If you are just considering venturing into public scholarship or have engaged in the public sphere for years, IU Libraries has programs and resources that may help at various stages of the publishing cycle. Whether you’re trying to choose a publishing venue, considering how to license your work, or questioning how to preserve access to your work even as programs and funding change, our librarians may be able to help.
Where to Publish
As of this posting through May 29, 2026, IU Libraries Publishing has an open call that includes a special request for public-facing projects, such as “translations” of academic trends into accessible forms. IU Libraries Publishing will consider many genres of work, from traditional monographs and edited collections to works that incorporate digital multimedia and interactive experiences. For a sense of previous publications, you can find past IU Libraries Publishing projects here along with links to impact data.
If you are considering larger presses, check our guide to OA publishing options. Because of agreements between IU Libraries and select publishers, IU affiliated authors may enjoy discounted OA fees or none at all. The linked guide contains details on the specific agreements and terms, organized by publisher.
Those interested in audio and video publications can check out our Creators Commons for a self-serve studio and equipment rentals.
For those interested in creating their own publication, IUPressbooks offers an easy to use interface for do-it-yourself style publishing.
Access and Preservation
For any work published open access, we encourage the use of Creative Commons licenses to communicate clearly the rights retained by the author and the rights granted to the reader. If you hope to incorporate images and other copyrighted work into your project, IU Libraries guide on copyright contains a wealth of advice.
Because publishers, initiatives, and websites come and go, we encourage you to make use of self-archiving tools. We generally recommend that authors preserve their works in more than one location. IU’s own institutional repository, IUScholarWorks, freely hosts the scholarly output from any IU-affiliated scholars, with options for grouping collections of related works or setting embargo periods on public downloads.
Measuring Impact
Like anything related to your research and professional ;activities, public scholarship belongs on your C.V. and requires the same attention to academic identity management as journal publication. Our guide to visibility and impact offers many tools and solutions, such as tying your work to your ORCiD profile.
Public scholarship will not always receive traditional citations, but there are many ways to measure impact, including media coverage, reviews, social media mentions, and workshop testimonials. Before you launch a new work, it’s helpful to form a plan for how you will demonstrate its impact to future committees.
Find Public Scholarship Works
Find public scholarship works using IU Libraries databases. Some of our databases include a variety of grey literature, including NGO reports, blog posts, and policy papers, from a wide variety of sources, such as NGOs and IGOs, government agencies, and think tanks. Currently, we have access to the following that emphasize or collect solely public scholarship:
Examples of Public Scholarship at IU Libraries
The following represents a sample of the public-facing work that IU librarians have engaged in:
Stargazing: Re/Imagining the Life of Elizabeth “Lizzie” Breckenridge.
- An interdisciplinary, multimedia arts and humanities project about the life of Lizzie Breckenridge, a Black woman who lived with and worked as a paid domestic servant for Theophilus Wylie.
- Featuring the work of poet and faculty member Dr. Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde, composer and faculty member Dr. Raymond Wise, and librarian and Wylie House Museum director Carey Champion, among others.
More Than Masala; Indian Food and Culture through Film: Home
- This LibGuide preservers information from the 2024 film and speaker series that featured films from India that dealt with social issues like gender, caste, class, and more through a focus on cooking and cuisine. The guide includes book recommendations, recipes, and a restaurant guide.
- A collaboration between IU Cinema, IU Libraries, the Dhar India Studies Program, and IU Media School.
Land, Wealth, Liberation: The Making and Unmaking of Black Wealth in the United States
- A multimedia presentation of primary sources concerning Black entrepreneurship, with an annotated bibliography. Intended for use in social studies lessons.
- Curated by IU librarian Willa Tavernier.
Questions?
IU librarians are available for consultations on any of these topics from assessing the pros/cons of various publication formats and venues to assisting you in reviewing licensing agreements.
Contact us at iusw@iu.edu for further assistance.
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