Community and Digitisation: the new drivers of cultural heritage – InDICEs Participatory Space

“Are you wondering how Cultural Heritage Institutions, whatever their size, may turn from gatekeepers to gate-openers? How to preserve and give better access to our cultural heritage? What strategy and tools to use to facilitate community engagement and stimulate user participation?

Join us to discuss how to foster democratic and community-focused digital transformation by supporting access and reusability of digital heritage. You will have the opportunity to meet recognised experts in the CH sector and get insights, inspirations and recommendations on how to convert your digital ambitions into digital strategies….”

COMMUNIA Association – The Italian Implementation of the New EU Text and Data Mining Exceptions

“This blog post analyses the implementation of the copyright exceptions for Text and Data Mining, which is defined in the Italian law as any automated technique designed to analyse large amounts of text, sound, images, data or metadata in digital format to generate information, including patterns, trends, and correlations (Art. 70 ter (2) LdA). As we will see in more detail below, the Italian lawmaker decided to introduce some novelties when implementing Art. 3, while following more closely the text of the Directive when implementing Art. 4….

Notably, the new Italian exception also allows the communication to the public of the research outcome when such outcomes are expressed through new original works. In other words, the communication of protected materials resulting from computational research processes is permitted, provided that such results are included in an original publication, data collection or other original work.

The right of communication to the public was not contemplated in the original government draft; it was introduced in the last version of the article to accommodate the comments of the Joint Committees of the Senate and the Joint Committees of the Chamber, both highlighting the need to specify that the right of communication to the public concerns only the results of research, where expressed in new original works.

 

The beneficiaries of the TDM exception for scientific purposes are research organisations and cultural heritage institutions. Research organisations essentially reflect the definition offered by the directive. These are universities, including their libraries, research institutes or any other entity whose primary objective is to conduct scientific research activities or to conduct educational activities that include scientific research, which alternatively: …

The Italian lawmaker did not expressly contemplate any specific and fast procedure for cases where technical protection measures prevent a beneficiary from carrying out the permitted acts under both TDM exceptions. However, the law now recognises to the beneficiaries the right to extract a copy of the material protected by technological  measures in certain cases. Under Art. 70-sexies, LdA, beneficiaries of the TDM exception for scientific purposes (as well as the beneficiaries of the exception for digital and cross-border teaching activities exception) shall have the right to extract a copy of the protected material, when technological measures are applied based on agreements or on administrative procedures or judicial decisions. In order to benefit from this right, the person shall have lawful possession of copies of the protected material (or have had legal access to them), shall respect the conditions and the purposes provided for in the exception, and such extraction shall not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work or the other materials or cause an unjustified prejudice to the rights holders….”

Open Science Italia

Open-science.it is the Italian portal dedicated to Open Science, Open Access to research outputs and many related topics. The portal hosts general information, training material, events, news and updates of national and international relevance, introductory material and resources related to specific problems, as well as analysis and advanced information. It is addressed to the Italian speaking community, contents are only available in Italian for now.

 

Do open citations give insights on the qualitative peer-review evaluation in research assessments? An analysis of the Italian National Scientific Qualification | SpringerLink

In the past, several works have investigated ways for combining quantitative and qualitative methods in research assessment exercises. Indeed, the Italian National Scientific Qualification (NSQ), i.e. the national assessment exercise which aims at deciding whether a scholar can apply to professorial academic positions as Associate Professor and Full Professor, adopts a quantitative and qualitative evaluation process: it makes use of bibliometrics followed by a peer-review process of candidates’ CVs. The NSQ divides academic disciplines into two categories, i.e. citation-based disciplines (CDs) and non-citation-based disciplines (NDs), a division that affects the metrics used for assessing the candidates of that discipline in the first part of the process, which is based on bibliometrics. In this work, we aim at exploring whether citation-based metrics, calculated only considering open bibliographic and citation data, can support the human peer-review of NDs and yield insights on how it is conducted. To understand if and what citation-based (and, possibly, other) metrics provide relevant information, we created a series of machine learning models to replicate the decisions of the NSQ committees. As one of the main outcomes of our study, we noticed that the strength of the citational relationship between the candidate and the commission in charge of assessing his/her CV seems to play a role in the peer-review phase of the NSQ of NDs.

Linking different scientific digital libraries in Digital Humanities: the IMAGO case study | SpringerLink

Abstract:  In the last years, several scientific digital libraries (DLs) in digital humanities (DH) field have been developed following the Open Science principles. These DLs aim at sharing the research outcomes, in several cases as FAIR data, and at creating linked information spaces. In several cases, to reach these aims the Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data have been used. This paper presents how the current scientific DLs in the DH field can provide the creation of linked information spaces and navigational services that allow users to navigate them, using Semantic Web technologies to formally represent, search and browsing knowledge. To support the argument, we present our experience in developing a scientific DL supporting scholars in creating, evolving and consulting a knowledge base related to Medieval and Renaissance geographical works within the three years (2020–2023) Italian National research project IMAGO—Index Medii Aevi Geographiae Operum. In the presented case study, a linked information space was created to allow users to discover and navigate knowledge across multiple repositories, thanks to the extensive use of ontologies. In particular, the linked information spaces created within the IMAGO project make use of five different datasets, i.e. Wikidata, the MIRABILE digital archive, the Nuovo Soggettario thesaurus, Mapping Manuscript Migration knowledge base and the Pleiades gazetteer. The linking among different datasets allows to considerably enrich the knowledge collected in the IMAGO KB.

 

SAGE Publishing and Bibliosan sign new Open Access agreement

SAGE and the Italian consortium of Biomedical Research Libraries, Bibliosan, have announced a new open access agreement. The deal will provide online access for Bibliosan’s network, which includes 68 research institutions, to SAGE’s full journal collection of 114 fully open access and 240 hybrid peer-reviewed journals.

IEEE and CRUI Sign Three-Year Transformative Agreement to Accelerate Open Access Publishing in Italy

IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, announced today that it has reached an unlimited read and publish open access agreement with the Conferenza dei Rettori delle Università Italiane (CRUI), the association of state and non-state Italian universities, to support authors who choose to publish open access.

Under this new three-year agreement, all researchers from the participating 54 Italian institutions are now able to publish open access articles in approximately 200 leading journals and magazines published by IEEE, making them instantly available and free to read by the public and helping support CRUI’s mission to make their authors’ publications open to the world. Under the terms of the agreement, the costs of both accessing subscription content and the article processing charges (APCs) required to publish open access are covered by the license fees paid by consortium members, making the process easier and more convenient for authors.

Uses of the Journal Impact Factor in national journal rankings in China and Europe – Kulczycki – Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology – Wiley Online Library

Abstract:  This paper investigates different uses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in national journal rankings and discusses the merits of supplementing metrics with expert assessment. Our focus is national journal rankings used as evidence to support decisions about the distribution of institutional funding or career advancement. The seven countries under comparison are China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, and Turkey—and the region of Flanders in Belgium. With the exception of Italy, top-tier journals used in national rankings include those classified at the highest level, or according to tier, or points implemented. A total of 3,565 (75.8%) out of 4,701 unique top-tier journals were identified as having a JIF, with 55.7% belonging to the first Journal Impact Factor quartile. Journal rankings in China, Flanders, Poland, and Turkey classify journals with a JIF as being top-tier, but only when they are in the first quartile of the Average Journal Impact Factor Percentile. Journal rankings that result from expert assessment in Denmark, Finland, and Norway regularly classify journals as top-tier outside the first quartile, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. We conclude that experts, when tasked with metric-informed journal rankings, take into account quality dimensions that are not covered by JIFs.

 

Green light for the National Plan for Open Science | GARR

“ICDI and its Competence Centre is recognised as an enabler of the process to make Open Science an opportunity to enhance research and scientific teaching and support Italian participation in EOSC. GARR, coordinator of the initiative, together with other Italian institutions of excellence will actively contribute to offering services and resources for the coordination of skills present in the Universities, Research infrastructures connected to the Center, proposing an organizational model of reference in the European strategy.

The National Plan for Open Science, an integral part of the National Research Programme 2021-2027, in compliance with Ministerial Decree no. 268 of 28-02-2022, and available on the website of the Ministry of University and Research at the following link https://www.mur.gov.it/it/atti-e-normativa/decreto-ministeriale-n-268-del-28-02-2022, becomes a reality. The National Plan for Open Science, which has just been published on the MUR website, constitutes a policy document that contributes to the implementation of open science, understood as a new paradigm for the creation of scientific knowledge based on transparency and cooperation, capable of enhancing research and scientific teaching, promoting knowledge as a common good and giving everyone the opportunity to access the results of scientific research.

The Plan proposes an overall vision, with specific strategies for five axes of intervention, which must interact to create an open ecosystem of publications, data, analysis tools, networked ICT infrastructures and services, evaluation and training, focusing on the essential value of knowledge sharing. For each intervention, the specific objective is presented and the plan of actions to be developed by 2027 is set out, indicating further long-term objectives, with recommendations for the actors involved. A monitoring system is then identified that will be put in place by the MUR, to ensure the consistency of the initiatives proposed and arranged by the scientific community with the objectives defined in the Plan. Thanks to the Plan, it will be possible to develop a national network infrastructure and a portal, which will connect the existing open archives of all disciplines and make scientific production searchable and accessible. “The publication of this plan provides the Italian community with the basis to start aggregating existing and launching new developments,” explains Donatella Castelli, CNR executive and one of the authors of the Plan. “A necessary effort,” she adds, “to support the transition towards what is certainly a new approach to science that is more effective, transparent and connected to society than the current one….”

Green light for the National Plan for Open Science

“ICDI and its Competence Centre is recognised as an enabler of the process to make Open Science ‘the new normal’ and support Italian participation in EOSC

The National Plan for Open Science, an integral part of the National Research Programme 2021-2027, in compliance with Ministerial Decree no. 268 of 28-02-2022, and available on the website of the Ministry of University and Research at the following link https://www.mur.gov.it/it/atti-e-normativa/decreto-ministeriale-n-268-del-28-02-2022, becomes a reality. 

The National Plan for Open Science, which has just been published on the MUR website, constitutes a policy document that contributes to the implementation of open science, understood as a new paradigm for the creation of scientific knowledge based on transparency and cooperation, capable of enhancing research and scientific teaching, promoting knowledge as a common good and giving everyone the opportunity to access the results of scientific research.

The Plan proposes an overall vision, with specific strategies for five axes of intervention, which must interact to create an open ecosystem of publications, data, analysis tools, networked ICT infrastructures and services, evaluation and training, focusing on the essential value of knowledge sharing….”

Wiley and Italian Consortium Bibliosan Sign Open Access Agreement | John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

“Global research and education leader Wiley today announced a new four-year agreement with Bibliosan, a consortium of medical research institutes and hospitals in Italy.  

This agreement will provide 68 institutions with access to Wiley’s complete journal portfolio and enable participating researchers to publish accepted articles open access in all of Wiley’s more than 1,600 hybrid and gold open access journals….”