"Even If You Hate Both AI and Section 230, You Should Be Concerned about the Hawley/Blumenthal Bill to Remove 230 Protections from AI"


Considering that AI is currently being built into basically everything, this "exemption" [from Section 230] will basically eat the entire law, because increasingly all content produced online will involve "the use or provision" of generative AI, even if the content itself has nothing to do with the service provider.

In short, this bill doesn’t just strip 230 protections from AI output, in effect it strips 230 from any company that offers AI in its products. Which is basically a set of internet companies rapidly approaching "all of them."

https://tinyurl.com/ykjx8v4t

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"The Impact of Open Access Mandates on Scientific Research and Technological Development in the U.S."

  • Scientific articles subject to the mandate were utilized on average 42% more in patents
  • Articles subject to the mandate were not cited more frequently by other academic papers
  • Small firms were the primary beneficiaries of the increased knowledge diffusion
  • Scientific articles subject to the mandate were utilized on average 42% more in patents
  • Articles subject to the mandate were not cited more frequently by other academic papers
  • Small firms were the primary beneficiaries of the increased knowledge diffusion

https://tinyurl.com/bdekuf2j

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

Paywall: "AI Policies across the Globe: Implications and Recommendations for Libraries"


This article examines the proposed artificial intelligence policies of the USA, UK, European Union, Canada, and China, and their implications for libraries. . . . The article highlights key themes in these policies, including ethics, transparency, the balance between innovation and regulation, and data privacy. It also identifies areas for improvement, such as the need for specific guidelines on mitigating biases in artificial intelligence systems and navigating data privacy issues. The article further provides practical recommendations for libraries to engage with these policies and develop best practices for artificial intelligence use.

https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352231196172

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"New at Dryad: Support for NIH-funded researchers"


Dryad provides a simple submission process that makes it easy for researchers to upload your datasets, apply metadata that makes them discoverable and reusable, and get a persistent identifier (DOI) you can use in grant reporting. Once submitted, datasets are made publicly accessible so they can be reused by others in order to advance scientific discovery and collaboration across disciplines. Dryad also provides an extensive library of existing datasets from various sources, including those funded by NIH grants, that are completely free to access and reuse.

https://tinyurl.com/4uu9tz2r

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

SPARC: "Oppose Section 552 That Will Block Taxpayer Access to Research"


The U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) has released an appropriations bill containing language that would block implementation of the 2022 updated OSTP policy guidance (the Nelson Memo) that would ensure immediate, free access to taxpayer-funded research. If enacted, this will prevent American taxpayers from seeing the benefits of the more than $90 billion in scientific research that the U.S. government funds each year. . . .

Write to Congress

Look up contact details for your Representatives and Senators, then customize the text in this template letter.

Call Congress

Look up contact details for your Representatives and Senators, then call the office and tell them to remove Section 552 of the House CJS bill.

https://tinyurl.com/3mbbmwxw

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Diamonds in the Rough: Societies Shine under Pressure"


Overall, 18% of fully open journals appear to be sponsored [diamond], but their proportion and number have been decreasing. . . . Among society-run journals, sponsored titles account for more than double the market average, for non-society (commercial) journals they account for just under half. Societies’ greater proportion of sponsored titles and their not-for-profit status could therefore place them in a stronger position than their commercial competitors if we see a large scale move by funders to require publication in journals without publisher fees and — as some noises from European funders suggest — which are not for profit.

https://tinyurl.com/yc4k2j9m

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"European Lawmakers Vote to Adopt EU AI Act"


European Union lawmakers have passed the EU AI Act that will govern use and deployment of artificial intelligence technology within the EU. . . . Changes introduced by MEPs to the original commission draft act include some top-level regulation of general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT. These foundation models will require mandatory labelling for AI-generated content and the forced disclosure of training data covered by copyright. . . . . Other changes include a fine-tuned list of prohibited practices, extended to include subliminal techniques, biometric categorisation, predictive policing, and internet-scraped facial recognition databases.

https://tinyurl.com/nhet5ckd

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

Congressional Research Service: Generative Artificial Intelligence: Overview, Issues, and Questions for Congress


The recent public release of many GenAI tools, and the race by companies to develop ever-more powerful models, have generated widespread discussion of their capabilities, potential concerns with their use, and debates about their governance and regulation. This CRS InFocus describes the development and uses of GenAI, concerns raised by the use of GenAI tools, and considerations for Congress. For additional considerations related to data privacy, see CRS Report R47569, Generative Artificial Intelligence and Data Privacy: A Primer, by Kristen E. Busch.

https://tinyurl.com/bdrpkzcj

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"An Effort to Ban Faculty Tenure in Public Universities Has Failed in the Texas Legislature"


On Saturday, in a surprise move, senators backed off their position and accepted the House’s counterproposal, which solidifies tenure in state law and places more power to make future changes to tenure in the hands of state lawmakers rather that individual university system boards.

https://cutt.ly/TwqKXVNj

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

Council of the European Union: "Council Calls for Transparent, Equitable, and Open Access to Scholarly Publications"


In its conclusions, the Council calls on the Commission and the member states to support policies towards a scholarly publishing model that is not-for-profit, open access and multi-format, with no costs for authors or readers. Some Member States have introduced secondary publication rights into their national copyright legislation, enabling open access to scholarly publications which involve public funds. The Council encourages national open access policies and guidelines to make scholarly publications immediately openly accessible under open licences. The conclusions acknowledge positive developments in terms of monitoring progress, like within the framework of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and suggest including open science monitoring in the European Research Area monitoring mechanism. The Council conclusions also encourage Member States to support the pilot programme Open Research Europe (to create a large-scale open access research publishing service), the use of open-source software and standards, to recognise and reward peer review activities in the assessment of researchers as well as to support the training of researchers on peer-review skills and on intellectual property rights.

https://bit.ly/3MS2leY

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"EU’s New AI Law Targets Big Tech Companies but Is Probably Only Going to Harm the Smallest Ones"


In a bold stroke, the EU’s amended AI Act would ban American companies such as OpenAI, Amazon, Google, and IBM from providing API access to generative AI models. The amended act, voted out of committee on Thursday, would sanction American open-source developers and software distributors, such as GitHub, if unlicensed generative models became available in Europe. While the act includes open source exceptions for traditional machine learning models, it expressly forbids safe-harbor provisions for open source generative systems.

Any model made available in the EU, without first passing extensive, and expensive, licensing, would subject companies to massive fines of the greater of €20,000,000 or 4% of worldwide revenue.

(Quote from Technomancers.ai.)

https://bit.ly/3ociZwo

"Supreme Court Rules against Reexamining Section 230"


The Supreme Court has declined to consider reinterpreting foundational internet law Section 230, saying it wasn’t necessary for deciding the terrorism-related case Gonzalez v. Google. The ruling came alongside a separate but related ruling in Twitter v. Taamneh, where the court concluded that Twitter had not aided and abetted terrorism.

https://cutt.ly/Z6BKtx6

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"Spain Adopts National Open Access Strategy"


Spain has approved a four-year national strategy for open science, under which all outputs of publicly financed research will made available free upon publication.

Under the strategy open access will become the default mode for all research funded directly or indirectly, with public funds. . . .

A budget of €23.8 million in 2023 will be maintained annually until 2027.

https://bit.ly/414w2gY

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

Class E Felony: "Tennessee Bill Would Punish Publishers for Selling ‘Obscene’ Material"


It is currently awaiting Governor Bill Lee’s approval to become law. Under this bill, violations would be considered a Class E felony, and publishers or distributers could be fined between $10,000 and $100,000.

https://bit.ly/40m7lfl

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"‘We Have to Move Fast’: US Looks to Establish Rules for Artificial Intelligence"


The US commerce department on Tuesday announced it is officially requesting public comment on how to create accountability measures for AI, seeking help on how to advise US policymakers to approach the technology….

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has also published an AI risk management framework, voluntary guardrails that companies can use to attempt to limit the risk of harm to the public.

https://cutt.ly/d7UOF25

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"Congress Introduces Bill to Tackle College Textbook Costs"


SPARC, a non-profit advocacy organization working to make education and research open and equitable, today applauded the reintroduction of the Affordable College Textbook Act in the U.S. Congress. The bill would address a key but often overlooked factor in the cost of higher education—the cost of textbooks—by establishing a grant program for the creation and use of free, openly licensed textbooks, while also strengthening federal price disclosure requirements for textbook publishers and institutions. If passed, the program would build on the success of the Open Textbook Pilot which is already projected to save students an estimated $250 million since its creation in 2018.

http://bit.ly/40sNVX2

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"Coalition Forms to Battle Library E-book Bills"


In a release this week, an alliance of author, publisher, and copyright industry advocacy groups launched Protect the Creative Economy Coalition, a coalition designed to combat a growing number of new library e-book bills surfacing in state legislatures in the opening weeks of 2023. . . .The initial members of the Protect the Creative Economy Coalition include the American Booksellers Association, Authors Guild, Association of American Publishers, National Music Publishers Association, News Media Alliance, and the Independent Book Publishers Association, as well as the Copyright Alliance.

bit.ly/42m0FQT

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

Paywall: "Open Data and the 2023 NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy"


As the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) new Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy is a large step toward shifting the culture of medical research toward a broader sharing of scientific data. . . . This article will serve as a primer on open data, data sharing, the NIH’s DMS Policy and its implications, and how librarians can support researchers in this landscape.

https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2023.2168103

| Research Data Curation and Management Works |
| Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works |
| Open Access Works |
| Digital Scholarship |

"Analysis of U.S. Federal Funding Agency Data Sharing Policies: 2020 Highlights and Key Observations "


Federal funding agencies in the United States (U.S.) continue to work towards implementing their plans to increase public access to funded research and comply with the 2013 Office of Science and Technology memo Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research. In this article we report on an analysis of research data sharing policy documents from 17 U.S. federal funding agencies as of February 2021. Our analysis is guided by two questions: 1.) What do the findings suggest about the current state of and trends in U.S. federal funding agency data sharing requirements? 2.) In what ways are universities, institutions, associations, and researchers affected by and responding to these policies? Over the past five years, policy updates were common among these agencies and several themes have been thoroughly developed in that time; however, uncertainty remains around how funded researchers are expected to satisfy these policy requirements.

http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/791

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"FOSS Could Be an Unintended Victim of EU Crusade to Make Software More Secure"


But FOSS is in the most danger. The underlying assumption of the regulation is that cybersecurity exists in the digital market like fire resistance does in that for soft furnishings. Putting regulatory cost burdens on a part of the market with no revenue and no gatekeeping on its distribution channels cannot work; there are no prices to increase to absorb compliance costs and no tap to turn off to keep the stuff off the market.

bit.ly/40RBepA

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Paywall (with Some Free Views): "How the Supreme Court Ruling on Section 230 Could End Reddit as We Know It"


But another big issue is at stake that has received much less attention: depending on the outcome of the case, individual users of sites may suddenly be liable for run-of-the-mill content moderation. Many sites rely on users for community moderation to edit, shape, remove, and promote other users’ content online—think Reddit’s upvote, or changes to a Wikipedia page. What might happen if those users were forced to take on legal risk every time they made a content decision? . . . .

"Without Section 230, Wikipedia could not exist," says Jacob Rogers, associate general counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation.

bit.ly/3Ykiddn

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Canadian Policy: Data Management Requirement Takes Effect in March"


Canadian institutions are preparing for a research data management policy developed by three major federal granting agencies to go into effect this March. The policy of the Tri-Agency Council, comprising the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), asserts that "research data collected through the use of public funds should be responsibly and securely managed and be, where ethical, legal and commercial obligations allow, available for reuse by others."

https://cutt.ly/N9vGKLh

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Copyright Flexibilities: Mapping and Comparative Assessment of EU and National Sources


This report illustrates and analyses the results of the research activities conducted in the framework of reCreating Europe’s Task 2.1. From January 2020 to June 2022, the task performed an unprecedented, two-layer, comparative, EU and cross-national mapping and assessment of sources impacting on copyright flexibilities and access to culture, focusing on (a) statutes, court decisions, governmental policies, practices and schemes in the field of copyright law, DSM, and broader cultural policies, and (b) private ordering sources, such as standardized license agreements (EULAs) and terms of use from online platforms, selected to represent a wide array of cultural and creative goods and services.

https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4325376

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

New Tools Validate Compliance with OA Funder’s Rules : "Confused by Open-Access Policies? These Tools Can Help"


Funding-agency policies mandating that scientific papers and data are made publicly available have helped to drive the adoption of preprints, open-access publishing and data repositories. But agencies often struggle to measure how closely grant recipients comply with the funding policies. Awardees, and the institutes that employ them, can struggle to ensure they are following the rules. Now, digital tools are cropping up to help both sides of the funding equation stick to the regulations.

https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00175-1

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"The Copyright Claims Board: Worrying Implications for Scholarship"


CCB proceedings may also pose a threat to freedom of expression for scholars and others who build on original works. There is, of course, the danger that the resolution of CCB infringement claims could result in required payment or an agreement to cease certain activity. Yet if a claimant files a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in addition to a CCB claim, the allegedly infringing work could remain off-line as long as it sits on the CCB docket awaiting resolution. This potential timescale is in contrast to the current DMCA notice-and-takedown regime, which requires an internet platform to repost an allegedly infringing work online within fourteen days in response to a counternotice that the work is not infringing. The new, extended takedown period thus constitutes a form of censorship.

https://cutt.ly/HM9TYzA

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |