Category Archives: oa.usa

USRN Discovery Pilot Project – SPARC

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“An interoperable and well-functioning network of repositories is an essential component of US national research infrastructure and will play a crucial role in creating a more open and equitable global scholarly communications system. With the advent of the recent OSTP Memorandum requiring Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research, there is a need to help repositories identify tools and practices to ensure that they can become an effective compliance option for this policy.

In November 2023, the US Repository Network (USRN) launched a pilot project aimed at improving the discoverability of articles in repositories. This pilot project involves the use of services from CORE, a not-for-profit aggregator based at Open University in the UK, to evaluate and improve local repository practices. Additional technical support will be provided by Antleaf Ltd.

As part of the project, CORE will aggregate the metadata and full text of articles from a subset of US repositories, allowing them to be findable through a centralized discovery service with prominent links back to the original full text of the repository. At the same time, the project will assess current practices related to metadata quality, the tracking of Open Access deposits, the use of PIDs, technical support for OAI-PMH, and the adoption of more recent protocols, such as FAIR Signposting. At the level of the centralized aggregation, CORE will enrich the existing US metadata with information from its larger international aggregation. A Dashboard service for participating institutions will be provided, enabling them to assess, validate and monitor their practices.

The one-year project involves 20 repositories representing a variety of institutions, software types and repository models and will result in concrete recommendations and best practice guidelines for machine and human discoverability of research articles in US repositories.”

The Nelson Memorandum: How two HELIOS members are responding | Carter | College & Research Libraries News

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“The Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS) responded right away, convening members for a virtual briefing by Alondra Nelson, who at the time served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy director for science and society of the White House OSTP, and Christopher Marcum, then-assistant director for open science and data policy at the OSTP. Both contextualized the public access guidance within the Biden Administration’s larger priorities and described how climate change, social inequity, and COVID-19 are compelling, real-world examples of the critical and urgent need for release of data. Additionally, the policy is an important part of upholding and supporting research integrity to protect and restore public trust in scholarship, to help keep track of investments, and maintain accountability through a public record. The Nelson Memorandum offers higher education the opportunity to promote equity and transparency in research through public access compliance. However, colleges and universities are responsible for implementing changes (to infrastructure, policies, training, and more) to comply with new and changing requirements.”

Proceedings of the Workshop Exploring National Infrastructure for Public Access Usage and Impact Reporting

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“Invited international experts and leading scholarly cyberinfrastructure representatives joined workshop organizers Christina Drummond and Charles Watkinson for an eight-hour facilitated workshop on April 2, 2023. Together they aimed to: ? identify the challenges preventing cross-platform public and open scholarship impact analytics at scale, ? explore open infrastructure opportunities to improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse i.e. “FAIRness” of usage data, and ? identify what’s needed to scaffold America’s national infrastructure for scholarly output impact reporting in light of a) the August 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) “Nelson Memo” regarding “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research,” and b) the European Open Science Cloud Core and Interoperability Framework. Participants were encouraged to consider the challenges related to impact reporting and storytelling for research outputs ranging from data, articles, and books to simulations, 3D models, and other multimedia. The workshop objectives shared in advance of the meeting with participants were: ? identify what’s needed to scaffold America’s national infrastructure for scholarly output impact reporting, ? develop recommendations for national infrastructure and investment, and ? prioritize and begin to map out what activities we need to undertake next to support these recommendations. 1…”

NASA Transform to Open Science

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“NASA’s Transform to Open Science (TOPS) initiative is designed to transform agencies, organizations, and communities to an inclusive culture of open science. TOPS’s first priority is to develop the infrastructure to train scientists and researchers as part of our 5-year program. The open science curriculum will introduce those beginning their open science journey to important definitions, tools, and resources; and provide participants at all levels recommendations on best practices.”

Remarks by Günter Waibel on federal public access policies and institutional investment – Office of Scholarly Communication

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“My name is Günter Waibel, and I am the Executive Director of the California Digital Library at the UC Office of the President. I’ll focus my remarks on the implementation of the 2022 White House OSTP guidance by agencies, publishers and institutions.

For publishing, the OSTP guidance has two tracks.

Track A is what we might call the mandatory green open access compliance track.

Compliance requires a deposit in an “agency-designated repositor[y] without any embargo or delay.”

Track B is what we might call the entirely optional gold open access publishing track.

The memo states that agencies should “allow researchers to include reasonable publication costs […] in all research budgets.”

Both of these tracks potentially require different kinds of investments from institutions, their libraries and their authors. On both tracks, there are significant opportunities for federal agencies and publishers to create a more seamless and equitable experience….

In summary, my recommendations to federal agencies are:

Please invoke the federal purpose license in your public access plans to create legal clarity for authors.
Please work with publishers and institutions to develop a scalable path towards automating repository deposit and compliance. PIDs that are openly available, that meet best practices agreed upon by the research community, and that are designed for global adoption and interoperability offer a promising approach.
Please continue to ensure that grantees understand that grant funds are eligible for open access payments.

My recommendation in particular to large research institutions is:

You can stop double-payments to publishers out of your library funds and federal agency grant funds by negotiating open access agreements….”

NCAT Applicant Portal | Electronic and Open Educational Resources Librarian/Assistant Professor

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“Reporting to the Head of Bibliographic, Metadata, and Discovery Services, the Electronic and Open Educational Resources Librarian is responsible for the activation, management, assessment and documentation of electronic resources for F.D. Bluford Library. This position also works closely with faculty to provide leadership with efforts promoting discovery, adoption and implementation of electronic Open Educational Resources such as open access journals and open textbooks….”

You are Invited to Participate in a Pilot of Data Management and Sharing Plan Templates – NIH Extramural Nexus

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“The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) is an association of federal agencies, research policy organizations and academic research institutions with the mission of streamlining the administration of federally sponsored research and create resources that are available to the research enterprise. We have work closely with them over the years on various activities, including efforts to implement our Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy that went into effect in January. Since March, we have engaged with FDP to pilot test two DMS plan templates. These templates were developed in close collaboration with staff and leadership from offices across NIH, and we seek your input on them.

The feedback obtained in this phase will inform possible revisions to the current NIH DMS Plan format page. Our aim is to encourage greater consistency in DMS Plan requirements across NIH Institutes and Centers and mitigate the administrative burden associated with DMS Plan development and implementation for researchers. While the pilot was initially planned to last at least two years, we anticipate that it may continue beyond that, as we continue to learn more as the community and NIH gain more experience with the DMS policy. The policy requires a DMS Plan for all NIH-funded research.

The templates being piloted, available on the FDP website, include:

Option 1 (Alpha version): a prescriptive template designed to limit the need for free text entry.
Option 2 (Bravo version): a template that aims to provide detailed prompts as well as more options to include free text responses as necessary.
Please note that applicants can also use the NIH DMS Plan format page.”

Information Specialist, Open Science – Libraries and Museums

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“Job Summary

Provide research and instruction services to students and faculty in STEM areas advancing student success and research excellence at UTSA with a focus on open science, reproducible research principles, measuring, and communicating research impact.

Develop and maintain strong faculty relationships in order to support the academic curriculum and facilitate meaningful use of the Libraries’ information resources.

 

Leverage technical knowledge and skills to develop new areas of collaboration within the Libraries and with faculty. Initiate and/or coordinate library projects with university-wide impacts. Uses knowledge and skills to achieve institutional goals.

Core Responsibilities

Serves as an expert advisor and consultant to UTSA research community. Identifies and actively cultivates enduring partnerships with research enterprise, academic programs and key faculty at UTSA, aiming to facilitate meaningful use of information resources and tools in research, teaching and learning and to advance open science principles
Develops, implements, and promotes education programming, focusing on educational efforts at UTSA; provides advice and assists faculty in integrating information resources into face-to-face, hybrid, and online courses; and develops associated digital content in a variety of formats.
Plans, develops, and delivers subject-specific online and in-person instruction that supports positive course- and program-level student learning outcomes.
Selects and evaluates materials in all formats to support areas of subject responsibility. Manages collection fund accounts for assigned areas.
Partners with key UTSA Libraries areas to contribute to library-wide programming, strategic projects, and initiatives.
Demonstrates UTSA core values: Integrity, Excellence, Inclusiveness, Respect, Collaboration and Innovation.
Performs other duties as assigned….”

What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2024? – The Public Domain Review

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“At the start of each year, on January 1st, a new crop of works enter the public domain and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose. Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain — and here we focus on three of the most prominent. Newly entering the public domain in 2024 will be:

works by people who died in 1953, for countries with a copyright term of “life plus 70 years” (e.g. UK, Russia, most of EU and South America);
works by people who died in 1973, for countries with a term of “life plus 50 years” (e.g. New Zealand, and most of Africa and Asia);
films and books (incl. artworks featured) published in 1928 for the United States….”

ARL Comments on Plan to Increase Public Access to USDA-Funded Research – Association of Research Libraries

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“On September 27, 2023, and October 10, 2023, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) held stakeholder listening sessions around their 2023 Implementation Plan to Increase Public Access to USDA-Funded Research Results, which included scheduled oral comments from stakeholders. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) presented oral comments at the October 10, 2023, session. ARL is pleased to now offer the following written comments in response to this request….”

Penguin Random House and bestselling authors sue Iowa over school book-banning law

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“The nation’s largest publisher and several bestselling authors, including novelists John Green and Jodi Picoult, are part of a lawsuit filed Thursday challenging Iowa’s new law that bans public school libraries and classrooms from having practically any book that depicts sexual activity.

The lawsuit is the second in the past week to challenge the law, which bans books with sexual content all the way through 12th grade. An exception is allowed for religious texts….”

Enhancing Public Access to the Results of Research Supported by the Department of Health and Human Services – A Workshop

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“This National Academies public workshop, which is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will provide a venue for stakeholders to discuss steps that HHS agencies, including the NIH, Administration for Children and Families, Administration for Community Living, and the Food and Drug Administration, could consider to help ensure changes to public access policies promote equity in publication opportunities for investigators. The workshop will focus on topics related to scholarly publications and convene interested individuals and communities, including authors, investigators, research institutions, libraries, scholarly publishers, scientific societies, healthcare providers, patients, students, educators, and research participants.”

Open Textbook Pilot Grantees Share Vision for Innovative Projects Across the U.S. – SPARC

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“The U.S. Department of Education has named six new recipients of federal Open Textbook Pilot grants for FY23. Project leaders across the country are gearing up to use the nearly $12 million in awards to expand the use of Open Educational Resources (OER).

This latest investment brings the total investment in the pilot program (since its inception in 2018) to $47 million. The funding is aimed at saving students money, improving college success, and making higher education more accessible through open textbooks.

As SPARC continues to advocate for FY24 renewal of funding, here’s a snapshot of the most recent round of grants….”

Request for Information (RFI) on NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research Survey

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“NSF is seeking public input from the science and engineering research and education community on implementing NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research. This plan, described in the SUPPLEMENTARY SECTION of this Federal Register notice, represents an update to NSF’s current public access requirements in response to recent White House Office of Science and Technology Policy guidance….”

Federal Register :: Request for Information (RFI) on NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research

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“The National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking public input from the science and engineering research and education community on implementing NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research. This plan, described in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, represents an update to NSF current public access requirements in response to recent White House Office of Science and Technology Policy guidance. A primary consideration during the development of NSF’s plan has been potential equity impacts of public access requirements. NSF’s goal is to improve equity throughout the research life cycle, making data and opportunities available to all researchers, including those from marginalized communities and historically under-resourced institutions of higher education in the U.S. NSF is committed to considering the needs of the diverse US research community, including identifying possible unintended consequences that the plan and its implementation could produce.”