Category Archives: oa.mla

The move to open: medical library leadership in scholarly communication | Shaffer | Journal of the Medical Library Association

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Abstract:  Over the years, health sciences librarians have been change agents, leading the charge on issues of importance to the profession and the communities we serve. From its founding in 1898 with the Exchange, the Medical Library Association (MLA) has been dedicated to improving access to health information. In 2003, the Board of Directors published a statement supporting open access to information generated from federally funded scientific and medical research and maintained that having access to timely, relevant, and accurate information is vital to the health of the nation and its education and research programs. At some financial risk, the association made the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) open access and published the entire archive of JMLA and its predecessor, the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, in PubMed Central. Nearly two decades later, the promise of open access and open science finally seems to be coming to fruition. In the 2020 Janet Doe Lecture, Chris Shaffer, AHIP, described the ways that MLA has led the profession, standing behind a shared vision and “walking the walk.” In challenging listeners to embrace open science, he affirmed that, as leaders in improving access to health sciences information since 1898, medical librarians must work in the open science arena to realize our vision “that quality information is essential for improved health.”

 

The move to open: medical library leadership in scholarly communication | Shaffer | Journal of the Medical Library Association

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Abstract:  Over the years, health sciences librarians have been change agents, leading the charge on issues of importance to the profession and the communities we serve. From its founding in 1898 with the Exchange, the Medical Library Association (MLA) has been dedicated to improving access to health information. In 2003, the Board of Directors published a statement supporting open access to information generated from federally funded scientific and medical research and maintained that having access to timely, relevant, and accurate information is vital to the health of the nation and its education and research programs. At some financial risk, the association made the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) open access and published the entire archive of JMLA and its predecessor, the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, in PubMed Central. Nearly two decades later, the promise of open access and open science finally seems to be coming to fruition. In the 2020 Janet Doe Lecture, Chris Shaffer, AHIP, described the ways that MLA has led the profession, standing behind a shared vision and “walking the walk.” In challenging listeners to embrace open science, he affirmed that, as leaders in improving access to health sciences information since 1898, medical librarians must work in the open science arena to realize our vision “that quality information is essential for improved health.”

 

Humanities Commons – Open access, open source, open to all

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“Welcome to Humanities Commons, the network for people working in the humanities. Discover the latest open-access scholarship and teaching materials, make interdisciplinary connections, build a WordPress Web site, and increase the impact of your work by sharing it in the repository. Brought to you by the MLA [Modern Language Association]….”

News from the MLA MLA Receives Grant for Humanities Commons

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“The MLA has received a generous $309,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue its work on Humanities Commons. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the MLA will engage in a nine-month process of sustainability planning and governance-model development. In the course of the project, the MLA will bring together its existing society partners—the Association for Jewish Studies; the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; and the College Art Association—with a group of other interested societies to develop a strategic plan that can ensure the future of the interdisciplinary, nonprofit scholarly research network. Kathleen Fitzpatrick will continue to serve as project director of Humanities Commons in her new role at Michigan State University, and Terrence Callaghan, the MLA’s director of administration and finance, will oversee the project as the MLA’s principal investigator. The grant period will run through September 2018.”

MLA Commons CORE and Open Access – ProfHacker – Blogs – The Chronicle of Higher Education

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The Modern Language Association recently announced an exciting open-access project, Humanities Core, funded by the NEH. The project is very ambitious and promises to be a valuable asset for researchers, particularly those without access to the expensive databases of large universities. The announcement explains the project:

The MLA and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ Center for Digital Research and Scholarship are pleased to announce that they have been awarded a $60,000 start-up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to begin development of Humanities Commons Open Repository Exchange, or Humanities CORE. Humanities CORE will connect a library-quality repository for sharing, discovering, retrieving, and archiving digital work with Humanities Commons, a developing platform for collaboration among scholarly societies and other humanities organizations. The interface will enable MLA members and other participants in Humanities Commons to link to uploaded materials from their profiles, creating an interactive professional vita.

While Humanities CORE hasn’t launched, the MLA CORE beta is open. There are several hundred works deposited on the MLA CORE beta, including a number of course materials, articles, and even books. Currently, the beta for submitting work is open to MLA Commons members only, but even in this early stage it shows its potential for a resource (particularly for things that are valuable but not often shared in an easily-accessible archive, like syllabus examples).

Going open-access with your work broadens the potential readership: we’ve advocated for open access frequently at ProfHacker. The SHERPA/RoMEO open access look-up tool makes it easy to find the typical permissions journals send authors for making work open access. These vary wildly, so it’s important to check before you add previously published work. While some institutions have dedicated repositories, one of the dominant “open-access” sites right now is Academia.edu. However, the site has come under warranted critique for its approach to open access — Gary Hall has a great article on concerns about using it as a repository. Humanities CORE offers one important vision for a future of a far less corporate archive.

Have you tried out MLA CORE, or used materials from the repository? Share your tips in the comments!

[CC BY 2.0 Photo by h_pampel]

Welcome to CORE! | MLA Commons

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“Welcome to the beta release of the Commons Open Repository Exchange, a library-quality repository for sharing, discovering, retrieving, and archiving digital work. CORE provides MLA Commons members with a permanent, open access storage facility for their scholarly output, facilitating maximum discoverability and encouraging peer feedback….”

The Modern Language Association and the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship Launch CORE | MLA Commons

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“The Modern Language Association (MLA) and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) are pleased to announce the beta launch of the Commons Open Repository Exchange, or CORE. CORE is a digital repository for MLA members to share and archive all forms of scholarly communication, from conference papers to syllabi, published articles to data sets. It provides MLA Commons members with a persistent, openly accessible storage facility for their scholarly output, using the existing Commons network to share this work and to encourage peer feedback and collaboration….”