Monthly Archives: October 2020

Making data open, accessible for researchers and scholars | University of Arizona Libraries

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“A new service created by the University of Arizona Libraries is helping researchers and students amplify their individual or cross-departmental work, while taking the our commitment to open to the next level.

ReDATA—a free research data repository that stores and shares datasets produced by University of Arizona researchers—was recently launched by the Libraries’ Office of Innovation of Digital Innovation & Stewardship.

In addition to addressing the growing number of funding agencies and journal publishers that require open access to underlying research data, the team that developed ReDATA identified an opportunity to tackle a strategic gap on campus. …

The service, which aligns with the Libraries’ mission to reduce barriers to accessing and sharing information, also allows researchers to receive credit and track the impact of their work. The platform looks at embedded download and citation counts, as well as altmetrics, which counts all of the mentions tracked for an individual research output. 

Traditional scholarly outputs include journal articles, books, conference proceedings, and monographs. Over the last decade, there has been an increase in expectations from the research community to provide supporting data and software alongside the original publication.

ReDATA accepts and archives all types of data, including spreadsheets, binary files, software and scripts, audiovisual content, and presentations….”

Canadian research data in FRDR now accessible in the European Union’s OpenAIRE Research Graph | SFU Library

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“The SFU Library is pleased to announce that the European Union’s OpenAIRE Research Graph — one of the largest databases of open access scholarly citations worldwide — now includes metadata from Canada’s Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR). The OpenAIRE Research Graph can be searched and browsed via the OpenAIRE Explore portal.

By depositing data into FRDR, faculty, graduate students, and other researchers now expose their research to the global community using the OpenAIRE Explore database….”

Gender gaps in research productivity and recognition among elite scientists in the U.S., Canada, and South Africa

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Abstract:  This study builds upon the literature documenting gender disparities in science by investigating research productivity and recognition among elite scientists in three countries. This analysis departs from both the general comparison of researchers across organizational settings and academic appointments on one hand, and the definition of “elite” by the research outcome variables on the other, which are common in previous studies. Instead, this paper’s approach considers the stratification of scientific careers by carefully constructing matched samples of men and women holding research chairs in Canada, the United States and South Africa, along with a control group of departmental peers. The analysis is based on a unique, hand-curated dataset including 943 researchers, which allows for a systematic comparison of successful scientists vetted through similar selection mechanisms. Our results show that even among elite scientists a pattern of stratified productivity and recognition by gender remains, with more prominent gaps in recognition. Our results point to the need for gender equity initiatives in science policy to critically examine assessment criteria and evaluation mechanisms to emphasize multiple expressions of research excellence.

 

DataCite Commons at your service

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“Datacite and the FREYA project partners are proud to announce the official launch of Datacite Commons today. Datacite Commons is the web interface to explore the PID Graph. formed by the publications datasets research software, and other research outputs generated by researchers working at research institutions and supported by grant funding (???) The PID Graph depends on persistent identifiers to uniquely identify all these resources and metadata that describe these resources and their connections

We launched a pre-release version of Datacite Commons in August Fenner (2020a) and have used the last two months not only for many small improvements and bug fixes but also to add two important new features a statistics page that describes the information available in the PID Graph, and personal accounts that allow for ORCID claiming and other functionality going forward….”

Manager of Public Policy & Advocacy

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“Assist the Executive Director in the development of SPARC’s policy goals and priorities, and lead SPARC’s implementation of federal advocacy with Congress and the Executive Branch. This will include:

Monitor and report on legislative and regulatory activities related to SPARC’s policy priorities.
Track the development of relevant international, federal, and state policy to identify trends or future problems.
Provide in-depth analysis of regulations, guidance, and legislation (existing and proposed) as it affects SPARC’s priorities.
Draft clear compelling materials for policymakers, SPARC members, and the public, including reports, fact sheets, FAQs, talking points, memorandums, and public comments.
Represent SPARC in meetings with policymakers and staff (in Congress, Executive branch, etc.) and provide regular feedback to SPARC leadership.
Represent SPARC in relevant coalitions, and develop and maintain partnerships with key collaborative organizations.
Oversee policy advocacy engagement with the SPARC membership, coalition partners, and the broader open community.
As a member of the management team, provide vital input for short- and long-term strategic and operational planning within the organization specific to the policy agenda….”

The Public Policy Basis for Open Access Publishing: A Scientific Approach | SpringerLink

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Abstract:  This article examines the interplay between public policy and green open access in light of copyright protection. Public policy is crucial for the progress of deposit in open access repositories which enhances distribution of information. In other words, public policy can be also be considered as a tool to contribute in the increase of information access opportunities with respect to copyright protection and associated regulatory framework. There are philosophical and pragmatic jusfitications based on which access to information is imperative (Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2012); Nikos Koutras, Building Equitable Access to Knowledge Through Open Access Repositories (Information Science Reference 2019).), while contemporary copyright regimes afford (overly) broad protection in terms of copyright duration and uses covered. This paper proposes a theoretical framework which relies on publishing model of open access and aims to develop a standard concerning stakeholder’s interests through public policy.

 

In Search of Equity and Justice: Reimagining Scholarly Communication – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“While open access is a critical piece of the equity puzzle in scholarly communication, there’s a much deeper agenda at play here. PLOS has from the outset been focused on designing broad-scale systemic change. More recently, we have been clear about the limit and barriers of the APC model and have begun to pilot alternatives, including our new Community Action Publishing model. But we have largely left to one side any deep engagement with our role (individually and organizationally) in perpetuating inequity. Like far too many, we’d assumed that passive support was enough. Understanding what it means to be “anti-racist” is now the cornerstone of PLOS’ DEI work and has supported increased clarity around our long-term strategic direction….

There are many barriers to equitable knowledge making and distribution – one of which is the APC model. As I’ve argued before, the current push towards Gold OA via so-called “transformative” agreements risks hardwiring the exclusion of many researchers, especially in the Global South. Far from being “transformative”, these deals run the risk of locking in the high cost of subscriptions into an open future and of reinforcing the market dominance of the biggest players as subscription funds simply flow in full to new deal models, further entrenching existing inequalities….”

Affiliation in Transition: Rethinking Society Membership with EarlyCareer Researchers in the Social Sciences

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“The coalescence of the open-access movement during the early years of the 21st century marked an inflection point for the member organizations known as scholarly or learned societies. As new information and communication technologies intersected with a diverse but impactful set of claims about the benefits of providing free and immediate access to scholarly publications, these organizations were forced not only to reexamine their business models but also to confront fundamental questions on the order of “what are scholarly societies for?” Such questions were, on the one hand, specific to the internal dynamics of the science system and its shifting relations with other societal actors. They were, on the other hand, reflective of a more general reassessment of associational forms from civic organizations to political parties. 1 2 3 4 …”

Humtank Prize 2020 to the Royal Library – Humtank

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From Google’s English:  “Society needs humanistic knowledge. The humanities need to reach out to society. Therefore, for the sixth year in a row, the think tank Humtank awards the Humtank Prize to academics or institutions that have made a meritorious contribution to important humanities perspectives in society. This year’s winner is the Royal Library, and this is the motivation:

 

The Royal Library (KB) has, by opening up its entire digitized newspaper archive on the internet during the corona pandemic, paved the way into the future. In a time marked by copyright and commercial tunnel events, KB gave everyone the opportunity to explore almost 400 years of Swedish news reporting and history – regardless of where they are in the country. A temporary copyright agreement meant that the entire archive could only be accessed freely for a few months, but through the initiative, the library has opened a wide window, which no researcher or good citizen wants to see closed anymore. In a far-sighted and meritorious way, KB has thus shown a genuinely digitized future, where history is free and accessible for everyone to explore.”

SCWAReD Advanced Collaborative Support Program: Call for Proposa… | HathiTrust Digital Library

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“The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) requests proposals for a special funded round of its Advanced Collaborative Support (ACS) program, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for HTRC’s “Scholar-Curated Worksets for Analysis, Reuse & Dissemination (SCWAReD)” project.

ACS is a scholarly service offering collaboration between researchers and HTRC staff to solve challenging problems related to computational analysis of the HathiTrust corpus. In this special cycle of ACS, we seek to collaborate with scholars to recover volumes in HathiTrust that tell the story of historically under-resourced and marginalized textual communities, and to identify gaps in the HathiTrust collection where such communities are not represented in the digital library. …”

The INKE Partnership – A Canadian Social Knowledge Institute research partnership

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“The Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership is a North American-based research network with the goal of fostering open social scholarship: academic practice that enables the creation, dissemination, and engagement of open research by specialists and non-specialists in accessible and significant ways….”

Preliminary report on the first draft of the Recommendation on Open Science – UNESCO Digital Library

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UNESCO

1. Adopts thé présent Recommendation on Open Science on this day of… November2021;

2. Recommends that Member States apply thé provisions of this Recommendation by taking appropriate steps, including whatever législative or other measures maybe required, in conformity with thé constitutional practice and governing structures of each State, to give effect within their jurisdictions to thé principles of thé Recommendation;

3. Also recommends that Member States bring thé Recommendation to thé attentionof thé authorities and bodies responsible for science, technology and innovation,and consult relevant actors concerned with Open Science;

4. Further recommends that Member States report to it, at such dates and in suchmanner as shall be determined, on thé action taken in pursuance of this Recommendation….”

Preliminary report on the first draft of the Recommendation on Open Science – UNESCO Digital Library

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UNESCO

1. Adopts thé présent Recommendation on Open Science on this day of… November2021;

2. Recommends that Member States apply thé provisions of this Recommendation by taking appropriate steps, including whatever législative or other measures maybe required, in conformity with thé constitutional practice and governing structures of each State, to give effect within their jurisdictions to thé principles of thé Recommendation;

3. Also recommends that Member States bring thé Recommendation to thé attentionof thé authorities and bodies responsible for science, technology and innovation,and consult relevant actors concerned with Open Science;

4. Further recommends that Member States report to it, at such dates and in suchmanner as shall be determined, on thé action taken in pursuance of this Recommendation….”

Open Science

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“The idea behind Open Science is to allow scientific information, data and outputs to be more widely accessible (Open Access) and more reliably harnessed (Open Data) with the active engagement of all the stakeholders (Open to Society).

By encouraging science to be more connected to societal needs and by promoting equal opportunities for all (scientists, policy-makers and citizens), Open Science can be a true game changer in bridging the science, technology and innovation gaps between and within countries and fulfilling the human right to science.

In the context of pressing planetary and socio-economic challenges, sustainable and innovative solutions require an efficient, transparent and vibrant scientific effort – not only stemming from the scientific community, but from the whole society. The recent response of the scientific community to the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated very well, how open science can accelerate the achievement of scientific solutions for a global challenge.

The Open Science movement has emerged from the scientific community and has rapidly spread across nations, calling for the opening of the gates of knowledge. Investors, entrepreneurs, policy makers and citizens are joining this call. However, in the fragmented scientific and policy environment, a global understanding of the meaning, opportunities and challenges of Open Science is still missing.

UNESCO, as the United Nations Agency with a mandate for Science, is the legitimate global organization enabled to build a coherent vision of Open Science and a shared set of overarching principles and shared values. That is why, at the 40th session of UNESCO’s General Conference, 193 Members States tasked the Organization with the development of an international standard-setting instrument on Open Science in the form of a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science….”

Open Science

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“The idea behind Open Science is to allow scientific information, data and outputs to be more widely accessible (Open Access) and more reliably harnessed (Open Data) with the active engagement of all the stakeholders (Open to Society).

By encouraging science to be more connected to societal needs and by promoting equal opportunities for all (scientists, policy-makers and citizens), Open Science can be a true game changer in bridging the science, technology and innovation gaps between and within countries and fulfilling the human right to science.

In the context of pressing planetary and socio-economic challenges, sustainable and innovative solutions require an efficient, transparent and vibrant scientific effort – not only stemming from the scientific community, but from the whole society. The recent response of the scientific community to the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated very well, how open science can accelerate the achievement of scientific solutions for a global challenge.

The Open Science movement has emerged from the scientific community and has rapidly spread across nations, calling for the opening of the gates of knowledge. Investors, entrepreneurs, policy makers and citizens are joining this call. However, in the fragmented scientific and policy environment, a global understanding of the meaning, opportunities and challenges of Open Science is still missing.

UNESCO, as the United Nations Agency with a mandate for Science, is the legitimate global organization enabled to build a coherent vision of Open Science and a shared set of overarching principles and shared values. That is why, at the 40th session of UNESCO’s General Conference, 193 Members States tasked the Organization with the development of an international standard-setting instrument on Open Science in the form of a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science….”