DigitalKoans – Page 13 – What Is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading?

Scholarly Communication Librarian at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans

Reporting to the Associate Director of Libraries, the Scholarly Communications Librarian provides general and virtual information, research, and reference services. . . . Explores, evaluates, and encourages deployment of emergent technologies into library programs and services. The Scholarly Communications Librarian collaborates closely with staff across the library and initiates activities and special projects, especially those involving new methodologies and scholarly communication practices. The incumbent develops and maintains awareness of scholarly communication initiatives across the disciplines, attending professional meetings, workshops and conferences for training and continuing professional development.

https://tinyurl.com/4u97d853

"Choice of Open Access in Elsevier Hybrid Journals"

Open access articles in hybrid journals have recently increased despite high article processing charges. This study investigated the impacts of grants and transformative agreements on authors’ choice of open and non-open access articles by comparing two article types. The samples were hybrid journals launched independently by Elsevier. The results revealed that the authors who received more grants in countries with transformative agreements were more likely to choose open access articles. By contrast, authors in developing countries were likely to publish non-open access articles. These findings imply that authors’ choices depend on the funding systems and open access policies in individual countries. Consequently, open access may become a barrier to the dissemination of work for researchers who have financial difficulty choosing open access, although it enables everyone to access articles free of charge.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-024-09978-0

Data Librarian at University of Nevada Las Vegas

Facilitate and lead instructional programming related to research data management, data literacy, and open science/research including the design, development, and delivery of instruction through multiple formats to meet stakeholder needs (e.g., in-person, hybrid, synchronous and asynchronous online).

Advise and guide researchers on recommended data management practices throughout the research lifecycle that align with FAIR and CARE data principles, with an emphasis on making data open when possible.

Provide input and guidance to researchers in selecting appropriate data repositories to store and share their data.

https://tinyurl.com/bddapp5w

"The Cost and Price of Public Access to Research Data: A Synthesis"

Beginning on or before 31 December 2025, all recipients of United States federal research funding will be required to make their federally funded scholarly outputs, including scientific data, freely available via public access venues with no delays or embargos. This paper focuses on research data as one of the key scholarly output types impacted by the requirements outlined in the Memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research issued by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy ?OSTP?, commonly called the "Nelson memo."

This paper sets out working definitions of four key terms: cost, price, reasonable, and allowable. Using these terms, we describe some of the pathways research data take to final publication, and summarize some of the extensive body of research on the costs of research data curation and sharing. We conclude that, for repositories leveraging sources of revenue other than deposit fees or other revenue streams that do not immediately scale up with increased deposits, sustainability is an important concern.

In the process, we look at cost modelling experimentation in the fields of research data management and digital preservation to consider what might be relevant from their approaches. Labour is the most significant cost for repositories and data curation, particularly in support of ingest and access, although the actual cost of data curation in repositories varies by discipline, characteristics of data, and level of curatorial services provided. If "reasonable” cost is not readily generalizable, greater clarity regarding allowable activities and more transparency in repositories" costs would aid researchers and funders in evaluating whether any deposit, membership, or other form of fees that are charged are appropriate for the services rendered. Where some or all of the effort associated with meeting public access requirements is performed by members of the research team, costs could be properly allocated to research and to publication components of grant budgets.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10729575

Information Technology Librarian at Langston University

Explores emerging technologies that promote maintenance and advancement of library infrastructure; Supports faculty, staff and student library related computer and informational technology needs; Promotes customer service and collegiality as a valued team member; Collaborates with Technical Services Librarian to ensure system functionality.

https://tinyurl.com/3jev8yu3

"What Do We Know about DOIs"

What, though, do we actually know about the state of persistence of these links? How many DOIs resolve correctly? How many landing pages, at the other end of the DOI resolution, contain the information that is supposed to be there, including the title and the DOI itself?. . . .

Let’s talk about the resolution statistics. Other studies, looking at general links on the web, have found a link-rot rate of about 60%-70% over a ten-year period (Lessig, Zittrain, and Albert 2014; Stox 2022). The DOI resolution rate that we have, with 97% of links resolving (or a 3% link-rot rate), is far better and more robust than a web link in general.

Is 3% a good or a bad number? It’s more robust than the web in general, but it still means that for every 100 DOIs, just under 3 will fail to resolve. We also cannot tell whether these DOIs are resolving to the correct target, except by using the metadata detection metrics (are the title and DOI on the landing page, which we could only detect at a far lower rate). It is entirely possible for a website to resolve with an HTTP 200 (OK) response, but for the page in question to be something very different to what the user expected, a phenomenon dubbed content drift.

https://www.crossref.org/blog/what-do-we-know-about-dois/

Lead Developer at University of Greenwich

Lead Developer is an exciting role within our Digital Services team, which manages our website and other key digital proprieties, as well as provide assistance to other departments with digital needs. We are looking for somebody who is highly motivated with proven programming and problem-solving skills and a good understanding of front-end development using HTML/CSS and JavaScript. You will also be familiar with working with structured data in formats such as JSON and SQL. The ideal candidate will be familiar with programming within enterprise CMS systems (In particular Squiz Matrix) and web development languages such as PHP.

https://tinyurl.com/2744x3fd

"eLife’s New Model: One Year On"

On January 31 2023, we launched our new model for publishing, combining the speed and transparency of preprints with the expert scrutiny and evaluation of peer review. We committed to publish everything that we reviewed. We would publish preprints together with public reviews and assessments. By doing so we would reshape the purpose of a journal. . . .

More than 6,200 teams of researchers have submitted their research (fig.1), choosing our journal and publishing model. Our month-on-month submissions have been stable since launch, but this January marks the highest number so far with 615.

At present, 27.7% of submissions (fig. 2) to our new model are sent for review. This is compared to 31.4% of submissions sent for review in our legacy model (from February 1, 2022–January 31, 2023). . . .

Reviewed Preprints help researchers share their peer-reviewed and assessed research faster. For a Reviewed Preprint, the median time from submission to publication of the first version with reviews and eLife assessment is 91 days (fig. 3). This is over two and a half times faster than the median submission to publication time in the legacy model. . . .

By the end of January 2024 we had published 1332 Reviewed Preprints, and this figure rises to 1836 when we include revised versions. These articles have been viewed over 850,000 times by more than 320,000 readers.

https://tinyurl.com/yknkm2fn

Digital Health Humanities Program Coordinator at UC San Francisco (Term)

This Digital Health Humanities (DHH) Program Coordinator will manage the development and day-to-day operations and services of the recently established Digital Health Humanities (DHH) program, including project direction for the two-year NEH-funded Advancing Digital Health Humanities Institute. The goal of the Digital Health Humanities program is to guide and equip researchers in their engagement with digital tools and methods to facilitate interdisciplinary scholarship that will advance understanding of the profound effects of illness and disease on patients, health professionals, and the social worlds in which they live and work. In order to extend the reach and use value of UCSF Archives and Special Collections "archives as data" resources through the practical application of innovative analysis and contextualization methods, the DHH Program Coordinator initiates and sustains constructive relationships with researcher-stakeholders (including faculty, students, and staff) as well as DHH instructors and consultants with expertise in computational research methods and archival health sciences collections.

https://tinyurl.com/2ppmwvrh

"How Open Are Hybrid Journals Included in Transformative Agreements?"

This study presents a novel approach based on open data, which leverages metadata on over 700 agreements and nine million journal articles to estimate the extent to which transformation agreements contribute to the transition of this journal business model. The results highlight a strong growth in open access between 2018 and 2022, driven by an increasing number of institutions that had transformative agreements in place. However, the majority of research literature published in hybrid journals in this five-year period remained behind publisher paywalls. Growth in the adoption of open access in hybrid journals, in particular through transformative agreements, can be largely attributed to three large commercial publishers — Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley — but varies substantially across journals, publishers, disciplines, and country affiliations. Despite the limitations of the data, the findings indicate that the current level of implementation of transformative agreements is insufficient to bring about a large-scale transition to fully open access.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18255

Discovery and Electronic Resources Specialist at Oakland University

To provide leadership, under the direction of the OU Libraries’ Collections Support Services Coordinator, for all activities related to the acquisition, activation, maintenance, accessibility, and assessment of the Libraries’ electronic resources. Configure and provide ongoing support for the Libraries’ discovery service and other database platforms. Develop and maintain processes to ensure data integrity and management leading to the generation of complex reports, dashboards, and other relevant output.

https://jobs.oakland.edu/postings/30417

"Information Accessibility and Knowledge Creation: The Impact of Google’s Withdrawal from China on Scientific Research"

How important is Google for scientific research? This paper exploits the exogenous shock represented by Google’s sudden withdrawal of its services from mainland China to assess the importance of access to information for the knowledge production function of scientific scholars in the field of economics. For economists, a type of scholar with a simple knowledge production function, results from difference-in-difference analyses, which compare their scientific output to scholars located in the neighbouring regions, show that the scientific productivity declines by about 28% in volume and 30% in terms of citations. These results are consistent with the view that information accessibility is an important driver of scientific progress. Considering that the negative effect of the shock is stronger for top scholars located in China, Google’s sudden exit bears the risk that researchers lose touch with the research frontier and persistently lag behind their foreign peers.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2023.2298293

Production Systems Librarian at Harvard University

The Library Technology Services (LTS) team at Harvard University is seeking a Production Systems Librarian to help support and maintain resilient services that support world-class research and teaching at Harvard. The Library Systems Support Team triages, analyzes, directly resolves, or reassigns service requests, incident reports, and other user problems. The team provides in-depth technical support for selected applications. The team works collaboratively with software engineers, analysts, systems librarians, library staff, system administrators, and IT professionals to support and maintain stable applications for the Harvard libraries.

http://tinyurl.com/5yb3sjhk

"Plan S: Annual Review 2023"

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access (OA) publishing, which requires that from 2021 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. . . .

In this annual review, we provide an overview of our activities in 2023, along with the latest advancements in our policies. Furthermore, we delineate ongoing initiatives that will significantly influence our future steps. The review sheds light also on specific actions taken by cOAlition S funders in the realm of scholarly communication.

http://tinyurl.com/5n8nkc7y

Digital Collections Archivist at NYC Dept Of Environment Protection

Reporting to the Director of Records and Archives Management, major responsibilities of the Digital Collections Archivist include administration of the Digital Asset Management system (Extensis Portfolio), directing digitization projects, acquiring and processing born-digital records, and implementing a strategy for preserving digital assets. This position will monitor system hardware and storage needs and interface with the agency’s Information Technology group on behalf of the unit.

http://tinyurl.com/mr2nsa38

"Digital Science Announces Innovative New Research Solutions from Dimensions, Delivering Insights from ~350 Million Publications, Grants, Patents and Clinical Trials through CHATGPT’s Conversational Interface."

With Dimensions Research GPT, any Plus or Enterprise ChatGPT Store subscriber can gain insight from the tens of millions of Open Access publications available through Dimensions, providing a quick and effective search of open research on the user-friendly ChatGPT platform. Search results include clickable links that take users to Dimensions, where they can learn more about source materials.

Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise is available to mutual ChatGPT Enterprise and organization-wide Dimensions customers, and incorporates insights from all publications, grants, clinical trials and patents within the Dimensions database. Queries such as "tell me about clinical trials for malaria vaccines", followed by "tell me about the key research articles that underpin these trials" provide answers that come fully linked to the research literature behind the responses, ensuring that researchers can access and check the source of the information.

https://www.digital-science.com/news/dimensions-research-gpt/

Here is a inquiry I made to Dimensions Research GPT:

Describe the history of the open access movement

The history of the open access movement, which aims to make scholarly research freely available to all, is rich and diverse, involving various stakeholders including researchers, libraries, publishers, and educational institutions. The top results from Dimensions include a range of perspectives and approaches, with a total of 946,585 related documents found.

Perspectives on Open Access Publishing:

Particle Physics and Open Access: Travis C. Brooks (2007) discusses the adoption of open access in particle physics, highlighting the field’s longstanding tradition of preprints and the European efforts towards fully open access publishing models (Brooks, 2007).

Scholarly Publishing System Critique: Molly Kleinman (2017) offers a critical view of the traditional scholarly publishing system and presents the open access movement as a remedy to its drawbacks, emphasizing its benefits for faculty, universities, and the public (Kleinman, 2017).

Academic Publishing Evolution: Bernard Forgues and Sébastien Liarte (2013) reflect on the evolution of academic publishing, discussing the challenges of subscription prices and time embargoes, and how the open access movement aims to reshape scholarly communication (Forgues & Liarte, 2013).

Innovative Open Access Models and Reflections:

Open Access Archives for Education: Bonnie Gordon et al. (2016) describe how Interference Archive uses an open stacks policy for education, allowing for a participatory approach in deciding how histories are told and accessed (Gordon et al., 2016).

Scholarly Knowledge Freedom: Peter Baldwin (2023) examines the past, present, and future of the open access movement, arguing for the free dissemination of scholarly knowledge (Baldwin, 2023).

University Presses and Open Access: Paul Ayris and Lara Speicher (2015) discuss the launch of UCL Press, the UK’s first fully open access university press, highlighting the global movement towards open access and open science (Ayris & Speicher, 2015).

Other Relevant Insights:

MOOCs and Licensing Challenges: David Kernohan (2013) examines the challenges of licensing and intellectual property in the massive open online course (MOOC) movement, advocating for open licenses to maximize content management benefits (Kernohan, 2013).

National Parks and Open Access: Kristian Martinus Mennen (2023) explores the history of the national parks movement in England and Wales, emphasizing its role in providing public access to natural spaces (Mennen, 2023).

In conclusion, the history of the open access movement is characterized by efforts across various fields to make scholarly knowledge freely available, addressing the challenges posed by traditional publishing models and exploring innovative solutions. With 946,585 documents identified, the movement’s impact and evolution continue to be a rich area for exploration and discussion.

This is what Microsoft’s Copilot said:

The Open Access Movement has a rich history spanning several decades. Let’s delve into some key milestones:

Project Gutenberg (1971): Michael Hart launched Project Gutenberg, an initiative to digitize and archive cultural works, making them freely accessible 1.

Psycoloquy (1989): Stevan Harnad launched the free online journal Psycoloquy, which later became a peer-reviewed journal in January 1990 1.

The Public-Access Computer Systems Review (1989): Charles W. Bailey Jr. initiated this free online journal, which transitioned to peer-reviewed status in April 1992 1.

Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web (1990-1991): Tim Berners-Lee proposed the concept of the World Wide Web, leading to its launch in March 1991. This pivotal development facilitated global information sharing 1.

ArXiv (1991): Physicist Paul Ginsparg established ArXiv, an open repository for preprints in physics and related fields 1.

Emergence of E-Journals (Early 1990s): Several e-journals, such as Ejournal, Electronic Journal of Communication, and Postmodern Culture, emerged during this period 1.

Standards for the World Wide Web (1991): Tim Berners-Lee released the standards for the World Wide Web, shaping its growth and accessibility 1.

Project MUSE (1993): The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University Press, launched Project MUSE, a pioneer in online distribution that allowed full-text searches 1.

Self-Archiving Proposal (1994): Stevan Harnad proposed self-archiving, advocating for authors to freely share their research 1.

Social Science Research Network (SSRN) (1994): Wayne Marr and Michael Jensen founded SSRN, a platform for sharing working papers and preprints 1.

Open Access Conversion (1994): The print journal Florida Entomologist transitioned to an open-access format, making all previous issues available for free 1.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) (1996): Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University launched NDLTD, promoting open access to theses and dissertations 1.

Internet Archive (1996): Brewster Kahle established the Internet Archive, preserving digital content for public access 1.

Medline and PubMed (1997): Medline, initially launched in 1966, became open access and was incorporated into PubMed 1. SciELO (1997): SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) began development as a project supported by FAPESP and BIREME 1.

The Open Access Movement continues to evolve, driven by the vision of making scholarly knowledge freely available to all.

Digital Projects Coordinator at Virginia Tech

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech has a full-time Digital Projects Coordinator available. Virginia Tech Publishing launched in 2017 and currently publishes open access books, journals, digital scholarship, and audiovisual media. The Digital Projects Coordinator will manage and produce digital content and consult with faculty and students on campus.

http://tinyurl.com/4hyx3ke9

"Does It Pay to Pay? A Comparison of the Benefits of Open-Access Publishing across Various Sub-Fields in Biology"

Authors are often faced with the decision of whether to maximize traditional impact metrics or minimize costs when choosing where to publish the results of their research. Many subscription-based journals now offer the option of paying an article processing charge (APC) to make their work open. Though such "hybrid" journals make research more accessible to readers, their APCs often come with high price tags and can exclude authors who lack the capacity to pay to make their research accessible. Here, we tested if paying to publish open access in a subscription-based journal benefited authors by conferring more citations relative to closed access articles. We identified 146,415 articles published in 152 hybrid journals in the field of biology from 2013–2018 to compare the number of citations between various types of open access and closed access articles. In a simple generalized linear model analysis of our full dataset, we found that publishing open access in hybrid journals that offer the option confers an average citation advantage to authors of 17.8 citations compared to closed access articles in similar journals. After taking into account the number of authors, Journal Citation Reports 2020 Quartile, year of publication, and Web of Science category, we still found that open access generated significantly more citations than closed access (p < 0.0001). However, results were complex, with exact differences in citation rates among access types impacted by these other variables. This citation advantage based on access type was even similar when comparing open and closed access articles published in the same issue of a journal (p < 0.0001). However, by examining articles where the authors paid an article processing charge, we found that cost itself was not predictive of citation rates (p = 0.14). Based on our findings of access type and other model parameters, we suggest that, in the case of the 152 journals we analyzed, paying for open access does confer a citation advantage. For authors with limited budgets, we recommend pursuing open access alternatives that do not require paying a fee as they still yielded more citations than closed access. For authors who are considering where to submit their next article, we offer additional suggestions on how to balance exposure via citations with publishing costs.

https://peerj.com/articles/16824/

Full Stack Web Application Developer at University Of Iowa

The University of Iowa Libraries seeks to hire a full-stack application developer to design, develop, test, debug, and troubleshoot web software and applications. Conduct system analysis and design, and provide technical leadership, training, and guidance to staff to support information technology business operations in a library environment.

http://tinyurl.com/ynuk5svv

"OpenAI: ‘The New York Times Paid Someone to Hack Us’"

OpenAI accuses The New York Times of paying someone to hack OpenAI’s products. This was allegedly done to gather evidence for the copyright infringement complaint the newspaper filed late last year. This lawsuit fails to meet The Times’ "famously rigorous journalistic standards," the defense argues, asking the New York federal court to dismiss it in part.

http://tinyurl.com/44j8wchb

AI Research Scientist, Digital Libraries at Virginia Tech

Reporting to the Associate Dean and Executive Director for IT at Virginia Tech University Libraries, the AI Research Scientist will contribute to the advancement of library services through artificial intelligence. The incumbent will work primarily with the Digital Libraries and Preservation unit, providing AI solutions to enhance arrangement, description, discovery, preservation of digital content managed by the University Libraries. A significant aspect of the role will also involve contributing to library-wide programs and initiatives, accelerating the library’s adaptation to the evolving landscape of higher education and research influenced by AI.

http://tinyurl.com/5b6nwzka

"How Transformative Are Transformative Agreements? Evidence from Germany across Disciplines"

Research institutions across the globe attempt to change the academic publishing system as digitization opens up new opportunities, and subscriptions to the large journal bundles of the leading publishers put library budgets under pressure. One approach is the negotiation of so-called transformative agreements. I study the "DEAL" contracts between nearly all German research institutions and Springer Nature and Wiley. I investigate 6.1 million publications in 5,862 journals covering eight fields in the years 2016–2022 and apply a causal difference-in-differences design to identify whether the likelihood of a paper appearing in an eligible journal increases. The effect strongly depends on the discipline. While material science, chemistry, and economics’s tend to shift towards these journals, all other disciplines in my sample do not react. Suggestive evidence hints at the market position of the encompassed publishers before the "DEAL" was established: Springer Nature and Wiley appear to benefit more from the contracts in disciplines in which they possessed a higher market share ex ante. The transformative vigor of these agreements in terms of publication behavior seems to be limited. It and highlights that the developments in this intertwined market require further examination.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04955-y

Research & Digital Humanities Librarian at Allegheny College

The Research & Digital Humanities Librarian provides research guidance, information literacy instruction, and digital technologies collaboration and support for faculty, academic staff and students through the lenses of the Library, the Center for Research and Teaching Excellence and digital humanities initiatives. This Librarian will exhibit excellent collaborative relationships and customer service skills between stakeholders, connecting the areas of faculty development, educational technologies and academic research.. . . .

Train and support faculty in the use of technology for digital humanities and other interdisciplinary digital projects; and promote digital scholarship through educational technologies and the research process.

Provide guidance on best practice use of educational technologies and digital course design.

http://tinyurl.com/mr45tcu2

"Taylor & Francis Extends Wikipedia Editor Access to All Journals"

The work of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors has been given a significant boost with the announcement they now have free access to all Taylor & Francis and Routledge journals. Through The Wikipedia Library, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, the global non-profit that hosts Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, active Wikipedia editors will be able to read and cite millions of peer-reviewed journal articles across every discipline, from anthropology to zoology.

http://tinyurl.com/mv2af6hf

Digital Media Specialists Team Leader at BFI National Archive

The Digital Media Specialists Team Leader will lead and develop a team of Digital Media Specialists to provide a flexible range of technical services and functions to achieve the digital preservation and access activities for BFI National Archive digital audiovisual collections. They will assist with and advise on specifications, quality control and verification processes in collaboration with colleagues, to meet agreed quality standards and deadlines.

https://bfijobsandopportunities.bfi.org.uk/