Transforming health and well?being through publishing computable biomedical knowledge (CBK) – Koru – 2023 – Learning Health Systems – Wiley Online Library

Abstract:  Computable biomedical knowledge artifacts (CBKs) are software programs that transform input data into practical output. CBKs are expected to play a critical role in the future of learning health systems. While there has been rapid growth in the development of CBKs, broad adoption is hampered by limited verification, documentation, and dissemination channels. To address these issues, the Learning Health Systems journal created a track dedicated to publishing CBKs through a peer-review process. Peer review of CBKs should improve reproducibility, reuse, trust, and recognition in biomedical fields, contributing to learning health systems. This special issue introduces the CBK track with four manuscripts reporting a functioning CBK, and another four manuscripts tackling methodological, policy, deployment, and platform issues related to fostering a healthy ecosystem for CBKs. It is our hope that the potential of CBKs exemplified and highlighted by these quality publications will encourage scientists within learning health systems and related biomedical fields to engage with this new form of scientific discourse.

 

The future of community-driven publishing: Research rooted in academia

“It’s intentional to highlight likenesses between the scholarly communication landscape and modern-day agriculture. This topic was discussed during the 2023 SSP Conference session “Locally Sourced, Locally Owned: Independent Society Journal Publishing to Seed Trust and Transformation,” which explored how, similar to the local farming movement, cultivating academy-owned publishing models, where the producer is native to the discipline, could lead to a more sustainable publishing landscape overall. Among the benefits of advancing academy-led publishing is its potential to level a playing field increasingly controlled by large corporations and, in the process, catalyze more efficient, economical, and transparent publishing practices guided by community interests….”

Studying “Pre-Truth” Science: The 2023 Scholarly Communications Institute – Scholarly Communications Lab | ScholCommLab

“The annual Scholarly Communications Institute (SCI) offers opportunities for interdisciplinary and international teams to come together to pursue complex projects related to a common theme. In this blog post, lab member Alice Fleerackers reflects on her experiences collaborating with scholars and journalists to understand and improve the ways preprints are reported in the news….”

Open Science 2.0: Towards a truly collaborative research ecosystem | PLOS Biology

Abstract:  Conversations about open science have reached the mainstream, yet many open science practices such as data sharing remain uncommon. Our efforts towards openness therefore need to increase in scale and aim for a more ambitious target. We need an ecosystem not only where research outputs are openly shared but also in which transparency permeates the research process from the start and lends itself to more rigorous and collaborative research. To support this vision, this Essay provides an overview of a selection of open science initiatives from the past 2 decades, focusing on methods transparency, scholarly communication, team science, and research culture, and speculates about what the future of open science could look like. It then draws on these examples to provide recommendations for how funders, institutions, journals, regulators, and other stakeholders can create an environment that is ripe for improvement.

 

Job posting: Scholarly Communications Librarian – Clemson Libraries

“Clemson Libraries seek a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and collaborative Scholarly Communications Librarian to help advance the Libraries’ scholarly communications initiatives. The Scholarly Communications Librarian will provide leadership and expertise in the areas of scholarly communications, copyright, open access, and research impact. The Scholarly Communications Librarian will be a critical position to the Libraries’ strategic growth as an R1 institution and will help expand the Libraries’ data and research services that will further support Clemson strategic priority to double research by 2035.  The Scholarly Communications Librarian will also provide specialized research consultations and instruction services in the areas of scholarly publishing. This librarian will work closely with campus groups such as the Division of Research, the Office of General Counsel, and the Graduate School. Clemson Libraries faculty are members of the academic community, with responsibilities in the areas of librarianship, scholarship, and service. This is a 12-month tenure-track faculty position and will work under the direction of the Head of the Open Scholarship Department. The Scholarly Communications Librarian will have a minimum salary of $70,000, with faculty rank to be determined based on the successful candidate’s qualifications and experience….”

SocArXiv Papers | Preprint review services: Disrupting the scholarly communication landscape?

Abstract:  Preprinting has gained considerable momentum, and in some fields it has turned into a well-established way to share new scientific findings. The possibility to organise quality control and peer review for preprints is also increasingly highlighted, leading to the development of preprint review services. We report a descriptive study of preprint review services with the aim of developing a systematic understanding of the main characteristics of these services, evaluating how they manage preprint review, and positioning them in the broader scholarly communication landscape. Our study shows that preprint review services have the potential to turn peer review into a more transparent and rewarding experience and to improve publishing and peer review workflows. We are witnessing the growth of a mixed system in which preprint servers, preprint review services and journals operate mostly in complementary ways. In the longer term, however, preprint review services may disrupt the scholarly communication landscape in a more radical way.

 

Increasing equity in open access: what will OASPA do next?

“This year OASPA has run four multi-stakeholder workshops bringing together over 100 participants from 32 different countries to look at how we can deliver open access (OA) more equitably. Our four workshop topics and links to outputs from each session appear at the end of this post covering where we are going next. 

Not wishing to act unilaterally, OASPA gathered inputs on six suggestions resulting from our ‘Equity in OA’ workshop series in a feedback session* in September 2023 during OASPA’s annual conference. 

This post summarises our results from polling our conference attendees about proposed next steps to increase equity in OA. We also want to hear from you, and ensure we are covering as many views as possible, so feel free to comment at the end of this post or email us with any  feedback before 14 November 2023….”

Taking and Giving Back? Open Access, Generative AI, and the Transformation of Scholarly Communication / IUB Libraries Calendar

“Generative AI systems trained on decades of open access, digitized scholarly publications, and other human-written texts can now produce non-copyrightable(?), (mostly) high-quality, and (sometimes) trustworthy text, images, and media at scale. In the context of scholarly communication, these AI systems can be trained to perform useful tasks such as quickly summarizing research findings, generating visual diagrams of scientific content, and simplifying technical jargon.

Scholarly communication will undergo a major transformation with the emergence of these model capabilities. On the plus side, AI has the potential to help tailor language, format, tone, and examples to make research more accessible, understandable, engaging, and useful for different audiences. However, its use also raises questions about credit and attribution, informational provenance, the responsibilities of authorship, control over science communication, and more. This talk will discuss how open access scholarly publishing has helped power the rise of the current generation of AI systems (especially large language models), some ways that AI is primed to change/has already changed scholarly publishing, and how the OA community might work with these models to improve scholarly communication, for example, by introducing different and more flexible forms of science communication artifacts, incorporating human feedback in the generative process, or mitigating the production of false/misleading information.”

CU Boulder faculty and University Libraries call for equitable access to information

“CU Boulder faculty are supporting the University Libraries in current negotiations with major academic publishers over licensing agreements that will determine who gets access to academic journals under what terms and conditions and at what cost to the campus. 

The Boulder Faculty Assembly, which is the representative body of the faculty for the Boulder campus, passed a resolution on October 5, 2023, supporting the libraries’ mission to provide equitable access to information and preserve author’s rights. Approved without dissent, the resolution recognizes the impact of subscription costs on the campus budget and champions open access to information and protecting authors rights to retain copyright of their work. 

The faculty support comes as the University Libraries engage in negotiations over fees and terms for renewal of licenses with major academic publishers including Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE, who together account for half of worldwide academic publishing revenues. 

At stake are issues such as whether publishers can stop authors from sharing their articles openly with other researchers and the public after they’ve been accepted into academic journals; whether the public has immediate, unfettered access to taxpayer funded research content; whether libraries can share content through Interlibrary Loan; and how much faculty and graduate students must pay publishers to get their articles published….”

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge – ACRL Insider

“ACRL announces the publication of Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge, edited by Maria Bonn, Josh Bolick, and Will Cross. This open textbook and practitioner’s guide collects theory, practice, and case studies from nearly 80 experts in scholarly communication and open education.

Learn more about Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge in this excerpt from the Foreword by the editors, licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge is available for purchase in print through the ALA Online Store and Amazon.com; by telephone order at (800) 621-2736 or (773) 702-7010; and as an open access edition….”

A study to assess the impact of Plan S on the global scholarly communication ecosystem: tender results

“cOAlition S is pleased to announce that the tender process for a study to assess the impact of Plan S on the global scholarly communication ecosystem has been successfully completed. The tender has been awarded to scidecode science consulting,  an international team of experts with extensive consulting experience and project work within the scholarly communication domain.

To assess the impact Plan S has had on the scholarly communication ecosystem and on facilitating research to be published Open Access, scidecode will follow a multifaceted approach, encompassing both quantitative econometrics and a qualitative methodology based on desk research, a comprehensive literature analysis, and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders. These stakeholders will include research funders, advocates for institutional Open Access initiatives, publishers and researchers.

The study is anticipated to deliver valuable insights into the effectiveness of cOAlition S in achieving its objectives. and provide actionable recommendations to improve and expand upon these. The findings and recommendations are expected to be published in mid-2024….”

Yuan Li appointed University Scholarly Communication Officer | Harvard Library

“Harvard Library is pleased to announce Yuan Li’s appointment as University Scholarly Communication Officer and Director of Open Scholarship and Research Data Services in Harvard Library. Yuan brings to this position a unique combination of experience in both scholarly communication and research data services, as well as a passion for advancing open data, open access, and open education. She began her role on September 11, 2023.

 
Harvard is an established leader in open access. The department of Open Scholarship and Research Data Services supports Harvard Library’s aspirations, on behalf of researchers, to be global leaders in expanding world knowledge and intellectual exploration through the creation, promotion, and support of new and existing models of sharing research outputs. Its focus is on shifting the information landscape towards a more equitable, diverse ecosystem of trustworthy resources, where impactful research is freely available to all who need it….”

A New Era in Scholarly Communication: Open Access Publishing

Abstract:  Open access has presented a fresh challenge to the publishing and scholarly communication sectors with the start of the twenty-first century. For the previous two decades, libraries have struggled to keep their journal subscriptions at a level that will support their research and development efforts due to rising publication fees and a stable budget. In the interim, the Web’s ability to publish academic articles in the public domain has opened up new communication channels for the scientific community. Along with various OA techniques, supporting business models have been proposed. Authors have reviewed a number of recent studies to demonstrate the effect of open access on its use and citation in scholarly and research. According to studies, open access (OA) has a significant impact on scientific communication since it helps boost the citation impact of journals and makes scientific research more visible and accessible. The writers are optimistic about the future of OA.