Category Archives: oa.cornell.u

Future of Scholarly Communications Committee Promotes Equitable, Sustainable Academic Publications at Faculty Senate Meeting | The Cornell Daily Sun

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“The Ad Hoc Committee: Future of Scholarly Communications presented at the Wednesday, March 8 Faculty Senate meeting in Schwartz Auditorium at Rockefeller Hall to discuss the effects of large corporations on academic publications.

To kick off the meeting, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian Elaine Westbrooks, who serves as the co-chair of the committee, emphasized the significance of Cornell libraries….

Following Westbrooks’s presentation, Prof. K. Max Zhang, engineering, who serves on the University Faculty Library Board, introduced the Ad Hoc Committee: Future of Scholarly Communications. According to Zhang, the committee is made up of roughly 15 members, representing both Cornell’s library system and academic side.

The committee details seven charges towards more accessible scholarly journals. Zhang summarizes these charges into four categories — assessing the current publishing model, evaluating new publishing models, identifying the University’s role in new models and reporting to the faculty about the problems of for-profit publishing….

“I want to be clear that I do not believe that publishers are inherently evil, or bad,” Westbrooks said. “What I really want to bring home is the fact that this is not good for science, it’s not good for scholarship and it’s not good for innovation to have a small set of multinational companies, that we call an oligopoly, control all the academic publishing in the world.” …”

Re-Assessing the “Big Deal” – Ithaka S+R

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“In 2020-2021 Ithaka S+R conducted a novel study in partnership with 11 academic libraries to understand the effects of bundled journal package cancellations on researchers. Since then there continue to be important efforts to collect new and different forms of evidence to create a detailed picture of how researcher perceptions and behaviors can be factored into library budgetary decision making around big deals. The Charleston Library Conference recently featured two such efforts at Georgia Southern University and Cornell University. Researchers Jesse Koennecke (Director of Acquisitions and E-Resource Licensing, Cornell), Kizer Walker (Director of Collections, Cornell), and Jessica Rigg (Acquisitions Librarian, Georgia Southern) recently shared more information about these projects with us….”

Library launches future with FOLIO | Cornell University Library

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“At the start of July, Cornell University Library made a giant leap to the future by implementing an innovative integrated library system (ILS) called FOLIO, becoming the first large research library in the world to migrate to the platform. 

Since 2016, Cornell University Library has been collaborating with institutions around the world to develop the new ILS, which is a complex suite of software for running services and operations—from ordering, paying for, cataloging, and lending out materials to analyzing resource use across physical, digital, local, and remote collections. An acronym for “The Future of Libraries Is Open,” FOLIO is envisioned as a sustainable, community-driven alternative to proprietary ILS products that are costly to purchase and maintain and are subject to vendor control. 

The open source and collaborative nature of FOLIO aligns with Cornell University Library’s commitment to open access and the wide sharing of knowledge …”

Digitization grants awarded to Arts and Sciences projects | Cornell Chronicle

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“Cornell University Library’s annual Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences is funding three new projects aimed at conserving fragile, physical artifacts and digitizing them for research and scholarship.

This year’s materials for digitization include the documents of a small, defunct poetry press in Ithaca; Hi-8 recordings of Haudenosaunee cultural events; and photographic slides of long-gone aerosol street art from different parts of the world….”

Library’s linked-data project gets new grant | Cornell Chronicle

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“A $2.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is boosting a multi-institution initiative to develop tools and workflows that improve the sharing of catalog data among libraries and help internet users discover library resources on the web.

Known as Linked Data for Production, the project is part of a long-term collaboration among Cornell University Library, Stanford Libraries and the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa.

Through linked data, information about books and other items in library records will be enhanced by related information from external online sources….”

Library’s linked-data project gets new grant | Cornell Chronicle

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“A $2.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is boosting a multi-institution initiative to develop tools and workflows that improve the sharing of catalog data among libraries and help internet users discover library resources on the web.

Known as Linked Data for Production, the project is part of a long-term collaboration among Cornell University Library, Stanford Libraries and the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa.

Through linked data, information about books and other items in library records will be enhanced by related information from external online sources….”

LD4L

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“With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Linked Data for Production Phase 2 (LD4P2) partners (Cornell University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science), in collaboration with the Library of Congress and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), are building a pathway for the cataloging community to begin shifting to linked data to describe library resources. LD4P2 builds on the foundational work of Linked Data for Production (LD4P) Phase 1 and Linked Data for Libraries Labs (LD4L Labs). More on LD4P2 Project Background and Goals….”

Project Euclid and SPIE announce publishing technology partnership

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“Project Euclid and SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, announced today a publishing technology partnership to launch a new Project Euclid platform late in 2020. Project Euclid, jointly managed by Cornell University Library and Duke University Press, is an online host and aggregator of over 100 scholarly journals, book series, and conference proceedings in mathematics and statistics. SPIE will develop and power Project Euclid’s new platform in an innovative technology model that brings nonprofit organizations together for the shared development of major publishing infrastructure….”

New Release: arXiv Search v0.1 : arXiv.org blog

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“Today we launched a reimplementation of our search system. As part of our broader strategy for arXiv-NG, we are incrementally decoupling components from the classic arXiv codebase, and replacing them with more modular services developed in Python. Our goal was to replace the aging Lucene search backend, achieve feature-parity with the classic search system, and give the search interface an opportunistic face-lift. While the frontend may not look terribly different from the old search interface, we hope that you’ll notice some improvements in functionality. The most important win for us in this milestone is that the new backend lays the groundwork for more dramatic improvements to search, our APIs, and other components targeted for reimplementation in arXiv-NG. Here’s a rundown of some of the things that changed, and where we plan to go from here….”

LawArXiv

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“LawArXiv is an open access legal repository owned and maintained by members of the scholarly legal community .

The repository was developed by three law library consortia and an academic lead institution: Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA), Mid-American Law Library Consortium (MALLCO), NELLCO Law Library Consortium, Inc. (NELLCO), Cornell Law Library.

The Center for Open Science serves as the technology partner and hosts lawarxiv.com through the Open Science Framework.  Administrative and leadership support is provided in partnership with the Cornell Law Library….”

2018-2022: Sustainability Plan for Classic arXiv – arXiv public wiki – Dashboard

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“Since 2010, Cornell’s sustainability planning initiative has aimed to reduce arXiv’s financial burden and dependence on a single institution, instead creating a broad-based, community-supported resource. arXiv’s funding and governance for the current operation (Classic arXiv) is based on a membership program engaging libraries and research laboratories worldwide that represent the repository’s heaviest institutional users. As of February 2017, we have 206 members representing 25 countries. arXiv’s sustainability plan is founded on and presents a business model for generating revenues and a set of governance, editorial, and financial principles. Cornell University Library (CUL), the Simons Foundation, and a global collective of institutional members support arXiv financially. The financial model for 2013–2017 entails three sources of revenues:

  • CUL provides a cash subsidy of $75,000 per year in support of arXiv’s operational costs. In addition, CUL makes an in-kind contribution of all indirect costs, which currently represents 37% of total operating expenses.

  • The Simons Foundation contributes $100,000 per year ($50,000 prior to 2016) in recognition of CUL’s stewardship of arXiv. In addition, the Foundation matches $300,000 per year of the funds generated through arXiv membership fees.

  • Each member institution pledges a five-year funding commitment to support arXiv. Based on institutional usage ranking, the annual fees are set in four tiers from $1,500 to $3,000.

In 2016, Cornell raised approximately $515,000 through membership fees from 201 institutions and the total revenue (including CUL, Simons Foundation direct contributions, and online fundraising) is around $1,015,000. We remain grateful for the support from the Simons Foundation that encouraged long-term community support by lowering arXiv membership fees and making participation affordable to a broad range of institutions. This model aims to ensure that the ultimate responsibility for sustaining arXiv remains with the research communities and institutions that benefit from the service most directly.”