Category Archives: oa.libre

61th Online Seminar: Open Access Publishing – Zooming in on Copyright and CC Licenses | Helmholtz Open Science

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The 61st Helmholtz Open Science Online Seminar will take place on Wednesday, October 27, 2021 from 3:00 p. m. to 4:30 p. m.

In this seminar, the Helmholtz Open Science Office will present on the topic of “Open Access Publishing – Zooming in on Copyright and CC Licenses”. We will shortly look into Open Access Publishing and the options for researchers at Helmholtz in general and then zoom in on the topics of copyright (What does this mean for your research, writing and publication process?) and CC Licences (How can you make use of these licences to “free” your own research and to successfully engage in Open Science?). After the presentation by Dr Christoph Bruch (Helmholtz Open Science Office) there will be ample opportunity for open discussion.

Questions can be submitted in advance via the Open Knowledge Foundation Online Pad and will – if possible – be addressed during the course of the event: https://pad.okfn.de/p/61st_Helmholtz_Open_Science_Online_Seminar

The 90-minute event will be held in English and will be conducted via the video conferencing tool Zoom. The seminar will not be recorded.

To participate in the event (free of charge), please register in advance.

Introducing Figshare+

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“Figshare has been helping researchers make their data publicly available for more than 10 years, over which time we have watched data sharing grow across disciplines as funders and publishers require data sharing and researchers seek to get credit for all the products of their research. While we will continue to offer figshare.com as a freely available generalist repository for the research community, we have found that there is an increasing need for sharing larger datasets as well as to have additional flexibility to describe and organize data. We also recognize the importance of open data that is not just openly accessible but that also adheres to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). To address this, we want to offer a way for researchers to get more support during the data sharing process in making their data well documented so it can be discovered, reused, and ultimately have more impact.

That’s why we are introducing Figshare+ to offer support for sharing larger datasets in a trusted generalist repository.

We frequently get requests from researchers seeking to use figshare.com with a need for more storage space for their data or larger file size uploads. There are few options for researchers to share TBs of data in a FAIR way. There are also long term ongoing costs in ensuring the data persists.

Figshare+ offers data deposit as a one-time Data Publishing Charge (DPC) to share the datasets and materials supporting a specific publication or project. To be as transparent as possible, nearly all of the DPC cost goes towards covering our costs to host this data securely and redundantly in the cloud. Many funders allow data sharing costs to be included in grant budgets, so you may be able to use grants funds to pay for Figshare+ and can include it in data management and sharing plans in funding proposals.

Because we want researchers to get the most out of their open data, Figshare+ also offers additional license options and metadata compared to figshare.com. Personal email support is also provided during data deposit which includes the review of your dataset files and description by a Figshare data expert who can offer guidance on making your data as discoverable and reusable as possible….”

Open Knowledge Licensing Coordinator | CRL

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“The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) seeks an Open Knowledge Licensing Coordinator. The Open Knowledge Licensing Coordinator is responsible for advancing open knowledge on a global level through coordination of CRL’s licensing activities. Reporting to the Senior Director of Collections, Technology, and Partnerships, the Open Knowledge Licensing Coordinator plays a key role in identifying, negotiating, and procuring electronic resource offers and in coordinating and managing subscriptions and purchases. The Open Knowledge Licensing Coordinator works with research libraries, content providers, and the scholarly communications community on new and innovative models that advance open knowledge. CRL is in an exciting growth period and this position will be integral to helping the organization meet its aspirations. 

Based in Chicago, Illinois, CRL is an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries that works against historic, systemic inequities by: advancing open and equitable access to knowledge through partnerships that span open knowledge policy, infrastructure, and analytics; engaging in collections work grounded in anti-racist and post-custodial frameworks that support communities historically under-engaged by the organization; supporting collections as data development that enables expanded form of scholarly and professional engagement with the scholarly record; and by committing to the responsible operationalization of technology. …”

A Checklist for Submitting Your Research to arXiv | by Liz Maag-Capriotti | Oct, 2021 | Towards Data Science

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arXiv is a popular open-access archive of scholarly articles that has operated for the last 30 years and includes research in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. arXiv has helped open science through pre-prints and improved global collaboration by allowing authors to share knowledge earlier in the scientific process and gain feedback on their research and ideas. Today arXiv remains one of the largest and exponentially growing preprint services.

In pursuit of rich article-level metadata: 5 elements journal publishers should prioritize

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“As noted at the start of this post, don’t be discouraged if you can’t add all of the above elements to your article-level metadata. Remember, any metadata enrichment step you take, no matter how big or small, will make a difference in your article discoverability. We recommend taking an iterative approach to metadata enrichment and, above all, focusing on quality over quantity. So be sure to first establish a means of producing clean JATS XML metadata and HTML meta tags for all of your articles and then begin layering on new metadata elements from there.

You don’t have to go the metadata enrichment journey alone either. Service providers can help you produce machine-readable metadata for all of your articles and enrich it. For example, Scholastica automatically generates machine-readable HTML and JATS XML metadata for all articles typeset by our digital-first production service, including automated citation metadata enrichment via machine learning. We also automatically produce machine-readable metadata for all articles published using our Open Access journal hosting platform. And when journals use Scholastica’s peer review management system, they can automatically apply metadata collected during peer review to articles submitted to our production service and/or published via Scholastica’s OA journal hosting platform to save even more time. You can learn more about how Scholastica is helping journals produce richer machine-readable metadata here.

Also, be sure to use the metadata checking resources available to you. For example, if you’re registering DOIs for articles via Crossref, you can use the Crossref Participation Reports tool to quickly see which elements your metadata includes and which are missing….”

Council agrees on a negotiating mandate on the Data Governance Act

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“Both the EP and Council texts contain amendments concerning the role of Open Access Common resources. In response to the initial DGA consultation, we submitted feedback to the Commission where we highlighted the fundamental role played by these resources in the overall data ecosystem. To safeguard this key function, it is important that Open Access Commons resources are not negatively affected by the DGA.

The Parliament’s text contains an addition in recital 37a stipulating that the provisions established by the DGA are without prejudice to the ability of non-profit organizations to make data and content available to the public under open licenses. This amendment would clearly signal that Open Access Common resources fall outside the scope of the DGA. As such, it would recognize their key role in today’s digital ecosystem.

The Council text includes a new definition of data intermediaries stipulating that only for-profit services fall into this category. If included in the final compromise, this addition would ensure that existing Open Access Resources, like Wikipedia or Europeana – which are generally recognized as not-for-profit – are not subject to the requirements that the DGA will impose on intermediaries.

Taken together, these two modifications would ensure that Open Access Commons resources are not subject to additional requirements that could endanger their modus operandi. To safeguard their position in the DGA and increase legal clarity, both Council’s and Parliament’s contributions therefore need to be included in the final text….”

Observing the success so far of the Rights Retention Strategy | Plan S

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“As someone who is independent of cOAlition S, I have been monitoring with great interest the application of the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS).

Using Google Scholar and Paperpile, I have documented over 500 works published across hundreds of different outlets using the Rights Retention Strategy language in the acknowledgements section of the work. Authors are using it to retain their rights in preprints, journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, and even posters – this makes perfect sense; the RRS language is simple and easy to add to research outputs. It’s not a burden to acknowledge one’s research funding and to add the statement: “For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission“, and so authors are doing this….

I am also pleased to observe that ALL the major publishers appear to be happily publishing works containing the RRS language, including Elsevier, ACS, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, IEEE, and Springer Nature (inc. Nature Publication Group). So, authors need not fear practising rights retention.

I note that the RRS is a tool that can be and is used across all disciplines – it works equally well for STEM and HSS. Indeed one of my favourite examples of RRS-in-action is a Wellcome Trust funded output by Dr Barbara Zipser from the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Thanks to the RRS language Dr Zipser included in her submission, there is a full-text accepted author manuscript version of her work available at EuropePMC for all to read, whilst separately the journal-published version is available from the publisher website behind a 25 euro paywall. The author accepted manuscript has undergone peer review and has been accepted by the publisher (it is not a rough preprint, from before peer review). I do not need to read a version that has publisher branding & logos. When researchers choose the “green” route to open access, people need not feel sorry for the journal publisher – individual and institutional subscribers pay handsomely to support the journal. Thus, green open access is never “unfunded“, as some publishers have tried to claim….

As a keen Wikimedian, I am delighted with another aspect of the RRS. Prior to the RRS, green OA copies of articles weren’t much used on Wikimedia Commons owing to incompatible licensing. But now, with the RRS, suddenly, RRS-using green OA copies become easier to adapt for re-use on other websites. As Wikipedia is one of the top 15 most visited websites globally, I think it is very important that academic research is not prevented from being used there by overly restrictive licensing conditions. To celebrate this openness, I have added a few figure images sourced from cOAlition S funded, CC BY licensed, author accepted manuscripts using RRS to Wikimedia Commons. These images can be re-used within suitable Wikipedia articles across all languages, helping the transmission of research information beyond the constraints of academic journals and language barriers….”

Whitepaper: Proposal to leverage Article 17 to build a public repository of Public Domain and openly licensed works. · Open Future

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“The German implementation includes a number of provisions that are specifically designed to reduce the risk of so-called overblocking: The unjustified blocking or removal of uploads subsequent to rightholder requests to prevent the availability of their works in accordance with Article 17(4) of the directive. These provisions include the requirement not to block “presumably legitimate” uploads and the requirement to keep disputed uploads available until the dispute is resolved.

In addition the German implementation law contains a specific provision aimed at preventing the unjustified blocking of works that are in the Public Domain or that have been licensed under open licenses….

To comply with this provision, OCSSPs operating in Germany will need to maintain an internal repository of works for which they have (1) received a blocking request and where (2) such blocking request has turned out to be abusive because the works are either in the Public Domain or where the use of the work is authorised under the terms of an open license…. 

Over time such repositories can be expected to grow and will likely start to contain a substantial number of entries relating to a wide variety of openly licensed and public domain works. This will result in the repositories obtaining value beyond the relatively narrow use case of preventing overblocking of openly licensed and PD works by OCSSPs: They will become repositories of freely reusable works that can help to unlock the societal value of these works…”

Wyden, Eshoo Press Big Five Publishers on Costly, Overly Restrictive E-Book Contracts with Libraries

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“Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and U.S. Representative Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif., today pressed the big five book publishing houses – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan – for answers regarding their contracts on e-books with libraries….”

Toward Reusable Science with Readable Code and Reproducibility

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Abstract:  An essential part of research and scientific communication is researchers’ ability to reproduce the results of others. While there have been increasing standards for authors to make data and code available, many of these files are hard to re-execute in practice, leading to a lack of research reproducibility. This poses a major problem for students and researchers in the same field who cannot leverage the previously published findings for study or further inquiry. To address this, we propose an open-source platform named RE3 that helps improve the reproducibility and readability of research projects involving R code. Our platform incorporates assessing code readability with a machine learning model trained on a code readability survey and an automatic containerization service that executes code files and warns users of reproducibility errors. This process helps ensure the reproducibility and readability of projects and therefore fast-track their verification and reuse.

 

What to Do if Your CC-Licensed Work is Misused – Creative Commons

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“The CC licenses are designed to make sharing simple and place minimal requirements on reusers who want to be able to use creative works. However, sometimes reusers still misuse CC-licensed works, either intentionally or by mistake, and as a licensor, there are several things you can do about it….”