Scholarly Communications Librarian Jonah McAllister-Erickson is available to assist faculty, graduate students and undergraduates in navigating the complex journey of writing and publishing research.
“I’m passionate about intellectual property,” McAllister-Erickson said. “In particular, making sure people are able to reuse their own work and remix others’ works, and can do so with confidence they are on firm ground.”
McAllister-Erickson is responsible for managing the WVU Libraries’ publishing program, focusing on Open Access publishing and Open Educational Resources. He assists WVU authors with understanding their rights as creators of copyrighted works and users of other people’s works.
He also works with the Research Repository @ WVU, assisting with electronic thesis and dissertations among other materials shared through the repository. Finally, he assists researchers in understanding best practices in research data management, and the impact of their publications through bibliometrics and altimetric.
The Pittsburgh native, who joined WVU Libraries in June 2022, previously worked in the Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing at the University of Pittsburgh.
“For a long time I have had an interest in copyright and intellectual property issues, particularly as those tend to relate to freedom of expression is where I started approaching that question from, people who use copyright law or trademark law to suppress criticism,” he said.
He did some course work on the law and libraries when he was getting his master’s in library sciences at Pitt and thought it was interesting.
“There have been some incidents where people have been critical of McDonald’s and they used McDonald’s logo, and McDonald’s tried to shut them down,” he said. “In a more scholarly, academic realm, there have been a number of lawsuits around using extensive quotations of a work when you’re being highly critical of it.”
A while back, he helped an author who was writing an article about the history of computing and he had several photographs he wanted to use and most were in the public domain because there wasn’t a copyright notice when they were first published.
They tracked places the photos were used and found one of the photos was reproduced in a shareholder newsletter with no copyright notice. McAllister-Erickson explained that this meant it was in the public domain and all of the photos were free to use.
“There’s a little puzzle element. I like that kind of stuff,” McAllister-Erickson said.
Many other copyright issues can arise when building on research from others. For example, a lot of graduate students use at least one journal article for a chapter in their thesis or dissertation and they need to get permission to do that.
Authors also must obtain permission to use tables, graphics and other data they pull from published sources.
“They will need to know how to request permission. Different publishers use different ways,” he said. “You need to know about the process to request and how to know when you don’t have to ask for permission.”
There’s also an equal number of questions a researcher has to handle to ensure their work is published in a reputable journal and they have their rights protected.
“Broader advocacy of your rights as an author, a creator and a user of materials are one of the things I enjoy about this work is helping people defend their rights as a creator,” he added.
These are some of the issues he will discuss in two online workshops on the docket this semester.
Predatory Publishing: Avoiding Academic Scams
This session will introduce participants to strategies and tools to avoid predatory publishers and conferences and to identify reputable publishing opportunities.
Register for the workshop scheduled for 1-2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30
Introduction to writing a data management plan with DMPTool
This workshop will go over the basics of a data management and sharing plan and introduce participants to DMPTool, an open-source, online application that helps researchers create DMPs that comply with funder requirements, such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.
Register for the workshop scheduled for 4-5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19
Register for the workshop scheduled for 11 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Feb. 15