JeSLIB at RDAP Summit 2026: Forging New Roles for Data Librarians in Open Access Publishing

Last month, JeSLIB had the privilege of presenting at the annual Research Data Access & Preservation (RDAP) Summit. The theme for the 2026 Summit was “Practical, Personalized, Impactful: Research Data in the Real World.”

Although the Summit was held virtually on Zoom, many attendees commented on how smoothly the association organizes and runs an online conference. The RDAP community always brings energy, curiosity, and a strong appetite for learning, making the conference experience one of the best in our field.

With this year’s theme in mind, we wanted to showcase how JeSLIB has become an impactful platform for data librarians to publish their scholarship, and how we strive to work directly with authors to personalize their publishing experience. As one of the only open access journals for librarianship in the research data space, we are committed to sharing the real experiences of data professionals to continually improve our practice.

Our panel presentation, “Forging New Roles for Data Librarians in Open Access Publishing,” built on last year’s presentation at IASSIST. For RDAP Summit 2026, we focused more deeply on the evolution of our partnership with RDAP, challenges in data publishing, and the role of data as a primary scholarly output. We highlighted our recent “Data in Action” article type and encouraged data librarians to consider it as a venue for showcasing their datasets and related work. The panel featured all current JeSLIB editors, plus a video recording from a recent “Data in Action” author.

You can view and download our presentation slides on eScholarship@UMassChan.

JeSLIB has been a long‑time supporter of the RDAP community. We have partnered closely with the RDAP Publishing Action Committee to publish articles based on conference proceedings and practitioner experiences since 2018. This year marks the ninth Special Issue that JeSLIB will publish for the RDAP Summit. We hope this mutually reinforcing partnership will continue to support community building, diversity, and practitioner‑driven scholarship.

 
How to Get Involved with JeSLIB and Open Access Publishing

We have a few calls to action if you would like to get involved with JeSLIB and/or open access publishing:

• Become a Reviewer: Reviewers are integral to our publication process, and we rely on the community to help uphold the integrity of the journal’s scholarly work. Fill out our “Become a Reviewer” form to join our reviewer community.
• Join Our Editorial Team: We will soon be recruiting a new Editor‑in‑Chief and Distribution Editor. If you are interested in editorial leadership or gaining experience with journal operations, please email Sally Gore.
• Submit a Data in Action Article: Have you collected a dataset that would be of interest to the field? Our “Data in Action” article type is an ideal venue to share your dataset, context, and lessons learned. Contact Allie Tatarian with any questions.
• Submit to the RDAP 2026 Summit Special Issue: Did you present at RDAP? Consider submitting a more robust, fully developed version of your work. Did you attend RDAP? We also welcome reflections on your virtual conference experience. Submissions for the RDAP 2026 Summit Special Issue are due July 17, 2026.

RDAP Conference Presentation