Open-Source 3D Morphing Software for Facial Plastic Surgery and Facial Landmark Detection Research and Open Access Face Data Set Based on Deep Learning (Artificial Intelligence) Generated Synthetic 3D Models | Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine

“Abstract:  Background: The scarcity of 3D facial models presents a significant hurdle for researchers and educators. Gathering such data demands substantial resources.

Objective: To introduce an open-source 3D morphing software to generate 3D facial data sets for research and to provide a large sample data set that is based on synthetically generated 3D models.

Methods: Software is developed to morph 3D facial models in bulk by altering landmark locations. Twenty synthetic 3D facial models are generated utilizing deep learning tools and 28 landmarks located on each. The measurements of synthetic models are confirmed to be realistic by comparing them with facial statistics. Several facial deformities and types are simulated at various magnitudes on 3D models to generate a large data set.

Results: An open-source software and an open-access data set of 980 3D facial models, each with 28 landmark locations, are provided. Since the data set is based on synthetically generated 3D models, no institutional review board approval is required.

Conclusion: The 3D morphing software and the large 3D data set are expected to benefit researchers and educators in the field of facial surgery and facial landmark detection.

Carrots and Sticks: A Qualitative Study of Library Responses to the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 Open Access Policy | DeSanto | College & Research Libraries

Abstract:  This study examines how academic libraries in the UK responded to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 open access policy. Thirteen information professionals at twelve institutions across the UK took part in semi-structured interviews. Findings from the interviews reveal how libraries created and deployed new infrastructures, workflows, and staffing as well as the methods through which universities communicated the policy’s requirements. The study describes respondents’ experiences of the changes brought about by REF 2021 as well as their thoughts on how the REF 2021 open access policy will affect future REF assessments. Results provide insight for libraries responding to US initiatives such as the August 2022 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy memo directing the open publishing of federally funded research.

 

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Neurotherapeutics’ Transition to Gold Open Access | SpringerLink

“Beginning with the January 2024 issue, Neurotherapeutics will become a fully Open Access journal in keeping with the overall trend in scientific publishing. Over the years, the official journal of the American Society for Experimental Neurotherapeutics (ASENT) has gone through a number of transitions regarding its publishing model, beginning with traditional subscription-based print journal paid by libraries, universities, and other institutions, then hybrid online publishing with both subscription and open access options, and now moving to fully open access where the cost of publishing will be covered by authors, their funders, or institutions. Invited articles will not be subject to Article Processing Charges. Along with this change, Elsevier will now be the new publisher of Neurotherapeutics.”

A Large Open Access Dataset of Brain Metastasis 3D Segmentations with Clinical and Imaging Feature Information – PMC

Abstract:  Resection and whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) are the standards of care for the treatment of patients with brain metastases (BM) but are often associated with cognitive side effects. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) involves a more targeted treatment approach and has been shown to avoid the side effects associated with WBRT. However, SRS requires precise identification and delineation of BM. While many AI algorithms have been developed for this purpose, their clinical adoption has been limited due to poor model performance in the clinical setting. Major reasons for non-generalizable algorithms are the limitations in the datasets used for training the AI network. The purpose of this study was to create a large, heterogenous, annotated BM dataset for training and validation of AI models to improve generalizability. We present a BM dataset of 200 patients with pretreatment T1, T1 post-contrast, T2, and FLAIR MR images. The dataset includes contrast-enhancing and necrotic 3D segmentations on T1 post-contrast and whole tumor (including peritumoral edema) 3D segmentations on FLAIR. Our dataset contains 975 contrast-enhancing lesions, many of which are sub centimeter, along with clinical and imaging feature information. We used a streamlined approach to database-building leveraging a PACS-integrated segmentation workflow.

 

Open access journal publication in health and medical research and open science: benefits, challenges and limitations | BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine

“Scientific progress, including in evidence-based medicine, requires all available evidence to be accessed, scrutinised, interpreted and used. Missing or incomplete evidence creates biases and errors in later research. Open science practices are movements and procedures that aim to increase transparency in science production. They aim to make scientific knowledge available, accessible and reusable, benefitting scientific collaboration and all society.1 Open access is a core component of open science that aims to help solve the problem of accessibility.2

Traditional publication behind a paywall can hide evidence from the public, clinicians, policymakers and other researchers. Whether online or print, traditional scientific journals maintain their content behind a paywall, with only abstracts freely available to read.3 Readers access articles by purchasing the individual article, the entire journal issue or through a subscription. These journal subscriptions are purchased by institutions like universities and libraries. However, readers whose institutions cannot afford these subscriptions or who are not affiliated to an institution are often unable to pay to access every article they need. Members of the public and readers in low-resourced countries are disproportionately affected.4

 

 

Open access is defined as making a document freely available for anyone to read and, depending on the licence model, share and use (Box 1). Scholarly publishers now offer open access routes for publishing journal articles such as protocols, commentaries, reviews and result articles. The academic community expects these publishers to adhere to the same quality standards as in traditional closed access publication, such as peer review, indexing and permanent archiving. Biomedical research has progressively adopted open access, with yearly increases in the percentage of articles available as open access publications and the number of countries and policies mandating open access.5 6 Online supplemental text 1 summarises national and international open access mandates….”

Open Access Conversations | Five minutes with Niamh Tumelty | LSE Press

“At LSE Library, I want to continue digging into Open Science and really trying to understand what open social science looks like when it is beneficial to the discipline.

As a sector, academic publishing is too dependent on making a profit. This doesn’t always act in line with the needs of researchers and can lead to decisions made for commercial reasons rather than reflecting the needs of the academy. Open Access university presses, such as LSE Press, help to create opportunities for researchers to work with a press that is aligned with what their values are, and to maximise access to their work without scrimping on quality. The output of LSE Press is high quality, peer-reviewed books and journal articles which can be used to promote social science research to the widest possible audience.

I’m really excited about the fact that LSE Press focuses on the social sciences specifically. There is a much more focused target audience which is helpful for building our brand and establishing ourselves as a leading publisher….”

ACM Announces New Open Access Publishing Model for the International Conference Proceedings Series

“ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has announced it will transition its International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) to a fully Open Access (OA) publishing model beginning January 1, 2024. Making its ICPS program Open Access represents an important step in ACM’s comprehensive shift to full OA publication of all content in the ACM Digital Library, which is planned for completion by December 2025….

The ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (ICPS) provides a mechanism for publishing the contents of high-quality conferences, technical symposia and workshops in the ACM Digital Library, the world’s leading repository of computer science research, thereby increasing their visibility among the international computing community.

ACM has published more than 75,000 research papers in the ACM Digital Library (DL) from over 2,000 conferences through the ICPS program since it was established in 2002. All ICPS published articles appear in the DL and are assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs), enhancing discovery, enabling persistent reference linking and archiving in digital preservation repositories, all while ensuring perpetual access. Publication in the ACM DL ensures high visibility. The ACM DL averages over 4 million unique users from 195 countries every month. On average, users generate 4.4 million page views and 1.75 million downloads each month….”

The American Chemical Society Offers a New Twist on the Article Processing Charge: An Interview with Sarah Tegen – The Scholarly Kitchen

“Will the author have the option of withdrawing at this point, if s/he doesn’t have funds to cover the ADC? Or does the author commit to the ADC payment before the manuscript is sent out for review?

We expect a very small number of authors to elect the ADC — in the range of about 200 per year out of 200,000 annual manuscript submissions.  If an author cannot pay the ADC, they can continue on their publishing journey, but they will need to wait to post their accepted manuscript for 12 months.

Is the ADC the same amount as the APC paid by funded authors? If not, how is the difference calculated? 

The ADC is a flat fee of $2,500 for our hybrid journals, and it covers the costs associated with the many publishing services provided from submission to final editorial decision. This includes organizing, maintaining, and investing in the high-quality scholarly peer review process and multiple other services provided by an expansive global network of editors and reviewers. These costs are significant, comprising more than 50% of the overall cost of publishing the final version of record. …

To ask what is such an obvious question that it might be stupid: how does an unfunded author (who therefore presumably can’t afford an APC) benefit from being charged an ADC instead? 

Assisting authors to get published is our North Star, and we’re introducing this ADC option to help authors navigate shifting funder mandates. Funders, institutions, and publishers agree there is a real cost to scholarly publishing, and choosing an OA option is entirely voluntary. The ADC ensures the long-term integrity and quality of content published in ACS journals. We also provide cost-free pathways to publish for all authors.  

Through the read and publish agreements we have with thousands of institutions worldwide, we have shielded authors from the costs of meeting funder requirements for gold OA. These enable authors to post the final version of record to repositories immediately after publication. ACS Publications already allows those authors who cannot publish via the gold OA route to post the accepted manuscript to a repository 12 months after publication at no cost. Authors may also choose to publish through subscription access journals at no cost to them.

For authors not covered by a read and publish agreement or another pathway, our zero-embargo green OA pathway will provide an additional option to immediately share the accepted manuscript while offsetting the costs incurred to ensure the quality, value, and integrity of the research during the publishing process.”

Unlike an article publishing charge (APC), the ADC does not cover expenses related to final production, digital distribution, discovery, and hosting of the version of record or maintaining post-publication updates. For those authors who later decide to publish fully OA, the amount of the ADC will be deducted from the cost of the gold APC. Authors will not pay more than the APC required for gold OA. ADC waivers or discounts will be automatically applied to papers from corresponding authors from all countries that currently receive special country pricing for APCs….”

Proudly nonprofit | Science

“And Science has a different view of open access publishing compared to commercial journals. Consistent with its commitment to put the scientific community first, AAAS does not favor a publishing ecosystem driven by article processing charges—the fees that authors must pay so that their articles are freely available once published (“gold” open access). An environment dominated by this approach drains laboratory resources and favors well-funded investigators, institutions, and disciplines. These inequities are coming into ever starker contrast, including through a recent AAAS survey of over 400 researchers in the United States. Rather, AAAS favors an ecosystem that does not put the cost burden for access on scientists. It has become an open access publisher by adopting a “green” policy for its subscription journals, including Science, whereby accepted manuscripts are made immediately available in repositories of the author’s choice. This approach—one that AAAS is excited to pursue alongside the American Medical Association— is consistent with open access policies in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. But for now, AAAS still has one gold open access journal, Science Advances, as an option for scientists or funders that prefer this mechanism.”

Overemphasis on publications may disadvantage historically excluded groups in STEM before and during COVID-19: A North American survey-based study | PLOS ONE

Abstract:  Publishing is a strong determinant of academic success and there is compelling evidence that identity may influence the academic writing experience and writing output. However, studies rarely quantitatively assess the effects of major life upheavals on trainee writing. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented life disruptions that may have disproportionately impacted different demographics of trainees. We analyzed anonymous survey responses from 342 North American environmental biology graduate students and postdoctoral scholars (hereafter trainees) about scientific writing experiences to assess: (1) how identity interacts with scholarly publication totals and (2) how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced trainee perceptions of scholarly writing productivity and whether there were differences among identities. Interestingly, identity had a strong influence on publication totals, but it differed by career stage with graduate students and postdoctoral scholars often having opposite results. We found that trainees identifying as female and those with chronic health conditions or disabilities lag in publication output at some point during training. Additionally, although trainees felt they had more time during the pandemic to write, they reported less productivity and motivation. Trainees who identified as female; Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color [BIPOC]; and as first-generation college graduates were much more likely to indicate that the pandemic affected their writing. Disparities in the pandemic’s impact on writing were most pronounced for BIPOC respondents; a striking 85% of BIPOC trainees reported that the pandemic affected their writing habits, and overwhelmingly felt unproductive and unmotivated to write. Our results suggest that the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on writing output may only heighten the negative effects commonly reported amongst historically excluded trainees. Based on our findings, we encourage the academy to consider how an overemphasis on publication output during hiring may affect historically excluded groups in STEM—especially in a post-COVID-19 era.

Reconsidering editorial consideration: Changing editorial assessment could reduce subjectivity in the publication process: EMBO reports: Vol 0, No 0

“Editorial assessment of relevancy, in particular at the pre-review stage, includes evaluations of journal-specific criteria: such as whether the work falls within the journal’s scope, adherence to technical guidelines, quality of the language and so on. But it also includes evaluation of whether the science is of interest to the journal. Indeed, a quick survey of various top biomedical journals’ guidelines—the “Aims and Scope” section to inform authors of the journal’s selection criteria—disclose that these aim to publish reports that are impactful, insightful, timely, elegant or “of surprising conclusions”, to name a few (www.nature.com/nature/journal-information). These vague terms are all subjective and thereby open to different interpretations by different individuals….

Pre-review editorial consideration is responsible for the vast majority of rejections, up to 90% in some journals (Laursen, 2021), which cannot simply be explained by lack of suitability, lack of adherence to journal guidelines or other objective criteria. Furthermore, pre-review editorial assessment usually does not consider inappropriate methodology, inaccurate conclusions or poor or incomplete analysis as these are typically handled by experts during the review stage.

Thus, it strongly implies that most initial rejections are based on subjective criteria that come on top of and overrule objective measures….

Pre-prints offer multiple benefits over journal-based publications by immediately exposing the science to a larger, more diverse audience, offer scooping protection, are citable and can still be submitted to traditional journals. Importantly, pre-prints are curated to a certain degree for completeness, quality, language and so forth, minimizing posting of subpar reports. The one major setback with this system is the poor engagement of the research community—so far only 5% of pre-prints have received comments although gradual increases are noted (Brainard, 2022). However, this scenario will necessarily change when the ball starts rolling….

Scientists already dedicate a substantial amount of their time towards reading manuscripts including pre-prints for their personal education and research, thus abandoning reviewing for journals would mean that they will have more time for commenting and reviewing the pre-prints they read anyway….

Removing editorial consideration from the publication process is not a panacea for all problems that plague science and publishing. But it would at least greatly reduce the subjectivity in the publication process and emancipate scientists from perpetual submissions–rejections rounds and from tiresome and lengthy review duties to assess if a paper is sufficiently “novel” and “relevant”. It would free scientists’ time to read and comment on pre-prints instead and make scientific research and findings accessible by anyone. This could engender a new culture of online commenting and reviewing and pave the way for new means of communication and interaction between scientists. For instance, posted manuscripts could be progressively modified or corrected in response to online comments, or other scientists could even post their own results alongside another pre-print in support or opposition to the results presented and their interpretation. This creates a scenario where smaller pieces of data—not enough to justify a full paper—can supplement other manuscripts, which actually reflects the “scientific endeavour” by allowing individual scientists to directly contribute to the greater task of understanding the world.”

Darwin’s handwritten pages from ‘On the Origin of Species’ go online for the first time

“An extraordinary collection of priceless manuscripts of naturalist Charles Darwin goes online today, including two rare pages from the original draft of On the Origin of Species….

Darwin’s handwriting is notoriously difficult to read. As such, the documents have been transcribed, and can be viewed side-by-side with the original manuscript. The newly released documents can be viewed at Darwin Online.

“Instead of being locked away out of public view, by adding these documents to Darwin Online they became freely available to anyone in the world”, shared Dr. van Wyhe.”

The SCOPE framework – implementing the ideals of responsible research assessment

Abstract:  Background: Research and researchers are heavily evaluated, and over the past decade it has become apparent that the consequences of evaluating the research enterprise and particularly individual researchers are considerable. This has resulted in the publishing of several guidelines and principles to support moving towards more responsible research assessment (RRA). To ensure that research evaluation is meaningful, responsible, and effective the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group created the SCOPE framework enabling evaluators to deliver on existing principles of RRA. SCOPE bridges the gap between principles and their implementation by providing a structured five-stage framework by which evaluations can be designed and implemented, as well as evaluated.

Methods: SCOPE is a step-by-step process designed to help plan, design, and conduct research evaluations as well as check effectiveness of existing evaluations. In this article, four case studies are presented to show how SCOPE has been used in practice to provide value-based research evaluation.

Results: This article situates SCOPE within the international work towards more meaningful and robust research evaluation practices and shows through the four case studies how it can be used by different organisations to develop evaluations at different levels of granularity and in different settings.

Conclusions: The article demonstrates that the SCOPE framework is rooted firmly in the existing literature. In addition, it is argued that it does not simply translate existing principles of RRA into practice, but provides additional considerations not always addressed in existing RRA principles and practices thus playing a specific role in the delivery of RRA. Furthermore, the use cases show the value of SCOPE across a range of settings, including different institutional types, sizes, and missions.

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge | ALA Store

“The intersection of scholarly communication librarianship and open education offers a unique opportunity to expand knowledge of scholarly communication topics in both education and practice. Open resources can address the gap in teaching timely and critical scholarly communication topics—copyright in teaching and research environments, academic publishing, emerging modes of scholarship, impact measurement—while increasing access to resources and equitable participation in education and scholarly communication.  

 
Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge is an open textbook and practitioner’s guide that collects theory, practice, and case studies from nearly 80 experts in scholarly communication and open education. Divided into three parts:

What is Scholarly Communication?
Scholarly Communication and Open Culture
Voices from the Field: Perspectives, Intersections, and Case Studies 

The book delves into the economic, social, policy, and legal aspects of scholarly communication as well as open access, open data, open education, and open science and infrastructure. Practitioners provide insight into the relationship between university presses and academic libraries, defining collection development as operational scholarly communication, and promotion and tenure and the challenge for open access.
 
Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge is a thorough guide meant to increase instruction on scholarly communication and open education issues and practices so library workers can continue to meet the changing needs of students and faculty. It is also a political statement about the future to which we aspire and a challenge to the industrial, commercial, capitalistic tendencies encroaching on higher education. Students, readers, educators, and adaptors of this resource can find and embrace these themes throughout the text and embody them in their work.

This book is also available as an open access edition at https://bit.ly/SCLAOK ”