to make sure it makes sense, it has proper grammar and flow, things like that.
So we're trying to figure out how all do we want to integrate AI into our MOU? Just making sure faculty are cognizant of what we want to see when they are using it. So drafting your MOU, you want to be cognizant if your institution has any policies or procedures around drafting these. So I reached out to the Office of General Counsel saying, "Hey, this is what we're interested in doing. We want to make sure we're following your policies and procedures." But we also reached out to HR saying, "Okay, if faculty are going to be working on this over the summer, is there anything we need to know about paying them over the summer or what those contracts have to say?" The faculty at Miami recently unionized. So now we're also going to be have to checking with the union to say, "Is there anything in those contracts that may impact the faculty member doing this work and/or how they might be spending the budget?"
For example, if a faculty member is interested in using part of their budget for a buyout for the semester, does that somehow feed into the union contract and how that money is spent or how that person gets a replacement instructor for the semester? So I think once you have those conversations with key groups, that's when you can start to draft writing your own from the ground up, but I encourage you to swipe. Even with all the work I've done throughout my career with copyright and licensing and drafting these things, I still went and swiped ones and used those as a basis in integrating... Karen's nodding. I think the Portland one was one of the ones I swiped. So we used those as templates. We read through them and pulled out paragraphs or information that we liked and then we customized it to Miami University.
And the publishing curriculum through the OEN has such great templates. I encourage you to take a look at those when you're starting to think about what might your MOU look like, what do you need to have in it? And then even just using those to draft them from the ground up. So tips and recommendations, use plain language. This was fun when I was talking with the Office of General Counsel, and I say that in the nicest possible way because they're attorneys and the way they tend to write texts is completely different from what most of us use in general. So with our MOU, at the end of the day, the certifications and the indemnifications are kind of legalese, even though I go through that very carefully with our faculty authors. Everything else, I work to write in plain language so it's easy for everybody to understand what is expected from both sides.
Organize a document logically. So ours starts off with, here's what the faculty member is responsible for, here's what the library is responsible for, here is the budgets, here is the due dates. So kind of a logical way to look through it and making sure we have in there, what are the key areas you need to cover? And Karen kind of touched on this. This is a learning process. The first MOU that we did looks mildly different from what it is now. We just ended up adding in more sections or providing more details where we realized, "Oh, well, that seemed clear to us, but it wasn't necessarily clear to the faculty members we were working with." So being flexible in how that looks. Setting expectations, informing your authors, maybe even part as a call for a proposal that this is an expectation that you will enter into the MOU. If possible, sharing with them a draft copy of the MOU, making it clear this may change a little bit depending on their project.
And then being available to answer questions, not just during the call for proposals in general, but the MOU can kind of be a little intimidating for people. "Here's this kind of legal looking document that I'm expect to sign. Can I answer questions for you?" Because I want people to step into these projects feeling confident, and as Karen said earlier, feeling that they can ask questions and that there's set clear communication expectations set from the beginning. So a poll, and let me see if I can get this one working. The MOU, the easiest way to draft one is to write one from scratch, to use one drafted by another institution, just take what they have and put it out there to use or a combination of the two?
Okay, I'm going to end the poll and share the results. Most folks, 93% think a combination of the two is the best option, and I would agree with that. I do know of one institution, one or two institutions who just started writing theirs from scratch. They had the resources to be able to do that, usually a full department who is supporting this work. A lot of times in libraries it's like, "Here's a great new initiative. Oh, we already know you're doing a job and a half, so we might as well make it two jobs. Here's all these other responsibilities on top of whatever else you're doing." And the great thing is this is open work. So there are lots of institutions who have put their MOUs out there for people to use, to reflect upon. Some places can't just grab somebody else's and start using it. Be cognizant there's not anything in that that you are agreeing to that you can't support. I think the customization option is really the best way to go. So some lessons learned from all of this.
Karen: Yeah. So I'm going to kick us off on lessons learned, and you will see that there is quite a bit of overlap between the call for proposals and MOU lessons learned. And Carla's already covered several of them and I have already in my slides, so this is just reinforcing what we're already saying. So project management, if you do not have a project manager, that was the first lesson that I learned when I first started open textbook publishing is you need one. It is very important to have one designated person running all the projects and really taking on that responsibility. Project management and supporting projects equals time. It takes up a lot of time to do the one-on-ones, the consultations, the meeting with the budget office to ensure that you know what's happening, the constant sort of connections and moving forward. So you do want to make sure that not only the authors know how much time this is going to take, but also that you as a project manager realize this. And also be cognizant of the number of projects that you have, the capacity to fully support.
Again, this goes with that time. You may think, "Oh, we can do four." But you have six other projects that are still continuing to run. So just because you may release or continue to do your call for proposals, you have to make sure that you can support all of the projects, not just the current ones. Timelines and priorities shift. Working with authors at the beginning of a project to really think about those competing priorities and how it will impact their timelines. Really be flexible on shifting timelines. I always say to faculty authors, "Let's think about what else you have going on. We cannot do a buyout. So you will have to continue with your teaching, with your research and your publishing. And now I'm asking, now you're putting an additional thing on your plate. It's okay to not get this done in one academic year."
Maybe we should draft it and then teach with it for the second and then look at completing it at the end of a second academic year. We don't have, our money is not tied with an end product that's going to provide profit. And really it's about ensuring that your faculty don't have burnout. Need for procedures and policies, particularly around if you're no longer supporting projects. While we don't want to stop supporting projects, you may need to. So if an author isn't meeting expectations, what procedures do you have in place to potentially pause their participation in the program? What steps will you need to follow in order to do that to be notified? Did you have any indication in a call for proposal that there may be faculty may have an option to pause or we may stop supporting? What does that language look like? Or in your MOU, do you have that information?
The other big question, and this is something that has come up at my previous institution is, authors leave the institution. How do you handle that? Are there other co-authors? Can somebody step up? These are things in which may not necessarily be added to your call for proposal, but something in which you really have to be thinking about. And again, and I cannot stress this enough, make sure you're clear about your budget distribution. The last thing you want to do is end up not being able to properly distribute money that you promised. And so it's really great to get ahead of that. Next, oh, go on, Carla. Yeah.
Carla: Oh, sorry. This is you. No, no, go on.
Karen: No, that's all right. I thought you were going to add something.
Carla: No, this is me having a rough day and not enough caffeine.
Karen: That's okay. I had a rough day with my first beginning slides and I was like, "Wait, I'm totally off here." So I, again, I feel like a broken record when I say this, but really be specific. And it's okay if your call for proposal is long. You can chunk it up and really make sure all the important stuff is at the top. But having all of this on paper is going to be really helpful because a lot of the time you can go back to, "What did you say? What were the expectations?" And if it's documented, you can work with the faculty to be like, "Yes, this is what we did." We recently at VCU, a question came up from an author and I was talking to our OER librarian and my first question to her was, "Well, what did we put in the call for proposal?"
So we went back to it and we were like, "Oh, here's what we said. Here's how we said it." And so it really also provides an opportunity to go to the authors and say, and get feedback and be like, "Was this clear? Did you have questions about this?" We actually, at the end of our projects, ask all the faculty authors to provide feedback on their overall experience. And one of the things we ask is, "What drew you to this program? What was it?" And so we really want to be able to gather that feedback for them. Set clear selection eligibility and rubric. You may unfortunately have more projects than you can support, so you do need to find a way to potentially say no to projects. It's also a really great way to get buy-in from liaisons if they are selecting or helping to select the project.
So really make sure you're clear on what is going to be a strong call and what's going to be a strong proposal and what are you looking at. And again, it's okay to reject proposals. If you only have capacity to handle three projects, then that's fine. Make sure there are three strong projects, your rubric will help you with that. But the more is not always better. It's one thing I cannot stress enough is just because you can support 10 doesn't necessarily mean you need to. So I believe that is all of my words of wisdom.
Carla: Now it's my turn. So lessons learned from MOUs. I think number one of them is, okay, once somebody's been selected, schedule their time to sit down and review the MOU with them line by line. And this thought is kind of tedious, especially if maybe it's going to be five pages long, but what we learned early on is things that seem really clear to us, even if we thought we were clear in our communications, the faculty member can have different perspectives maybe on if they've worked with a commercial publisher before or maybe just from their particular field. So I think the best example I have of this is we had awarded a grant for an open textbook publication. We were so excited, because it was going to be in a subject area that we weren't aware there was any MOU out there.
And I sat down to start talking with a faculty member going through the MOU, and we got to the end and they said, "Hey, hey Carla, where's the section of my royalties?" And I was like, "Oh, well, with an open textbook, this is freely available to everybody, there's no charge. So as part of this money, there can be compensation for you for the work for writing it, but there's no ongoing royalties." And they're like, "Oh, but a book with no royalties?" And I'm like, "Yes, but they open..." They had published before with commercial publishers, that's kind of what they were expecting. And they said, "Carla, I hate to say this, but I have a kid getting ready to go to college and we were hoping royalties from these books would help fund that. I think I may want to step out of this project and go with a commercial publisher instead." Which in the end, that's what they wanted. And we were happy to support them and wish them well, but we were really struggling on our end.
Was there some crisis miscommunication on our end that we weren't being clear that while there are upfront funds, there is no royalties, ongoing royalties associated with this? And we ended up talking with some other people. And I think for them it's just what they were used to publishing in their area and maybe the fact that there was no OER in this area. It was just kind of reflective of the fact that that was a really unique publication means, but other people assured us like, "No, no. We really kind of understood what the concept was." But if we hadn't gone through line by line in that particular area, if we hadn't cleared that up upfront, it really bothers me to think what would it have been like when a year went by and they said, "Wait a minute, what do you mean now I'm getting no royalties after I put all this work in and that work was actually published."
Communicate, communicate, communicate. I don't think you can over-communicate when publication happens. And that's because issues will arise on both ends. And most of that comes down to life happening. I did publish a book with a commercial publisher, and when I missed my first deadline, I reached out to my publisher. I was crying in the Zoom, I felt so horrible. And she said, "Carla, you're busy. You have a life, you have work." She said, "I don't imagine you didn't get this done by the deadline because you weren't doing the work." And I was like, "Well, I got sick. And then I had somebody, I just...." She's like, "Yeah, life happens." And she shared a really interesting statistic with me, and looking back at being a journal editor for 10 years, I'm like, "She's right. And that statistic is, only 20% of authors ever meet their initial publication deadlines."
"80%," she said, "can end up taking a little bit more time to double the amount of time that they thought." And she said, "You will get some slackers who just lose interest in the project and stop working on it. But for most people, it's life happening. It's things coming up with their families, it's personal things happening, it's things coming up at work and they just need more time than they initially thought." And kind of like Karen said, if you set that clear collaborative communication from early on, you want them to feel comfortable coming to you saying they're having issues. I once had somebody I was working with and they missed a deadline and I sent an email and then I sent another email, and then I tried calling and I really think they didn't pick up because they knew my area code.
And so I picked up my cell phone, which had totally different area code, and I called them and they picked up and they said, "Oh hey, Carla." And it was just kind of this awkward pause and I'm like, "Hey, how you doing? What's going on? How's your project?" And they said, "I'm so far behind and I've just been so embarrassed and felt so bad. I've seen your emails, I saw your call. I've just been avoiding you because I didn't know what to say." I'm like, "Just say that, that you're behind. Things have happened and let's find a way to get you back on track. What do you need?"
We do plan regular check-ins, and we kind of take a look at the MOU, "What due dates are coming up? What are you working on? Is there something in the MOU? We originally agreed on the citation style and you're thinking you want to switch over to that." So we kind of use that MOU as a guide for those conversations. When questions do come up like, "Oh, I thought you were doing all the copyright permissions?" "No, we will give you great resources to help draft those letters, but as it states in the MOU, that was going to be your responsibility."
Identify areas in the MOU where you can be flexible and identify areas where you cannot. There are some areas we can't be flexible, because we don't have the staffing to do it. We really need the faculty member to do that work. It could be if you're working with a third party who's going to be doing the copy editing or the publishing, they are expecting the project at a certain time. And if the author can't get it to them, they can give you a new due date, but it might be three or six months down the road. So we need to know where they are so that we can communicate to the publisher we're working with. So if you can be flexible, be flexible, and most of the flexibility is going to come from that person needing extra time.
But make it clear up front to the areas where you can't be flexible. And then kind of both of us, things we've both seen recently times are changing. And it was funny because when Karen and I got together to start planning our joint presentation, we were talking about, well, these are things we've seen throughout our careers in supporting this, but recently we're seeing more things or we're seeing some really unique things popping up and what does that look like? So Karen, I'm going to let you kick off with some of your examples and then I'll share a few from Miami University.
Karen: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we're really seeing is faculty workloads. So faculty workloads are changing and shifting, and it's really just been, have people reached a certain level of burnout? So we heard about it particularly during COVID, but one of the things we saw was faculty really energized around the idea of open education, creating resource materials specifically for their students, being able to really design with students in mind. One of the things that we're really now seeing is even that level of energy getting pulled away just due to various circumstances. So how do we reframe and talk about OERs in a way that we haven't done before? How do we continue to energize our faculty to show how important this material is and the fact that while saving students money is important, there are so many other reasons to be creating OERs and really to be able to create just that level of energy that I know many of us have seen, just not as high as it used to be.
Carla: We're seeing the same things in tandem here at Miami University. So budgets for higher education are being impacted across North America. State support is dropping. We're seeing that more and more students are thinking, "I don't necessarily immediately have to go to college." So we're seeing enrollments down. And then of course, a demographic cliff coming where since 2008, people have just been having less children. So there will be even fewer people of the age of 18 to go to college. And then with budget pressures, we're seeing a little bit of an impact on faculty workloads. I know here at Miami University, there's a little bit more of an emphasis to pivot away from visiting assistant professors who normally might've taught some of the lower level courses. They're just saying, "With tighter budgets, we just can't hire as many of them." So before where faculty might have seen an opportunity, "I have this time in my schedule to work on open materials," they're saying, "Well, now I'm teaching more classes."
Or just that burnout that Karen talked about. Just seeing that more in terms of everything faculty are trying to navigate at in higher education, especially other pressures coming through society right now. And I'm not trying to be political, but the fact is grants are being cut in other areas and the way that can impact faculty morale or workload. I talked with one faculty member who was like, "Is now even a good time to be writing open materials because I'm concerned about some of the content that I put in there. Could that content make me a target for people who feel like what topics are and aren't being taught in higher education?" So some of these really forces coming from the outside that we're trying to figure out how we need to navigate. And so I think the solution to this is just a review of campus and instructor needs and flexibility. One of the things we're talking about here, and I will say like Karen, we get feedback from everybody who's involved in all of our initiatives, and we have been changing.
Some of our programs haven't changed at all, but some of them end up getting reinvented every two or three years because we found out that faculty needs have changed. So do we maybe need to be providing more support to the faculty member? Okay if they're seeing their workloads modify a little bit? Do we maybe need to work in a budget for a student employee who can help the faculty member with some of those things? Are there things we want to focus on like one of our big initiatives here at Miami University is trying to negate the cost of course packs.
It's not necessarily open education, we're looking at what readings are in those course packs students are paying for that they don't have to either because the library is licensing those resources or we can make them available under fair use or other rights and copyright law. It's not an open resource because it's in Canvas, it's not freely accessible to the world, but nevertheless, maybe we'll have a little bit more success there for the time being negating those costs while we try to figure out how can we support faculty needs with these bigger projects. Karen, what solutions are you looking at?
Karen: Well, I do want to be cognizant of the time. So it is three o'clock. So I do want to just, yeah, here's our contact information. If you do need or have any questions for us, please feel free to reach out. And I just was going to reiterate what Carla said about solutions. Flexibility is huge. And I also think it's about thinking outside the box. Really, it's about how can you support the faculty member and how can you continue to move forward with creating OERs to the best of your ability? And I see Melissa's put her camera back on.
Melissa: Okay. So first, thank you so much Karen and Carla, thank you so much for bringing this really important topic to us. I've actually been working on a call for proposal, so I'm going to take a lot of put you guys said to heart. And so I'll use it for the upcoming MOU also. I know I do want to be cognizant of time as well, but if anyone had any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat or if you would like to unmute yourself, please do. I would like to give everyone that opportunity.
Karen: And I am able to stay a little bit longer as well, so I'm happy to answer any questions.
Carla:I am too.
Melissa: Oh, great. Thank you.
Karen: And we did throw a lot of information at you in 50 minutes, so we also apologize.
Melissa: It was very helpful though. Yeah, thank you so much for both giving all of that information. And of course this will be available on our Pub101 YouTube page also. So if you will like to go back and watch again or any of our other sessions, those are available too. Okay, so if there are no questions, I'll just say thank you all for joining us as we continue to learn about open textbook publishing. We hope that as we continue to share available resources and recommendations, one of our key takeaways is the sense that you're not alone in figuring out how to support open textbook authors. So thank you all again and we will see you next week for the final Pub101 session.
Carla: Thanks everybody.
END OF VIDEO
00:20:33 Christine Rickabaugh: Working with respected/interesting folks
00:20:43 Carla Myers: Expert support in an area where I do not have experience!
00:20:48 Lora Largo: Hello everyone. My audio is not working, so I am going to leave and hop back on. Thank you!
00:21:03 Stephanie Wiegand: A timeline that allows for writing that is not incredibly rushed.
00:21:11 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "A timeline that allo..." with 💯
00:21:31 Amanda Larson: Interesting Topics and reasonable timelines.
00:34:26 Sonya Durney: I wish I had heard this advice last summer. +1 meet with the finance office before!
00:39:24 Monica Johnson: this information about services / support is great. I have many faculty that assume this is my responsibility.
00:44:00 Christine Rickabaugh: I'm so glad we implemented an MOU! It gives me an opportunity to clarify roles, deliverables, explain copyright/CC, and clearly state that if the author leaves the institution, we can finish the book with out them!
01:08:15 Amanda Larson: Say no to things! You can always build capacity - it's much harder to shrink it back down when you're overwhelmed.
01:12:41 Monica Johnson: Can you please Pub 101 Canvas curriculum and YouTurbe Hub 101 Spring 2025
01:13:41 Amanda Larson: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
01:13:44 Melissa Chim: Pub101 (2025) - YouTube
01:20:43 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Incredibly is helpful. Thank you so much!
01:21:02 William Peaden: Very helpful
01:21:08 Jeffrey Hopkins: Thank you guys!
01:21:14 William Peaden: Thank you very much it is 8pm for me so I will be leaving
01:21:39 Lora Largo: Thank you so much!
01:21:42 Amanda Larson: Thank you Karen and Carla!
01:22:02 Cameron Boucher: Thanks!
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The sixth session of Pub101 in 2025 shares key insights to help you prepare an open publishing Call for Proposal and/or Memorandum of Understanding. Join Karen Bjork of Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries and Carla Myers of Miami University Libraries as they offer effective communication tips, content considerations, and recommendations for using these documents to navigate the publishing process. Melissa Chim of Excelsior University hosts today’s session.
Watch the video recording of this session or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Watch the video recording of this session or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Audio Transcript
Speakers:
- Melissa Chim (Scholarly Communications Librarian, Excelsior University)
- Karen Bjork (Head of Digital Libraries and Publishing, Virginia Commonwealth University)
- Carla Myers (Assistant Librarian and Coordinator of Scholarly Communications, Miami University Libraries)
Melissa: Great. Hi everybody. Welcome to the Open Education Network's Pub101. Thank you for joining us for today's session. My name is Melissa Chim and I am the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Excelsior University, and I'll be your host and facilitator today. So before we get started, I did have a quick opening reflection for you, so please feel free to go into the chat. And the theme of today's session is Call for Proposals and MOUs. So our opening reflection for today is, what makes you want to respond to a call for proposal? So what makes you want to participate in that project? It could be maybe a motivating hook in the proposal, very clear details, maybe they're offering some expert support. So we're interested in what makes you want to respond to a call for proposals. So soon I'll be handing it off to Karen Bjork who is the Head of Digital Libraries and Publishing for Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries and Carla Meyers who is the Assistant Librarian and Coordinator of Scholarly Communications for Miami University Libraries.
As always, we'll leave time for your questions and conversation. There may be many of you who have experience with this topic in addition to our guests, and we invite you to share your experiences and resources. So here are a few housekeeping details. We have an orientation document that includes our schedule and links to session slides and recordings. If you can't make it to a session for whatever reason and want to know what you missed, please check this document. I'll grab that shortly and put it in the chat. Please remember that there is a companion resource for these sessions, the Pub101 Canvas curriculum, and that's where you'll find the resources and templates mentioned. We are recording this session and we'll add it to our YouTube Pub101 Spring 2025 playlist. We're committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for everyone aligned with our community norms. Please join us in creating a safe and constructive space. And finally, all links to the resources and everything that I mentioned, there is no Linktree, but we will have some documents for you. So now I will hand it over to Karen and Carla.
Karen: Thank you so much. So I will be starting our session and then passing it to Carla, and then Carla will be passing it back to me and then I'll pass it back to Carla and then we'll have open questions. So this is a brief overview of what we will be covering during this session. And just as a brief sort of introduction, prior to working at VCU Libraries, I oversaw the open textbook publishing program, PDXOpen at Portland State University. So some of the experiences in which I'll be sharing come directly from that prior work experience. So we're going to be looking at call for proposals as well as memorandum of understanding, what to include, some author challenges and lessons learned. These two topics very much mirror each other, so you can't do one without the other. Next slide please. So we have a poll. What I am curious to know is, have you ever been involved in creating or managing a call for proposal? It's a pretty, wow, 64% have not. Well, I'm happy you're here and I do hope that all the information we share will be helpful. All right, so next slide.
So the call for proposal informs your author agreement, your MOU. So these two should mirror each other in terms of authors and program requirements. So the call for proposal is typically how faculty first hear about your initiative. It provides the opportunity to set selection criteria and priorities, expectations such as the use of Creative Commons license, levels of funding available to awardees. It really helps to define your services that are going to be offered and your program capacity. What a finished product will look like, do they need to have completed text? Or is the grant designed to get folks started on a project? The call for proposal also includes who, if any, of your internal external partners are going to be involved and it's a way to be able to market your program.
So I'm going to be going into each of these in more detail in the upcoming slides. There are many, oh, sorry, can you go back one slide? Sorry. Thank you. So there are many open textbooks and OER publishing call for proposals available. So it's always a really good idea to review what others have done. So this is what I did at my previous institution when I first got started because there's really no reason to reinvent the wheel on this. And I continue to look at how other schools approach their call for proposals. There's always some really great new initiatives, new ideas that's really worth looking at to see maybe you could apply as well. It's also so important to revise your call for proposal with each new round. Priorities shift, lessons are learned, budgets are different, and there's always something you missed or points that need more clarity or detail. So I always recommend taking a look at what you had done in the previous year and revise and revise and do some more revision. Next slide please.
All right, so as I mentioned in the previous slide, before you release your call for proposal you'll want to consider and decide on the focus of your grant program. This is really, really important. So you always will need to ask yourself, who will you be encouraging to apply and whether your program has a specific focus. So for example, will you be encouraging faculty who teach first-year courses? Is your focus on high enrollment? Will your program focus on a particular discipline or area? Or are you looking to work with a department or a degree program rather than a single course? So when I worked at Portland State University, our focus was to target high enrollment courses. So we designed a call for proposal around that goal.
So one of the things we needed to do was define what we meant by high enrollment. So this took a bit of work and a lot of consultation with the registrar's office and other institutional partners, but we were able to define high enrollment courses and then we added that information into our call for proposal. We also targeted our outreach to the faculty who taught those courses. So although it took us some time to determine how to identify it, it was actually really worth it in the end and we got some really great partnerships out of it. So at our most recent call for proposal at VCU, we decided not to target a specific audience.
We really were starting to establish great relationships across the university, so we wanted to cast as wide of a net as possible to really see who was interested. However, we created a call for proposal that had very specific requirements within it, so we were making sure that the people that were applying had very well thought out programs that they were wanting to or well thought out projects that they were wanting to do. Next slide.
So what are... Wait, I got myself mixed up here. Can you go back for a second? Okay, I got myself mixed up. I'm going to go back to the requirements. So what are the program requirements? So it's important to include what CC license the project teams will have to agree to. Also with the new Title II ADA requirements, what do you expect your faculty authors to complete such as, are you ensuring that the documents meet accessibility standards? That audio and video materials must include closed captioning? Will you require one-on-one check-ins? Will there be monthly or group meetings and workshops? How will grantees share their successes or talk about their challenges? This is also important for building community and ensuring that these projects are completed on time. So at VCU, grantees are required to participate in a summer cohort kickoff meeting, a one-on-one check-in, and bimonthly group cohort meetings.
The kickoff meetings offer grantees the opportunity to meet one another. They learn about their self-publishing, they do copyright, accessibility, and open pedagogy. For us, the focus is on building a community of practice of learning where the cohort gets to know each other and become comfortable asking questions of one another. It's also about being able to foster positive relationships, particularly as projects continue for longer periods of time than anticipated. You really need to establish those levels of trust as faculty may hit challenges and barriers and you really want them to come to you as soon as possible. You also need to make sure you're really clear on will your OERs have peer reviewers? Is it going to be open peer review? Is it going to be closed peer review? If it's open peer review, who's going to be select or even closed, who is selecting the peer reviewers? At Portland State, we said as part of our call for proposals that we require the books to be reviewed by three people.
Two of them have to be outside the institution and one has to be within. We actually also said that the authors select their reviewers. They are the experts in their field, and so we really wanted them to find folks that could look at the book in different angles. We weren't seeing it as a closed peer review. We were really seeing it as a way to enhance the book and ensure that it was meeting the teaching requirements in the pedagogy. We also need to set project deadline dates. So the issues with project deadline dates is the fact that things happen. So projects may have an anticipated deadline date of a year, but really projects usually are going to take double that amount of time. However, setting dates is important because you can have conversations about what is realistic. Can a faculty member actually teach their full load of courses on top of writing four chapters? These are conversations that you need to have throughout the project and they also are really important when doing the MOU. All right, next slide please.
I think I'm on track. Yes. Project scale and funding. So what type of projects will you support and at what financial level? So will you do mini grants and support ancillary materials only? Or will you support adopt and adapt grants? Will you just focus on creation? Will you focus on early stage projects where the goal is to assist with the development of the project? Or provide funding for projects that have already been published and require additional support to be updated? Your overall budget and the number of projects you can support will help you determine this answer. So when my program had very limited funding, I designed a call for proposals around adapting and adopting only. Even with the limited funding, we were able to provide the opportunity to support faculty flipping their courses to open.
So at VCU, we're doing something different in the fact that we don't actually set amount of funding that we will distribute to each project. Instead, we say that the funding amounts vary and we actually ask each applicant to set their own budgets. We do, however, say that the awards are typically between $1,000 to $2,000 for smaller projects. Individual course projects can be up to $15,000 if it's a larger departmental one. So we kind of give people a bit of a range, but we have them set that. And we actually find that this opens up the possibility of being able to support the larger departmental projects, but it also provides the opportunity to consider, what funding levels do projects really need? We all know that we cannot fully support the labor that it takes to create an open textbook, but what we can do is have faculty say to us, "How much could they get paid in the summer?"
It becomes then part of a conversation much more so than just, "Hey, we're giving you money to do this." And so we have actually found this to be a very successful way to navigate this. Unfortunately, this year for example, we have far more proposals that like, our funding levels are far higher than what we can support. So part of our selection process is also having an in-depth conversation about how much money should we be giving to projects. Next slide please. All right, budget. So there is a lot to consider with the budget, and this is probably one of the most complicated areas. So before you release your call for proposal, I cannot stress enough to meet with your library's fiscal office to understand how funds can be distributed. So at Portland State University, the library distributed the funds to the authors directly. This required regular meetings with our library's budget budget analysts to ensure that we were on track and stayed on budget.
We set up spreadsheets and documents that guided every decision we made. We also met with our central HR to assist with drafting contracts to ensure that we were not violating labor laws or contracts, and then if your institution distributes the funds directly, here are some things. So yeah, so we set up all of this before we even did our call for proposal because we needed to know what we could actually provide to the faculty. So it was to were we able to give people a lump sum or did we have to distribute it out during an academic year? Could we only pay them in the summer when they were off contract? What happens if a faculty member's on a 12-month contract, how do we navigate that? Were we offering departmental buy-out? Who was going to cover the OPE or the other payroll expenses? So employee paid taxes such as social security and Medicare. So if we were offering a stipend of $2,500, was the faculty actually going to receive the $2,500 or would they actually receive $2,000 after taxes and OPE were taken out?
How will your institution hire or handle contracts? Would the faculty member be able to hire a third-party vendor, for example, to do copy editing or to do design work? Who is going to handle that contract? And then what type of expenses can and cannot be paid for? So we had a whole running spreadsheet that said as we learn things, we would continuously update it and then I would share that with the faculty as an FAQ just because there were so many ins and outs. So at VCU Libraries, our funding is actually dispersed to awardees departments at the beginning of the fiscal year. So how and when the funding is spent is at the discretion of the department, which means it's a lot less work for us, but it's more work for the faculty member because we clearly state that the faculty member has to know how their money is going to be distributed and they have to have a conversation with their fiscal officer before the distribution happens.
We've unfortunately run into issues where faculty haven't spent their money in time or they were under the impression they could spend their money one way only to find out that they couldn't do it. So it leads to a lot less headaches on our end if faculty have that conversation up front with their fiscal office and they know what they can do with their money before they actually receive their money. Next slide please. All right, services and support. You must clearly define what services your program is going to provide. So here are a few questions I recommend answering to help you decide on what services your program has the capacity to support. And capacity is key to all of this. So will your open textbook authors just write their book or will they be responsible for editing and designing it? Will authors be responsible for clearing copyright or will your program provide assistance with this?
So at Portland State, many of our open textbooks were supported, were in language education and it required international copyright clearance. So while we worked really closely with the author to drop the copyright permission letters, we actually required the authors to reach out. During the author creation process, will the library assist with pedagogical questions or does your university have instructional designers? Do you have any in-house expertise? Is there staff at your library or university that could do copy editing or design? Does that person have capacity to take on that extra work? If you don't have in-house expertise, will authors be responsible for finding editors and designers by themselves or will you be able to assist with that? Again, how will you handle peer review?
I talked about that in our previous slide. If you decide to do open peer review, will the authors need to find those reviewers? Will authors be required to set aside a certain amount of money to be designated for editorial or production services? This is something I've done in the past. It hasn't run as smoothly as I would like, because you can only estimate how much it's going to cost, whereas most of the time the reality is it costs a lot more. So trying to have those conversations of, "Oh, you only set aside $2,000 and it's actually now going to cost $4,000" is tricky to have, but something to really consider.
It's also just really important to lay it all out. Unfortunately, what this means is that your call for proposal, as you can only imagine, just keeps getting longer and longer, but having all that information there is going to set up expectations, which is really important. Next slide please.
We're getting near the end. So what will your completed textbook look like? Will you define the number of pages, number of chapters? Will each chapter have a set structure? And you also want to think about what constitutes a final product and finished product. So you should prime authors to think about their long-term project sustainability. Plans for revision are really, really important. You just don't create and forget. Authors constantly have to be updating it. A lot of our projects, we don't have the money to support those updates, so it's, what does this look like in two years? What does this look like in five years? How do you plan for making these adjustments? Also, what is the spirit of the project? If something were to happen to the author where they don't have the capacity to finish it, could you create and say, "This is done, we could work with this, we could teach with this." And then eventually somebody or that author could go back and restart it again. So it's really important, because you do at some point need to just cut projects off and say, "We're done." Next slide please.
Carla: Okay. So hi everybody. My name is Carla Myers. I'm the Coordinator of Scholarly Communications from Miami University, which is in Ohio, and I'm so excited always to talk to this group in general, but especially this collaborative presentation between Karen and I. Because not only is Karen fabulous, but these two topics, the call for proposals and the memorandum of understanding once proposals are selected are so closely related to each other, it's nice to kind of build upon that. So you've done your call for proposal, you put it out there, you get some great projects, you decide which ones they're going to be able to support, and now is the time to sign a memorandum of understanding as a communication tool and as a project management tool.
Okay, so we're going to have another poll. Let me launch that. So have you signed an MOU before? It can be related to open textbooks or open textbook publishing. It can be related to acquisitions, it can be related to anything. I'm curious, how many people have engaged in this process before? Let's share these results out. So about 30% of you have signed one before, about 50% have not, and about 20% have been part of the process even though they weren't the person signing. So I think that's pretty reflective of what we commonly see in this area. Thanks to everybody for engaging with that. So what is an MOU? MOU stands for memorandum of understanding. It is a formal though, not necessarily legally binding, although it can be legally binding, but it's a document that outlines an agreement between two or more parties that they have reached between this discussion and negotiation.
It can be as short or as long as you need it to be. Generally, you want it to be as short or as long as it can be to effectively reflect the needs of the particular project or to clearly outline the understandings in different areas. I've seen MOUs that are barely a page long, I've been a part of an MOU that was almost 30 pages long, so it really kind of just depends on the projects. I would say for open textbook publishing, they usually range from about three to eight pages long. So why have an MOU? What's the point? And somebody asked me this once, they said, "Everything was kind of spelled out in the call for proposals, why do we need this next document to move forward?" And there's a couple of different reasons for that. What we put in the call for proposals can be flexible based on different projects.
It could be flexible based on the budget. Some projects have very set budgets. No matter what you're doing, you get X amount of dollars. Others kind of do what Karen mentioned. "Well, tell us how much money you think you need." And maybe one group thinks they need $2,500 and maybe another group thinks they need $20,000. Now maybe you might find out, "Oh, I think you're underestimating with your $2,500. Let's bump you up to $5,000" if you have the capacity to do that. Or you might say, "Yeah, $20,000 is a little bit beyond our scope. Here's what we can offer you." That can also go in terms of the support that somebody is seeking. Some projects may need support in different areas than others. So it really kind of just establishes the expectations for everybody involved in that project, who is going to be doing what.
And I think what's really important is it provides a source document that you can consult when there's confusion or there's goals not being met. For much of my career, I worked at the circulation desk, so public facing. And I think with most libraries, circulation policies and procedures, we have to set policies, but you can interpret those differently in different situations. But when somebody got upset by a policy, "Well, what do you mean I'm being billed for the replacement when I return it two and a half years late." It was nice to be able to have a document, a policy online or somewhere in the library that you could go back to and say, "This is the basis of the decision or the discussion." And I think that's one of the great things about the MOU is you can go back to that source document and say, "Here's what we agreed upon. What do we need to do to get to this area? Or where might we need to change things in order to accommodate a need of the project?"
Who is in the agreement? It depends. Generally, it's going to be between those creating the OER. So that could be the library, it could be the larger academic institution. If your institution or a library has a publishing arm, it could be them. It could be with a group of authors if it's a group project. It could be with what we call corresponding author, maybe the lead author of that project. Sometimes we need to have a conversation with them, "Okay, you are going to be writing it, but you're going to be bringing this person to create some ancillary materials like a test bank online or a website or things like that. So do we need to bring that person into the MOU to plan that part or are they going to kind of be like a subcontractor, you're going to work with them on behalf of the project?"
Something else we have to think about is could union representatives be involved? If your institution has a union that covers faculty, there could be something that contract that says for these types of projects, as Karen mentioned earlier, if the work is being done while they're on contract, if they're nine months that there has to be a union consultation or whether it's going to be the summer, that might be a little bit different. So it could be that somebody from the union has to be part of that conversation too. What is in your MOU? And chances are it's going to be a lot of what was in the call for proposals, but more specifically, what are those different categories specific to this project?
The big things are, first off, what are the authors going to be delivering? Writing the text, are they going to be responsible for finding images, creating figures? Are they going to be responsible for clearing permissions when they're needed for third-party works? But then also making it very, very clear, what is the library, the institution delivering? Are we finding contributors or peer reviewers? Are we the ones providing the copy, editing the layout, things like that. Are we the ones doing the formal publication of the book? So very clearly spelling out who is responsible for what. And this is important because you could have an author who says, "Wait a minute. Well, you said there had to be reviewers, but I was thinking you were going to select them." When under either the call for proposals or something else, we outlined their responsibility for that. So this is just making sure before everybody kicks off, we kind of know what to expect from the different parties involved.
Your timeline. What are the due dates for the deliverables for the projects? Whether it's chapters, whether it's figure creation, whether it's remediation for accessibility, but then also that from the author, but also the institution itself. Once they get you the text for the book, what is your turnaround time going to look like to get that back to them? Once you have proofs, what's the expected turnaround time for getting that back and forth? So very clearly spelling out those due dates. And then copyright considerations, there can be different considerations if there is a single author, if there are multiple authors, if they're going to have students contributing to the open work, we might have FERPA considerations.
So FERPA is the law that protects the privacy of students. I've worked with instructors who really want to have students collaborating to get that student voice and perspective in the OER, but if that is part of a graded assignment here at Miami University, we number one, have to get a FERPA clearance and number two, have to make it clear we cannot compel them to place an open license on work in which they are the copyright owner. And in those cases, if the student doesn't want to contribute, is there an alternative assignment that they can engage in? We might also have work made for hire situations, which is a category of copyright law.
So we are hiring you to create a work. At some institutions that means the copyright is actually going to lie with the university, even though that faculty member retains rights to reuse it in different capacities. For some of these contracts, the copyright remains with a faculty member, they're putting an open license on it, but also agreeing to language that makes it very clear if updates need to be done in the future or like Karen said, life can happen. All of a sudden they find a need to pause or end the project that we can empower somebody else to help us finish it off.
This one I've learned is kind of unique to Miami University, certifications and indemnities. Some institutions do this, I think it's pretty rare. So a certification is usually saying, "I'm the person who created the work. I'm the author of it. I have the right to enter into this agreement with the institution." And indemnities, "If I mislead you on anything, if I'm unscrupulous and have stolen this work from somebody else and that person sues the institution, because I certified I was the author, I've indemnified the university against legal liability, but I will take that on if I misrepresent anything here." Sometimes also saying, "I'm not including any libelous materials, things that portray somebody or an institution in an organization in a way that could bring about legal liability." Miami University is great because they really empowered me in this work, but I think they're also conservative when it comes to the law and dotting their I's and crossing their T's and making sure this language is in there.
And then also of course, the open license. Here at Miami University, we give a faculty the ability to choose from three different open licenses out of all the ones the Copyright Clearing Center offers. Some programs say you can choose any of them. Some institutions say you will put on this one, making it very clear what open license is going to apply to that project or what their options are for choosing one, and if so, which one they want to choose. What is the budget? And I'm just going to emphasize again how important it is to have this conversation upfront. How much are they getting for the project? How will that be distributed? Will it all be upfront? Will the money be awarded in stages? Will the library be paying the bills? Will the library be transferring the money to that person's department for them to take care of it?
And what type of expenses can be paid? One of the ones we have to be most careful of here is third-party contracts. So if they want to go out and hire somebody to create some images or figures or something like that, because then the university probably is going to have to get involved in agreeing to that contract. It can be done, it just adds in an extra step that we have to make sure the faculty member is cognizant of and takes in order for us to be able to reimburse that expenses. So we're also very upfront on what the budget is and how that is being managed. How will the materials be submitted? I was a journal editor for 10 years and I can tell you this is so critical. What format? We would probably assume most people would submit it in Microsoft Word. I've had things submitted in OpenOffice, which doesn't play nice with a lot of editorial publishing tools that are out there.
I once had a faculty member give me something in a locked PDF and when I was like, "Oh wait, there's a problem here." They're like, "Well, I don't want anybody altering my work without my permission." Yeah, yeah. "So you can just note your changes and then I can decide what's going to be made." That was kind of a reflective conversation on what is an open access work, even though I thought we had covered that clearly, that we had clearly said up front, "We need this in a Word format." Image and graphic file formats, what types do you need those to come in? And citations. Number one, what all needs to be cited because you would sometimes be surprised where they think they need citations and where they don't and what format you want those citations in. I say this with love in my heart, a lot of times what I get is citations coming in in multiple formats or they're using either maybe a tool from a journal or a tool in Word to create those citations and those are notorious for causing errors.
So we have a conversation that you can use those tools to get you started, but that you have to check those yourself to make sure they are actually correct, not only the content they need, but actually the formatting itself because that's just so much work and our small group that supports this doesn't have the capacity to do this. Something new with citations that we are navigating here at Miami University is the use of AI in the creation of open works in any capacity. AI is an emerging tool and we want to support faculty in using it where it is practical, but we also want to be upfront in communicating where they used it or again, recognizing that AI is far from perfect. So if you used AI to create a case study, number one, being upfront that that case study was authored by AI, but number two, making sure they're going in and reading it to make sure it makes sense, it has proper grammar and flow, things like that.
So we're trying to figure out how all do we want to integrate AI into our MOU? Just making sure faculty are cognizant of what we want to see when they are using it. So drafting your MOU, you want to be cognizant if your institution has any policies or procedures around drafting these. So I reached out to the Office of General Counsel saying, "Hey, this is what we're interested in doing. We want to make sure we're following your policies and procedures." But we also reached out to HR saying, "Okay, if faculty are going to be working on this over the summer, is there anything we need to know about paying them over the summer or what those contracts have to say?" The faculty at Miami recently unionized. So now we're also going to be have to checking with the union to say, "Is there anything in those contracts that may impact the faculty member doing this work and/or how they might be spending the budget?"
For example, if a faculty member is interested in using part of their budget for a buyout for the semester, does that somehow feed into the union contract and how that money is spent or how that person gets a replacement instructor for the semester? So I think once you have those conversations with key groups, that's when you can start to draft writing your own from the ground up, but I encourage you to swipe. Even with all the work I've done throughout my career with copyright and licensing and drafting these things, I still went and swiped ones and used those as a basis in integrating... Karen's nodding. I think the Portland one was one of the ones I swiped. So we used those as templates. We read through them and pulled out paragraphs or information that we liked and then we customized it to Miami University.
And the publishing curriculum through the OEN has such great templates. I encourage you to take a look at those when you're starting to think about what might your MOU look like, what do you need to have in it? And then even just using those to draft them from the ground up. So tips and recommendations, use plain language. This was fun when I was talking with the Office of General Counsel, and I say that in the nicest possible way because they're attorneys and the way they tend to write texts is completely different from what most of us use in general. So with our MOU, at the end of the day, the certifications and the indemnifications are kind of legalese, even though I go through that very carefully with our faculty authors. Everything else, I work to write in plain language so it's easy for everybody to understand what is expected from both sides.
Organize a document logically. So ours starts off with, here's what the faculty member is responsible for, here's what the library is responsible for, here is the budgets, here is the due dates. So kind of a logical way to look through it and making sure we have in there, what are the key areas you need to cover? And Karen kind of touched on this. This is a learning process. The first MOU that we did looks mildly different from what it is now. We just ended up adding in more sections or providing more details where we realized, "Oh, well, that seemed clear to us, but it wasn't necessarily clear to the faculty members we were working with." So being flexible in how that looks. Setting expectations, informing your authors, maybe even part as a call for a proposal that this is an expectation that you will enter into the MOU. If possible, sharing with them a draft copy of the MOU, making it clear this may change a little bit depending on their project.
And then being available to answer questions, not just during the call for proposals in general, but the MOU can kind of be a little intimidating for people. "Here's this kind of legal looking document that I'm expect to sign. Can I answer questions for you?" Because I want people to step into these projects feeling confident, and as Karen said earlier, feeling that they can ask questions and that there's set clear communication expectations set from the beginning. So a poll, and let me see if I can get this one working. The MOU, the easiest way to draft one is to write one from scratch, to use one drafted by another institution, just take what they have and put it out there to use or a combination of the two?
Okay, I'm going to end the poll and share the results. Most folks, 93% think a combination of the two is the best option, and I would agree with that. I do know of one institution, one or two institutions who just started writing theirs from scratch. They had the resources to be able to do that, usually a full department who is supporting this work. A lot of times in libraries it's like, "Here's a great new initiative. Oh, we already know you're doing a job and a half, so we might as well make it two jobs. Here's all these other responsibilities on top of whatever else you're doing." And the great thing is this is open work. So there are lots of institutions who have put their MOUs out there for people to use, to reflect upon. Some places can't just grab somebody else's and start using it. Be cognizant there's not anything in that that you are agreeing to that you can't support. I think the customization option is really the best way to go. So some lessons learned from all of this.
Karen: Yeah. So I'm going to kick us off on lessons learned, and you will see that there is quite a bit of overlap between the call for proposals and MOU lessons learned. And Carla's already covered several of them and I have already in my slides, so this is just reinforcing what we're already saying. So project management, if you do not have a project manager, that was the first lesson that I learned when I first started open textbook publishing is you need one. It is very important to have one designated person running all the projects and really taking on that responsibility. Project management and supporting projects equals time. It takes up a lot of time to do the one-on-ones, the consultations, the meeting with the budget office to ensure that you know what's happening, the constant sort of connections and moving forward. So you do want to make sure that not only the authors know how much time this is going to take, but also that you as a project manager realize this. And also be cognizant of the number of projects that you have, the capacity to fully support.
Again, this goes with that time. You may think, "Oh, we can do four." But you have six other projects that are still continuing to run. So just because you may release or continue to do your call for proposals, you have to make sure that you can support all of the projects, not just the current ones. Timelines and priorities shift. Working with authors at the beginning of a project to really think about those competing priorities and how it will impact their timelines. Really be flexible on shifting timelines. I always say to faculty authors, "Let's think about what else you have going on. We cannot do a buyout. So you will have to continue with your teaching, with your research and your publishing. And now I'm asking, now you're putting an additional thing on your plate. It's okay to not get this done in one academic year."
Maybe we should draft it and then teach with it for the second and then look at completing it at the end of a second academic year. We don't have, our money is not tied with an end product that's going to provide profit. And really it's about ensuring that your faculty don't have burnout. Need for procedures and policies, particularly around if you're no longer supporting projects. While we don't want to stop supporting projects, you may need to. So if an author isn't meeting expectations, what procedures do you have in place to potentially pause their participation in the program? What steps will you need to follow in order to do that to be notified? Did you have any indication in a call for proposal that there may be faculty may have an option to pause or we may stop supporting? What does that language look like? Or in your MOU, do you have that information?
The other big question, and this is something that has come up at my previous institution is, authors leave the institution. How do you handle that? Are there other co-authors? Can somebody step up? These are things in which may not necessarily be added to your call for proposal, but something in which you really have to be thinking about. And again, and I cannot stress this enough, make sure you're clear about your budget distribution. The last thing you want to do is end up not being able to properly distribute money that you promised. And so it's really great to get ahead of that. Next, oh, go on, Carla. Yeah.
Carla: Oh, sorry. This is you. No, no, go on.
Karen: No, that's all right. I thought you were going to add something.
Carla: No, this is me having a rough day and not enough caffeine.
Karen: That's okay. I had a rough day with my first beginning slides and I was like, "Wait, I'm totally off here." So I, again, I feel like a broken record when I say this, but really be specific. And it's okay if your call for proposal is long. You can chunk it up and really make sure all the important stuff is at the top. But having all of this on paper is going to be really helpful because a lot of the time you can go back to, "What did you say? What were the expectations?" And if it's documented, you can work with the faculty to be like, "Yes, this is what we did." We recently at VCU, a question came up from an author and I was talking to our OER librarian and my first question to her was, "Well, what did we put in the call for proposal?"
So we went back to it and we were like, "Oh, here's what we said. Here's how we said it." And so it really also provides an opportunity to go to the authors and say, and get feedback and be like, "Was this clear? Did you have questions about this?" We actually, at the end of our projects, ask all the faculty authors to provide feedback on their overall experience. And one of the things we ask is, "What drew you to this program? What was it?" And so we really want to be able to gather that feedback for them. Set clear selection eligibility and rubric. You may unfortunately have more projects than you can support, so you do need to find a way to potentially say no to projects. It's also a really great way to get buy-in from liaisons if they are selecting or helping to select the project.
So really make sure you're clear on what is going to be a strong call and what's going to be a strong proposal and what are you looking at. And again, it's okay to reject proposals. If you only have capacity to handle three projects, then that's fine. Make sure there are three strong projects, your rubric will help you with that. But the more is not always better. It's one thing I cannot stress enough is just because you can support 10 doesn't necessarily mean you need to. So I believe that is all of my words of wisdom.
Carla: Now it's my turn. So lessons learned from MOUs. I think number one of them is, okay, once somebody's been selected, schedule their time to sit down and review the MOU with them line by line. And this thought is kind of tedious, especially if maybe it's going to be five pages long, but what we learned early on is things that seem really clear to us, even if we thought we were clear in our communications, the faculty member can have different perspectives maybe on if they've worked with a commercial publisher before or maybe just from their particular field. So I think the best example I have of this is we had awarded a grant for an open textbook publication. We were so excited, because it was going to be in a subject area that we weren't aware there was any MOU out there.
And I sat down to start talking with a faculty member going through the MOU, and we got to the end and they said, "Hey, hey Carla, where's the section of my royalties?" And I was like, "Oh, well, with an open textbook, this is freely available to everybody, there's no charge. So as part of this money, there can be compensation for you for the work for writing it, but there's no ongoing royalties." And they're like, "Oh, but a book with no royalties?" And I'm like, "Yes, but they open..." They had published before with commercial publishers, that's kind of what they were expecting. And they said, "Carla, I hate to say this, but I have a kid getting ready to go to college and we were hoping royalties from these books would help fund that. I think I may want to step out of this project and go with a commercial publisher instead." Which in the end, that's what they wanted. And we were happy to support them and wish them well, but we were really struggling on our end.
Was there some crisis miscommunication on our end that we weren't being clear that while there are upfront funds, there is no royalties, ongoing royalties associated with this? And we ended up talking with some other people. And I think for them it's just what they were used to publishing in their area and maybe the fact that there was no OER in this area. It was just kind of reflective of the fact that that was a really unique publication means, but other people assured us like, "No, no. We really kind of understood what the concept was." But if we hadn't gone through line by line in that particular area, if we hadn't cleared that up upfront, it really bothers me to think what would it have been like when a year went by and they said, "Wait a minute, what do you mean now I'm getting no royalties after I put all this work in and that work was actually published."
Communicate, communicate, communicate. I don't think you can over-communicate when publication happens. And that's because issues will arise on both ends. And most of that comes down to life happening. I did publish a book with a commercial publisher, and when I missed my first deadline, I reached out to my publisher. I was crying in the Zoom, I felt so horrible. And she said, "Carla, you're busy. You have a life, you have work." She said, "I don't imagine you didn't get this done by the deadline because you weren't doing the work." And I was like, "Well, I got sick. And then I had somebody, I just...." She's like, "Yeah, life happens." And she shared a really interesting statistic with me, and looking back at being a journal editor for 10 years, I'm like, "She's right. And that statistic is, only 20% of authors ever meet their initial publication deadlines."
"80%," she said, "can end up taking a little bit more time to double the amount of time that they thought." And she said, "You will get some slackers who just lose interest in the project and stop working on it. But for most people, it's life happening. It's things coming up with their families, it's personal things happening, it's things coming up at work and they just need more time than they initially thought." And kind of like Karen said, if you set that clear collaborative communication from early on, you want them to feel comfortable coming to you saying they're having issues. I once had somebody I was working with and they missed a deadline and I sent an email and then I sent another email, and then I tried calling and I really think they didn't pick up because they knew my area code.
And so I picked up my cell phone, which had totally different area code, and I called them and they picked up and they said, "Oh hey, Carla." And it was just kind of this awkward pause and I'm like, "Hey, how you doing? What's going on? How's your project?" And they said, "I'm so far behind and I've just been so embarrassed and felt so bad. I've seen your emails, I saw your call. I've just been avoiding you because I didn't know what to say." I'm like, "Just say that, that you're behind. Things have happened and let's find a way to get you back on track. What do you need?"
We do plan regular check-ins, and we kind of take a look at the MOU, "What due dates are coming up? What are you working on? Is there something in the MOU? We originally agreed on the citation style and you're thinking you want to switch over to that." So we kind of use that MOU as a guide for those conversations. When questions do come up like, "Oh, I thought you were doing all the copyright permissions?" "No, we will give you great resources to help draft those letters, but as it states in the MOU, that was going to be your responsibility."
Identify areas in the MOU where you can be flexible and identify areas where you cannot. There are some areas we can't be flexible, because we don't have the staffing to do it. We really need the faculty member to do that work. It could be if you're working with a third party who's going to be doing the copy editing or the publishing, they are expecting the project at a certain time. And if the author can't get it to them, they can give you a new due date, but it might be three or six months down the road. So we need to know where they are so that we can communicate to the publisher we're working with. So if you can be flexible, be flexible, and most of the flexibility is going to come from that person needing extra time.
But make it clear up front to the areas where you can't be flexible. And then kind of both of us, things we've both seen recently times are changing. And it was funny because when Karen and I got together to start planning our joint presentation, we were talking about, well, these are things we've seen throughout our careers in supporting this, but recently we're seeing more things or we're seeing some really unique things popping up and what does that look like? So Karen, I'm going to let you kick off with some of your examples and then I'll share a few from Miami University.
Karen: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we're really seeing is faculty workloads. So faculty workloads are changing and shifting, and it's really just been, have people reached a certain level of burnout? So we heard about it particularly during COVID, but one of the things we saw was faculty really energized around the idea of open education, creating resource materials specifically for their students, being able to really design with students in mind. One of the things that we're really now seeing is even that level of energy getting pulled away just due to various circumstances. So how do we reframe and talk about OERs in a way that we haven't done before? How do we continue to energize our faculty to show how important this material is and the fact that while saving students money is important, there are so many other reasons to be creating OERs and really to be able to create just that level of energy that I know many of us have seen, just not as high as it used to be.
Carla: We're seeing the same things in tandem here at Miami University. So budgets for higher education are being impacted across North America. State support is dropping. We're seeing that more and more students are thinking, "I don't necessarily immediately have to go to college." So we're seeing enrollments down. And then of course, a demographic cliff coming where since 2008, people have just been having less children. So there will be even fewer people of the age of 18 to go to college. And then with budget pressures, we're seeing a little bit of an impact on faculty workloads. I know here at Miami University, there's a little bit more of an emphasis to pivot away from visiting assistant professors who normally might've taught some of the lower level courses. They're just saying, "With tighter budgets, we just can't hire as many of them." So before where faculty might have seen an opportunity, "I have this time in my schedule to work on open materials," they're saying, "Well, now I'm teaching more classes."
Or just that burnout that Karen talked about. Just seeing that more in terms of everything faculty are trying to navigate at in higher education, especially other pressures coming through society right now. And I'm not trying to be political, but the fact is grants are being cut in other areas and the way that can impact faculty morale or workload. I talked with one faculty member who was like, "Is now even a good time to be writing open materials because I'm concerned about some of the content that I put in there. Could that content make me a target for people who feel like what topics are and aren't being taught in higher education?" So some of these really forces coming from the outside that we're trying to figure out how we need to navigate. And so I think the solution to this is just a review of campus and instructor needs and flexibility. One of the things we're talking about here, and I will say like Karen, we get feedback from everybody who's involved in all of our initiatives, and we have been changing.
Some of our programs haven't changed at all, but some of them end up getting reinvented every two or three years because we found out that faculty needs have changed. So do we maybe need to be providing more support to the faculty member? Okay if they're seeing their workloads modify a little bit? Do we maybe need to work in a budget for a student employee who can help the faculty member with some of those things? Are there things we want to focus on like one of our big initiatives here at Miami University is trying to negate the cost of course packs.
It's not necessarily open education, we're looking at what readings are in those course packs students are paying for that they don't have to either because the library is licensing those resources or we can make them available under fair use or other rights and copyright law. It's not an open resource because it's in Canvas, it's not freely accessible to the world, but nevertheless, maybe we'll have a little bit more success there for the time being negating those costs while we try to figure out how can we support faculty needs with these bigger projects. Karen, what solutions are you looking at?
Karen: Well, I do want to be cognizant of the time. So it is three o'clock. So I do want to just, yeah, here's our contact information. If you do need or have any questions for us, please feel free to reach out. And I just was going to reiterate what Carla said about solutions. Flexibility is huge. And I also think it's about thinking outside the box. Really, it's about how can you support the faculty member and how can you continue to move forward with creating OERs to the best of your ability? And I see Melissa's put her camera back on.
Melissa: Okay. So first, thank you so much Karen and Carla, thank you so much for bringing this really important topic to us. I've actually been working on a call for proposal, so I'm going to take a lot of put you guys said to heart. And so I'll use it for the upcoming MOU also. I know I do want to be cognizant of time as well, but if anyone had any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat or if you would like to unmute yourself, please do. I would like to give everyone that opportunity.
Karen: And I am able to stay a little bit longer as well, so I'm happy to answer any questions.
Carla:I am too.
Melissa: Oh, great. Thank you.
Karen: And we did throw a lot of information at you in 50 minutes, so we also apologize.
Melissa: It was very helpful though. Yeah, thank you so much for both giving all of that information. And of course this will be available on our Pub101 YouTube page also. So if you will like to go back and watch again or any of our other sessions, those are available too. Okay, so if there are no questions, I'll just say thank you all for joining us as we continue to learn about open textbook publishing. We hope that as we continue to share available resources and recommendations, one of our key takeaways is the sense that you're not alone in figuring out how to support open textbook authors. So thank you all again and we will see you next week for the final Pub101 session.
Carla: Thanks everybody.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
00:20:33 Christine Rickabaugh: Working with respected/interesting folks
00:20:43 Carla Myers: Expert support in an area where I do not have experience!
00:20:48 Lora Largo: Hello everyone. My audio is not working, so I am going to leave and hop back on. Thank you!
00:21:03 Stephanie Wiegand: A timeline that allows for writing that is not incredibly rushed.
00:21:11 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "A timeline that allo..." with 💯
00:21:31 Amanda Larson: Interesting Topics and reasonable timelines.
00:34:26 Sonya Durney: I wish I had heard this advice last summer. +1 meet with the finance office before!
00:39:24 Monica Johnson: this information about services / support is great. I have many faculty that assume this is my responsibility.
00:44:00 Christine Rickabaugh: I'm so glad we implemented an MOU! It gives me an opportunity to clarify roles, deliverables, explain copyright/CC, and clearly state that if the author leaves the institution, we can finish the book with out them!
01:08:15 Amanda Larson: Say no to things! You can always build capacity - it's much harder to shrink it back down when you're overwhelmed.
01:12:41 Monica Johnson: Can you please Pub 101 Canvas curriculum and YouTurbe Hub 101 Spring 2025
01:13:41 Amanda Larson: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
01:13:44 Melissa Chim: Pub101 (2025) - YouTube
01:20:43 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Incredibly is helpful. Thank you so much!
01:21:02 William Peaden: Very helpful
01:21:08 Jeffrey Hopkins: Thank you guys!
01:21:14 William Peaden: Thank you very much it is 8pm for me so I will be leaving
01:21:39 Lora Largo: Thank you so much!
01:21:42 Amanda Larson: Thank you Karen and Carla!
01:22:02 Cameron Boucher: Thanks!
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