Workshops

Mason Publishing Group offers workshops on topics ranging from negotiating copyright to trends in digital publishing. See the listing below to browse our currently offered workshops.

Contact us at publish@gmu.edu to schedule a workshop for your department, course, organization, or center.

Social Media Strategies for Scholars, Institutions, and Publishers

For publishers and authors, social media offers a way to connect directly with audience. Social media is about adding value—for your stakeholders and audience. We will review how different platforms help authors and publishers to achieve diverse goals, assess ways to rethink organizational structure and roles; examine techniques to “listen to the conversation” in order to become familiar with your audience’s social media habits; and assess tools for social media analytics.

Word Play: Interactivity, Gaming, and the Future of Digital Texts

Electronic books are evolving, but the majority of ebooks are still a “digital picture of a book,” more portable, perhaps, than printed books but with few other advantages. This presentation examines the future of electronic texts, covering examples of interactive ebooks, gamification and transmedia, and digital textbooks with automated assessment. Using case studies of innovative ebooks, we explore the intersection of digital textbooks and online learning as well as the future of the book.

The Future of Digital Textbooks

This presentation examines trends in digital textbooks and educational resources, including open access textbooks, open educational resources, interactive texts, auto-assessment. Using examples of what innovative publishers, authors and other players are doing in this space, such as texts that include multimedia, collaboration, and automated assessments. We also examine free and low-cost authoring tools and platforms and glimpse the future of digital textbooks.

Metatrends in publishing

Examines the significant trends affecting trade and scholarly publishing, including the changing publishing landscape, Amazon and online bookselling, ebooks, the rise of self publishing, book discovery and metadata, social media, and the changing definition of the book.

Marketing and Promotion for Impact

Presents steps to find your target audience and writing effective copy in order to make the greatest impact on awareness, discovery, and sales. Learn how to target appropriate audiences, plan media campaigns, write press releases and other marketing copy with impact, craft pitch letters, and use stories to connect to your intended audience at an emotional level.

Starting an E-Journal

Interested in starting an online journal? This workshop will guide you through the steps involved in launching a successful online publication. Topics include: defining the goals and scope of your journal; choosing an editorial process; matching your content and goals with a publishing platform; recruiting contributors; and promoting your publication.

Introduction to OJS for Editors

This workshop offers a hands-on introduction to using Open Journal Systems to publish your online journal. We will introduce the different user roles and workflows in OJS, and will provide guidance on customizing the defaults templates in OJS to establish your own editorial process.

MARS, Institutional Repositories, and Open Access

This presentation gives an overview of MARS, the Mason Archival Repository Service, and the role of institutional repositories in the life-cycle of academic scholarship. We will discuss why and how to submit your work to the institutional repository and the benefits of institutional repositories for discoverability, as well as long term access and stability of digital artifacts.