“In late June, around 400 delegates – library directors and their staff – from throughout Europe convened at the 48th Liber Conference in Dublin. SPARC Europe was involved in the joint organisation of a pre-conference workshop titled How European policies and legislation affect academic library leaders and recent changes to copyright, public sector information and Horizon Europe. The purpose of the event: to update the library community on important policy developments and to encourage more library and Open Science leaders to become engaged in local, national information policy-making activities in their countries. During the conference, SPARC Europe also helped organise a panel – Open Science meets Open Education. Below, a summary of keynotes from both sessions. …”
Monthly Archives: August 2019
Is Scholarly Publishing Like Rock and Roll?
Abstract: This article uses Alan B. Krueger’s analysis of the music industry in his book Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life as a lens to consider the structure of scholarly publishing and what could happen to scholarly publishing going forward. Both the music industry and scholarly publishing are facing disruption as their products become digital. Digital content provides opportunities to a create a better product at lower prices and in the music industry this has happened. Scholarly publishing has not yet done so. Similarities and differences between the music industry and scholarly publishing will be considered. Like music, scholarly publishing appears to be a superstar industry. Both music and scholarly publishing are subject to piracy, which threatens revenue, though Napster was a greater disrupter than Sci-Hub seems to be. It also appears that for a variety of reasons market forces are not effective in driving changes in business models and practices in scholarly publishing, at least not at the rate we would expect given the changes in technology. After reviewing similarities and differences, the prospects for the future of scholarly publishing will be considered.
Academic Libraries’ Stance toward the Future
Abstract: The literature about academic libraries takes a strong interest in the future, yet little of it reflects on academic libraries’ underlying stance toward the years ahead: is there a sense of change or continuity? Is there optimism or pessimism? Consensus or divergence? This article explores these questions using data from interviews with a broad range of practitioners, commentators, and experts. Some see libraries as fundamentally unchanging, while others perceive innovation as a given. There is little consensus about upcoming trends. Some interviewees doubt libraries’ ability to deal with change, but others feel considerable optimism.
The allure of the journal impact factor holds firm, despite its flaws | Nature Index
“Many researchers still see the journal impact factor (JIF) as a key metric for promotions and tenure, despite concerns that it’s a flawed measure of a researcher’s value….
A recent survey of 338 researchers from 55 universities in the United States and Canada showed that more than one-third (36%) consider JIFs to be “very valued” for promotions and tenure, and 27% said they were “very important” when deciding where to submit articles….
[N]on-tenured and younger researchers, for whom RPT matters most, put more weight on JIFs when deciding where to publish….
According to Björn Brembs, a neuroscientist from the University of Regensburg, in Germany, who reviewed the study for eLife, the continuing deference to the JIF shows how scientists can be highly critical in their own subject domain, yet “gullible and evidence-resistant” when evaluating productivity. “This work shows just how much science is in dire need of a healthy dose of its own medicine, and yet refuses to take the pill,” he says….”
WHO joins coalition for free digital access to health research
“Today, WHO announces it is the first of the United Nations agencies to join a coalition of research funders and charitable foundations (cOAlition S), an initiative to make full and immediate open access to research publications a reality. cOAlition S is built around Plan S, which consists of 10 principles to ensure that the results from publicly-funded research, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo. …”
Pursuing a new kind of “big deal” with publishers
“Making the transition from paying to read to paying to publish academic research won’t be easy for universities or publishers. But it is possible, attendees at an open-access-publishing event were told Thursday.
The University of California, which canceled its “big deal” with publisher Elsevier earlier this year after negotiations to establish a new agreement broke down, hosted a public forum discussing how libraries, publishers and funders can support a system where all research articles are made free to read at the time of publication….”
Library Publishing Workflows | Educopia Institute
“Educopia Institute, the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) and 12 partner libraries are embarking on a two-year project to investigate, synchronize, and model a range of workflows to increase the capacity of libraries to publish open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Most library publishers have developed services in response to local needs, and initial workflows are generally home-grown, varied, and idiosyncratic. This represents a missed opportunity for comparative analysis and peer learning; it also yields frequent omissions of crucial workflow steps, such as contributing metadata to aggregators (essential for discovery and impact) and depositing content in preservation repositories (necessary for a stable scholarly record). The workflow model envisioned in this project will help libraries provide a strong alternative to commercial publishing for a wider range of journals, representing a significant advance in the development of open and academy-owned scholarship….”
EveryONE: Nadine Kabbani
Dr. Kabbani is a Systems Biologist at the School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States of America What is your area of study and why is it important? I am interested
Scholarly Publishing Librarian, Dartmouth College
“The Scholarly Publishing Librarian helps support new models and services for the creation, dissemination, and management of research and scholarship at Dartmouth College. This position will help to realize the strategic goals and initiatives of Dartmouth Library’s Scholarly Communication Program that will engage diverse voices, encourage student contribution, and empower the Dartmouth community to build a more equitable and sustainable research ecosystem. The ideal candidate will bring technical and organizational skills and expertise in research and information management within a highly collaborative environment. The Scholarly Publishing Librarian will participate in the implementation, development, and planning of publishing initiatives including the institutional repository of Dartmouth research, and will coordinate and execute those aspects of the program that provide faculty, students, and staff with tools, information, education, and resources for publishing the results of their scholarly activities….”
Protecting Books From Harm With Controlled Digital Lending | Internet Archive Blogs
” “Digitizing a collection and storing it under existing standards ensures that there is always a backed-up copy somewhere. During and after any disaster, the user would never lose access and the government would not have to reinvest to rebuild collections.” Controlled Digital Lending–the digital equivalent of traditional library lending–is a model that achieves these purposes.
For libraries with fewer resources, CDL can also be a tool to maximize public dollars and improve access. Once a library determines that its community no longer has a need for a certain CDL book (or as many copies as owned), the extra copies can be shared with libraries that never had access and would never have access without collaborative efforts….”
World Health Organization and TDR Join cOAlition S to Support Free and Immediate Access to Health Research | Plan S
“Today the World Health Organization (WHO) announces it is the first of the United Nations agencies to join the growing coalition of research funders and charitable foundations who implement Plan S. This commitment will ensure that all WHO supported health research will be free to read online on the day it is published.
TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a global programme of scientific collaboration that helps facilitate, support, and influence efforts to combat diseases of poverty will also join cOAlition S alongside WHO. TDR is hosted at WHO, and is sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, and WHO….”
Strategies for Open Science (Stratos)
“Stratos designs and implements solutions to increase the speed and transparency of scholarly research…Stratos assists partnering organizations with strategic planning, analysis of workflow and infrastructure needs, implementation and project management, and adopting or building technology…Stratos was founded by Kristen Ratan and draws upon a wide network of experienced and talented people including strategic consultants, financial analysts, designers, product managers, software architects and engineers, and project managers….Stratos operates as a 501c3 through its fiscal sponsor, Rapid Science, which is a nonprofit organization aiming to speed translational science, its accuracy, its dissemination to the clinic, and feedback regarding its efficacy….”
Next Gen Library Publishing partnership awarded $2.2M Arcadia grant to improve scholarly publishing infrastructure – Office of Scholarly Communication
“Educopia Institute and California Digital Library are pleased to announce an award in the amount of $2,200,000 from Arcadia—a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin—in support of the “Next Generation Library Publishing” project.
Through this project, Educopia and its partner institutions—California Digital Library (CDL), Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), Longleaf Services, LYRASIS, and Strategies for Open Science (Stratos)—will provide new publishing pathways for authors, editors, and readers by advancing and integrating open source publishing infrastructure to provide robust support for library publishing. …”
SocArXiv Papers | How to align disciplinary ideals with actual practices: Transparency and openness in archaeological science
Abstract: Archaeology is a highly diverse community of researchers without universally adopted methods,concepts, or theoretical perspectives. One ideal that unites us is that we typically perceive of ourselves as contributing to the public good by helping to understand and preserve the past (Chippindale 1994). We act as stewards for archaeological sites and artefacts, and we work to correct misinformed views of the past that might have sinister motives. However, many of the current norms of archaeological practice are at odds with these ideals of archaeology. We share relatively little of our research with each other or the public. Typically we produce a journal article or monograph as a final product, but we rarely share the data files or computational methods that generated those final products, nor do we share our written work in ways that are readily accessible to the public. This suggests a gap between current practice and ideals. It also limits the reproducibility of our research, and the efficiency with which new methods can spread through the discipline. We show that an exploration of this mismatch between ideals and practice can reveal untapped potential for digital tools in archaeology to improve its sustainability as a research domain, and indicate new ways to engage with the public. We describe emerging norms in archaeology, and some new digital tools that archaeologists are using, that are helping to close the gap between ideals and current practices.
#metoo Digital Media Collection
“The #metoo Digital Media Collection is a digital project of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. This project will document the digital footprint of the #metoo movement and the accompanying political, legal, and social battles in the United States and will collect social media, news articles, statements of denial and/or apology, Web-forum conversations, legislation, lawsuits, statistical studies, Fortune 500 companies’ employment manuals, hashtags related to #metoo, and more. The material in the collection will date from 2007 with the creation of the #metoo hashtag by Tarana Burke and will end when #metoo activity subsides. The collection will be made available for interdisciplinary research on #metoo….”