FHSLA Annual Meeting: Speaker Highlight #3

The annual meeting is next week, but registration doesn't close until tomorrow, March 6th! We've love to see you there! For more details and to register, see: https://med-fsu.libguides.com/fhsla2025 

For our last speaker highlight, we're introducing our panelists. This panel discussion on predatory publishing aims to shed light on the practices of predatory publishers, who exploit researchers for profit by charging fees for publication without offering legitimate editorial or publishing services. With the increasing pressure to publish and the rise of open-access models, understanding how to recognize, prevent, and protect against predatory publishers is critical for both researchers and institutions. We are fortunate to have 3 excellent panelists! Their biographies are below. Be sure to bring your questions!

Monica Berger is a Library Professor at the New York City College of Technology, City University of New York, who has published extensively on predatory (questionable) publishing including her monograph Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications (Association of Research and College Libraries, Publications in Librarianship series, 2024). In her publications and presentations, she addresses the marginalization of scholars from the Global South, arguing that the South should develop more quality, diamond open access in order to mitigate predatory publishing and offer local authors better options.

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Ruth Bueter, MLIS is the Associate Director of Library Operations of George Washington University's Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library where she coordinates collections, cataloging, resource sharing, the institutional repository, and library systems and technology. Ruth has been working in libraries for 16 years. She earned her Master’s in Library and Information Science from Clarion University of Pennsylvania (PennWest Clarion) in 2012 and her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from the University of Toledo in 2002. She has worked at George Washington University’s Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library since 2015. During her time as Serials Librarian at Himmelfarb Library, she became fascinated with predatory publishing and has been educating authors about the dangers of predatory and questionable publishers ever since. Ruth’s scholarly interests include predatory publishing, scholarly communications and publishing, information literacy, open access publishing, electronic resource management, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility within the library profession.

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Karen Burton is an Assistant Librarian at Clemson Libraries where she supports the College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Life Sciences and Clemson Extension. Karen graduated from Clemson in 2003 with a B.S. in Entomology and received her Master's of Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina in 2021. Karen has worked in many different roles at Clemson over the years from raising beetles for biological control to providing academic support to student athletes as part of the Athletic Academic Services Department. Before joining the Clemson Libraries in 2022 she worked for the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville where she supported the Continuing Medical Education program for Prisma Upstate. Her research interests include predatory publishing, evidence synthesis, and scholarly communication.

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