By Ron Peterson

With the publication of issue 53, the Code4Lib Journal is implementing a new post-publication name change policy. Drawing heavily on “A vision for a more trans-inclusive publishing world: guest article” and the Sage Publishing name change policy, the new policy seeks to lower the barriers for authors seeking to change their name or gender identity and decrease the risk of inadvertent disclosure within the Code4Lib Journal.

Our goal in implementing this policy is to address the needs of all authors who seek to change their names for any reason, such as changes to gender identity, marriage status, religion and others. The Editorial Committee recognizes that individuals who are transgender, non-binary, and/or gender diverse are uniquely vulnerable to harassment and assault, as well as issues related to receiving proper credit for their work. Our purpose with this policy is to not contribute to these issues and, where we are able to, provide relief.

The Code4Lib Journal will do its best to follow the 5 guiding principles and best practices laid out in the COPE guest article:

• Accessibility: Name changes will be available to authors upon request without legal documentation, unnecessary barriers, burdens, or labor placed upon the author making the request.
• Comprehensiveness: We will remove all instances of an author’s previous name from the records maintained and disseminated by the publisher. 
• Invisibility: The Journal will not draw attention to the gender identity of an author, nor create a clear juxtaposition between the current name and the previous name.
• Expediency and Simplicity: The Journal will implement name changes in a timely manner, and with a minimum of bureaucratic overhead.
• Recurrence and Maintenance: The Journal will regularly audit and correct new instances of changed names in order to prevent ongoing dissemination of incorrect information.

The Code4Lib Journal does not have the ability to update how these articles are represented in indexing and abstracting services, with the exception of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and must rely on the indexing services to pick up the changes to the publication. For DOAJ, new metadata will be submitted to update author information.

If you would like to discuss this policy, or any other journal policy, I encourage you to start a discussion on the journal’s email discussion list, c4lj-discuss. We look forward to hearing from you.

Now for what you will find in this issue and as is typical we have something for everyone. For those of you interested in metadata we have articles like Karen Coyle’s article exploring the use of the Library Reference Model’s (LRM) work, expression, manifestation, and instance concepts beyond the Library and Information Science world. If that doesn’t meet your needs, maybe Jenn Randles and Andrew Bullen’s article, “Citation Needed: Adding Citations to CONTENTdm Records” is what you are looking for. There is also Ross Spencer’s article, “Fractal in detail: What information is in a file format identification report?” about using the metadata in the file format identification report.

We also have articles that will help you manage the workflow in your library. There’s “Automated 3D Printing in Libraries” by Brandon Patterson, Ben Engel, and Willis Holle about responding to pandemic challenges by allowing users to request 3D printing jobs remotely. Or if you need to automate referrals for reference assistance, Stephen Zweibel’s article, “Automating reference consultations with JavaScript and a Google Form,” may be what you are looking for. Chris Diaz’s article, “Lantern: A Pandoc Template for OER Publishing” can help libraries looking to publish Open Educational Resources in multiple formats.

If your interests include digital content management, you might be interested in learning more about “Strategies for preserving Digital Scholarship / Humanities Projects” at the University of Toronto. Kirsta Stapelfeldt, Sukhvir Khera, Natkeeran Ledchumykanthan, Lara Gomez, Erin Liu, and Sonia Dhaliwal tell us about the work they are doing to plan for the long-term preservation of digital projects created at the university. You might also be interested in how Shawn M. Jones, Himarsha R. Jayanetti, Alex Osborne, Paul Koerbin, Martin Klein, Michele C. Weigle, and Michael L. Nelson are applying social media storytelling to a subset of a collection to facilitate collection understanding at a glance with their DSA Toolkit. Lastly for libraries needing to collect, manage, and curate information about the research activity produced at their campuses, Daniel M. Coughlin’s and Cynthia Hudson Vitale’s article, “Supporting open access, integrating distributed research platforms,
and building a research information management platform” should give you some food for thought.

I hope that you find these topics and articles as interesting and informative as I did and that they give you some ideas that you use to further the work that you are doing.

Have a great summer!