Melody Herr Heads Office of Scholarly Communications

University Relations

Melody Herr, recently appointed head of the Office of Scholarly Communications, will help develop the U of A's Institutional Repository, ScholarWorks@UARK.

The University of Arkansas welcomes Melody Herr as head of the Office of Scholarly Communications. Based in Mullins Library, the office is jointly sponsored by the University Libraries and the Office for Economic Research and Development.

The Office of Scholarly Communications hosts the university's institutional repository ScholarWorks@UARK, now in its first phase. ScholarWorks@UARK is an open access showcase for the research, scholarship, and creative output of U of A's faculty, staff, and students.

Herr will develop the repository by increasing the size of the collection, its visibility, and use. ScholarWorks@UARK will be a feature collection of the University Libraries, but also a community service for the state of Arkansas. The repository will showcase student theses and dissertations, help satisfy funding mandates, and provide global visibility for U of A's work. 

The office will also serve as a clearinghouse for information regarding open access, copyright, and other relevant issues. Herr and her staff will provide workshops for faculty and students on topics like getting published, measuring the impact of publications and outreach, and managing research data.  

Herr has a Doctor of Philosophy in history of science, medicine, and technology from Johns Hopkins University. Before coming to U of A she was the acquiring editor at the University of Michigan Press. Over the course of her publishing career, Herr acquired books in a range of fields from regional topics, business history, and U.S. history to law, political science, and international relations. Through her graduate training and professional experience, she is familiar with publishing practices within the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, as well as with interdisciplinary scholarship.  

Herr values the role publishers play in disseminating research and scholarship, but she is also committed to making scholarly communications more democratic and accessible on a global scale.      

"If I were going to write a mission statement, it would be a single word: EMPOWERMENT," Herr said. "The most rewarding part of my job has been enabling others to achieve their goals, and that's what I most want to do here, empower each member of the community to achieve their personal goals of learning, teaching, discovering, and creating, and to contribute to the collective goal of gaining recognition for the University of Arkansas — an outstanding, globally-acclaimed institution."

Please contact Melody Herr at herr@uark.edu with any questions about copyright, submitting materials to ScholarWorks@UARK, or open access at the U of A. Or, visit the Office of Scholarly Communications online.