“The University of Michigan has created a new policy setting expectations and guidance for research data stewardship, focusing on issues of ownership, sharing and retention….
The policy also outlines expectations for U-M researchers to make research data publicly available when possible, taking into account any existing agreements, contracts, sensitivities or protections….”
“The University of Michigan has created a new policy setting expectations and guidance for research data stewardship, focusing on issues of ownership, sharing, and retention. See New policy outlines research data stewardship expectations in the University Record.
This initiative was launched last year by the Office of the Vice President for Research, in collaboration with the U-M Library, Information and Technology Services and other units, in response to a White House guideline to make publicly sponsored research outcomes freely and immediately available. See New rule expands public access to federally funded research.”
“In the humanities, the monograph often acts as the lab where scholars experiment and engage with other thinkers. Despite the valuable ideas emerging from these fields, the academic community has struggled to find sustainable ways to make humanities monographs open access. Grant money and other funding is often less available to these scholars than to their counterparts in the sciences. As a result, the academic and publishing communities have had to explore new ways to make the turn to open. Fund-to-Mission from the University of Michigan Press is one such project to open the humanities….”
“The library manages a dark repository, named Dark Blue because I have no imagination, for material needing preservation but not public access such as preservation copies of digitized moving image and in-process born-digital material. You can read more about the implementation of this repository in this 2018 post. It is fair to say that Dark Blue had some growing pains over these past few years that include incorrect packaging of material and broken deposit and withdrawal workflows. While these sound like technical problems, the thesis of this post is that our troubles with Dark Blue are not based on bad systems or policies, but the limitation of people and time, and choosing to do the “nice” thing over the realistic thing….”
“Public access to publicly funded research is an obvious social good,” said Donna Hayward, interim university librarian and dean of libraries. She said the new directive is a further step in a positive direction that’s been gaining momentum in the last decade.
“Of course, these policy changes will require adjustments to the ways some U-M researchers manage and publish their findings,” she said. “Fortunately, the library has quite a bit of expertise and infrastructure to help people prepare for and navigate the new standards and requirements.”
“The 2023 Michigan Ebook Collection marks the third year of University of Michigan of Press’s renewed commitment to open access through its Fund to Mission program. This OA monograph model has allowed UMP to better align with our mission of sustainably distributing scholarship to the broadest possible audience, reflecting our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
Fund to Mission has received resounding support from over 100 libraries, many individual funders, and our provost. With their help, we plan to make at least 75% of our frontlist monographs open access in the 2023 Michigan Ebook Collection. This builds on our success in 2022 where we made 50% of our monographs open access….”
“This week the University of Michigan Press announced through our partner LYRASIS that we have reached our target of converting 50% of our 2022 monograph program to open access, without ever requiring any author to pay to publish. We will increase this percentage to 75% in 2023 and anticipate being able to sustain a majority open access monograph program that produces at least 60 new books a year. These open-access titles are now available on our open-source publishing platform, Fulcrum, and through multiple other distribution channels.
To sustain our output, we have developed a financial model, Fund to Mission, that matches investments in our ebook collection from over 100 libraries with subventions for individual titles, and support from our parent institution. In July, the Press was honored to receive a multiyear, $1.2 million investment from the University of Michigan Provost’s Office and an invitation to apply for continuing funding within the next three years.
While we acknowledge the privilege of being at a leading and well-resourced US public university, we hope that the commitment Michigan’s academic leadership is making to open access for humanities books will be duplicated by Provosts at other North American institutions. As the name of our initiative suggests, such support allows university presses to pursue their core mission; to maximize global access to humanistic knowledge at a time when the need for rigorously vetted, boldly-expressed, high-quality information has never been greater. We also hope that even more libraries will be attracted to partner in achieving our shared mission….”
“In spring 2021, University of Michigan of Press began to adjust our publishing program to better align with our mission of sustainably distributing scholarship to the broadest possible audience, reflecting our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. This project resulted in the development of the open access monograph model that we call Fund to Mission.
Over the past year and a half, Fund to Mission has received resounding support from the library community, individual funders, and our provost. Through them, we have been able to make over 50% of our frontlist monographs open access for 2022 and are well on our way to making at least 75% of our frontlist monographs open access by the end of 2023 without any author ever having to pay.
Our success has been a community effort with over 100 libraries signing on to Fund to Mission. This engagement highlights how much scholars and libraries value open access, and as a result, our Provost has renewed their commitment to provide another three years of financial support for the Fund to Mission program….”
“Charles Watkinson, director of the University of Michigan Press, has stepped into the presidency of the Association of University Presses. Watkinson, who also serves as associate university librarian for publishing at Michigan….”
“A century ago, amid the political upheaval and humanitarian crises that followed World War I, U-M professor of Latin language and literature Frances Willey Kelsey traveled to Constantinople (now Istanbul). In a shop in the Old City, he purchased the first item of what would become the largest collection of Greek manuscripts in America, which now encompasses more than 100 bound manuscripts and fragments spanning the 4th to the 19th centuries.
Each of the collection’s items is unique — all written by hand, some illuminated, and some incorporating elaborate bindings. Taken together, they’re a rich source of information about the transmission of Christian texts, manuscript illumination, and historical bookmaking, especially in the late Byzantine Empire.
Pablo Alvarez, curator in the library’s Special Collections Research Center, has been responsible for the Greek manuscripts since arriving at the library in 2010, and he describes it as one of the highlights of his work.
Now, a new exhibit created by Alvarez — live in the Hatcher Library through June 28, and also available online — celebrates the collection’s centenary by shedding light on its history and provenance, and by displaying some of its most beautiful and interesting items. …”
“James Hilton, the University of Michigan’s vice provost for academic innovation and university librarian-dean of libraries, will step down from his library role June 30….
Over his nearly decade of service to U-M, Collins said, Hilton had led the development of digital scholarship services, increased the awareness of and access to U-M faculty research, piloted new models of sustainable open-access publishing, furthered the potential for cooperative collection sharing, preservation and collaboration, and increased the organization’s focus on redressing issues of bias and racism.”
“Elsevier and the University of Michigan have established an agreement to support the university’s authors who wish to publish open access. The agreement provides authors at the University of Michigan with an incentive to publish their articles open access in applicable Elsevier journals. Where an author chooses to publish OA, articles will be made freely available on ScienceDirect under the author’s choice between two reuse licenses: CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND.”
“LYRASIS and Michigan Publishing announce the successful integration of the Fulcrum platform with Library Simplified/SimplyE and The Readium Foundation’s Thorium Desktop Reader.
This initiative brings together three open source reading and content delivery platforms, utilizing entirely open standards and technologies. By working together, the partners are improving discovery and access for ebooks and supporting the sustainability and scalability of two community-led social enterprises. …”
“University of Michigan Press (UMP) will extend free-to-read access to the University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection (UMP EBC) until the end of August 2020, strengthening its support of students, librarians, and faculty who need ebook access as they continue to transition to online learning and teaching.
Additionally, in recognition of the budget constraints that many libraries now face as a result of COVID-19, UMP will also keep UMP EBC prices flat for the 2021 calendar year….”
“In response to the request of the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) for “creative solutions that allows critical access to publisher content for the research and public health communities,” University of Michigan Press will make all content in the University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection (UMP EBC) free-to-read for the remainder of the academic term….”