DigitalKoans – Page 49 – What Is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading?

Applications Developer at UC Berkeley

This position will support the development and maintenance of new and existing applications, services, and integrations using a variety of platforms and languages as part of a team in Library IT Application Development department in Library IT division.. The Library IT Applications department has responsibility for writing, maintaining, and supporting all library applications, including digital project workflows, the library’s internal and external web services, including integrations with library discovery platforms,and the digital collections management system(s), and integrations with campus technology services and platforms.

https://bit.ly/427h8a8

Walt Crawford: "Gold Open Access 8 Is Now Available"

Gold Open Access 2017-2022: Articles in Journals (GOA8) is now available in print book, PDF ebook, and dataset forms. The print book–a 6×9 trade paperback with color graphs–is $11.50 (or the nearest equivalent in other currencies supported by Lulu), of which I receive a stunning $0.24. The PDF ebook and dataset are both free, and all versions are CC-BY.

https://cutt.ly/WwqKXwVM

Project Manager at Columbia University

The Columbia University Libraries seek a creative, critical-thinking, and collaborative Project Manager to join the Libraries’ Digital Project Management Unit. Reporting to the Associate Director of Digital Project Management, the incumbent will lead the entire project lifecycle of digital projects produced in partnership with various stakeholders and library units. They will also help foster the application of project management principles and best practices throughout the libraries. Subject to business needs, we may support flexible and hybrid/work arrangements. Options will be discussed during the interview process.

https://bit.ly/3MGKS85

"Towards an Author-Centered Open Access Monograph Program: Understanding Open Access Cultures in Scholarly Publishing"

Author attitudes towards Open Access (OA) remains an important area of investigation in academic publishing. The successful implementation of new OA infrastructure and business models depend on their reception within scholarly communities. This paper proposes "Open Access Culture"—the set of beliefs, practices, and attitudes towards OA publishing shared by members of an academic field—as a framework to understand how OA innovations are and will be received by different scholarly communities. The investigation of OA culture helps identify the needs of individual academic fields (e.g., the importance of print publishing for a particular field), thus foregrounding author preferences in the publishing process. The University of Michigan Press (UMP) is drawing upon the OA Culture framework to aid the implementation of its OA monograph initiative. UMP has undertaken research (author survey as well as editor, author, and librarian interviews) to understand how the monograph initiative will integrate different fields. This paper presents results of this research demonstrating the application of the OA Culture framework to several fields, as well the Humanities, Arts, and Humanistic Social Sciences (HSS) more broadly. This is one way that University Presses may take an author-centered approach to OA publishing programs, one that foregrounds the needs of individual authors and considers their unique disciplinary context. Moreover, the paper offers a recent view of sentiments towards OA in the HSS and thus helps to contextualize the current OA landscape.

https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3332

Director, Information Technology & Facilities Services at University of Waterloo

The Director leads the library technical and physical operations and collaborates on campus-wide IT projects and library building projects, including the library strategic space plan. They will lead key technology and facilities projects affecting the library’s infrastructure, technical services and staff/patron safety.

https://bit.ly/43s0S4B

ARL and CARL: Observations on Research Libraries’ Alignment with Institutional STEM Priorities

This report synthesizes the two associations’ joint exploration of the need for, and nature of, alignment of research libraries with their universities’ STEM priorities. The report notes the challenges to be overcome, and provides examples of the ways libraries are already working to strengthen and support STEM at their institutions. The report includes a summary of common themes as well as observations of each institution visited.

https://bit.ly/3qaF9Qq

Technical Lead, Library Systems at Yale University

The Technical Lead for Library Systems will provide customer service excellence by partnering with clients to administer, support, and train staff on library applications. This position will take ownership in guiding and managing the solutions used for library collections acquisition, access, discovery, and management. The Technical Lead will oversee, monitor, and administer enterprise services including the library services platform, supporting applications, and custom integrations.

https://bit.ly/3ouVIG6

UC System: "Re: UCOLASC [University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication] Statement on Retention of Author Rights in License to Publish Agreements"

As discussed at our joint UCOLASC and Council of University Librarians (CoUL) meeting held on February 15, 2023, the Project Transform Negotiating Team (PTNT) and Project Transform Working Group (PTWG) have learned that many publishers are requiring University of California (UC) authors to sign "License to Publish" (LTP) agreements, which purport to grant exclusive rights to publishers and contravene the spirit of the open access (OA) policies and declarations strongly endorsed by UC faculty.We find this now-common practice to be unacceptable and therefore ask you to prioritize the issue of author rights and act on our behalf when you negotiate with publishers. . . .

UCOLASC urges the Project Transform Negotiating Team (PTNT) to negotiate transformative open access agreements with publishers stipulating that authors only grant "limited" or "nonexclusive" licenses to publishers. Liberal Creative Commons (CC) licenses (e.g., CC BY) should be applied as the default choice, and licenses that restrict commercial and derivative uses of the work (e.g., CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, and CC BY-NC-ND) should function as originally intended with authors always free to do whatever they want with their own works.

https://bit.ly/43uzuDd

OSPO [Open Source Programs Office] Program Manager at Johns Hopkins University

The Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) at Johns Hopkins University is seeking an OSPO Program Manager to expand support for open-source programs and communities at JHU. By creating the first OSPO at a US university, JHU has led the way in defining what it means for an academic institution to embrace open source. The OSPO Program Manager will continue the expansion of OSPO capabilities by collaborating with faculty, researchers, staff, and students who are actively engaged in open-source software development, community management, governance deliberations, and sustainability planning. . . .Not only will you be engaging with colleagues and students at JHU, but also with other emerging OSPOs across the academic landscape as well as community stakeholders and more established open source programs in industry.

https://bit.ly/3MWP2tS

"What is Your Threshold? The Economics of Open Access Scholarly Book Publishing, the ‘Business’ of Care, and the Case of punctum books"

In this article, we share how a small, independent, academic open access (OA) press, punctum books, has survived and can maybe thrive financially, but also in terms of human quality of life dividends, in the very precarious landscape of making and funding open books. Tracing the history of the press and our bumpy road to better financial sustainability, and the ways in which we have settled upon a business model that purposefully "scales small," we argue that the mission and the business model of any OA book publisher must be in better alignment than is currently the case in much of academic publishing and that bibliodiversity, along with an ethics of care—of ourselves, our authors, and the librarians who fund us—should be paramount in everything we do as a publisher. We also offer a brief survey of the current state of the field of library funded OA books initiatives in order to raise some questions about the weight and logics of these initiatives and, with more and more players entering this scene, about the viability more largely of consortial library funding for OA books in the United States.

https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3627

Applications Developer I at Kansas State University Libraries

Work projects provide opportunities to hone skills in design, development, and support of application software such as: Flask/Django based python applications, Drupal, Omni CMS, and other library centric software. Functions include investigating and evaluating user requirements while maintaining accessibility standards. Duties assigned to this position can include application requirement review, application development, system expansion and testing, and database design among other assignments.

https://bit.ly/3MTJWhZ

Open Access and Publications Support Specialist at The Science and Technology Facilities Council

You will manage and administer STFC’s Open Access publishing systems and processes, coordinating and overseeing deposit of research papers into the ePubs repository. Working with colleagues you will develop and support workflows for open access and contribute to the ongoing review and development of the publications repository, ensuring funder and organisational open access requirements are met.

https://cutt.ly/RwqlEHJh

Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All

In Athena Unbound, Peter Baldwin offers an up-to-date look at the ideals and history behind OA, and unpacks the controversies that arise when the dream of limitless information slams into entrenched interests in favor of the status quo. . . .

Baldwin addresses the arguments in terms of disseminating scientific research, the history of intellectual property and copyright, and the development of the university and research establishment. As he notes, the hard sciences have already created a funding model that increasingly provides open access, but at the cost of crowding out the humanities. Baldwin proposes a new system that would shift costs from consumers to producers and free scholarly knowledge from the paywalls and institutional barriers that keep it from much of the world.

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14887.001.0001

Scholarly Communication & Metadata Coordinator at Rollins College

This role is responsible for conducting and overseeing copy cataloging while ensuring the maintenance and oversight of correct and appropriate metadata standards throughout library collections and across departments, including Archives and Special Collections. The Coordinator also works closely with Olin Library librarians as a resource, collaborative partner, initiator, and promoter of scholarly communications projects related to publishing, open access collections, student and faculty research, and Rollins Scholarship Online.

https://bit.ly/43lKfYg

"10 Trends I Observed Interviewing 10 Publishing Executives about the Future of Academic Books"

If ten years ago, publishers sold most of their books to libraries and book stores, today Amazon leads sales by a large margin. Some publishers do more than half of their total sales on Amazon, making them quite vulnerable and susceptible to the algorithmic tweaks of the commercial behemoth. To make things worse, the vast majority of publishers have no direct line of communication with Amazon, so there is no way to negotiate better terms and conditions or report issues. This has had far reaching implications including the type of content (more trade titles) that these publishers now prioritize (see more on this below).

https://bit.ly/3Wtfped

Web & User Experience Librarian at Boston University

Manage libraries web presence: Ensure an effective web presence for the Libraries through content management and utilization of appropriate web platforms in use across the BU Libraries system, including and especially for information services delivered over the WordPress and SpringShare publishing platforms. Provide resources, support, and training to library colleagues, including liaisons, subject specialists, managers, and administrative coordinators, in the usage of these platforms to deliver research and learning support information to target audiences.

https://bit.ly/3oyUhGD

Pew Research Center: "A Majority of Americans Have Heard of ChatGPT, but Few Have Tried It Themselves"

However, few U.S. adults have themselves used ChatGPT for any purpose. Just 14% of all U.S. adults say they have used it for entertainment, to learn something new, or for their work. This lack of uptake is in line with a Pew Research Center survey from 2021 that found that Americans were more likely to express concerns than excitement about increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life.

https://cutt.ly/Ywqld1X7

Learning Technologies and Data Librarian at Coastal Carolina University

The Learning Technologies and Data Librarian plays a central role in shaping data services, extended reality (XR) support and in fostering the tactile learning, entrepreneurship, and innovation that result from using makerspace technologies.

https://jobs.coastal.edu/postings/20313

"European Scholarly Journals from Small- and Mid-Size Publishers: Mapping Journals and Public Funding Mechanisms"

This study investigates the relationship between scholarly journal publishing and public funding, specifically concerning the context of small- and mid-sized journal publishers in European countries. As part of the movement towards open science, an increasing number of journals globally are free to both read and publish in, which increases the need for journals to seek other resources instead of subscription income. The study includes two separate components, collecting data separately for each European country (including transcontinental states): (1) the volume and key bibliometric characteristics of small- and mid-sized journal publishers and (2) information about country-level public funding mechanisms for scholarly journals. The study found that there are 16,387 journals from small- and mid-sized publishers being published in European countries, of which 36 per cent are already publishing open access. There is a large diversity in how countries reserve and distribute funds to journals, ranging from continuous inclusive subsidies to competitive grant funding or nothing at all.

https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scac081

Senior Library Technologist – Digital Technologies – Digital Records, Projects and Application Support at Brown University

The successful candidate will be responsible for performing skilled tasks in support of the ongoing maintenance, enrichment, and improvement ofthe Library’s systems maintained by Digital Technologies that support research, digital preservation, teaching, and scholarship, including the various web archiving tools, the digital repository, digital exhibitions, and course reserves.

https://bit.ly/3Msu7NT

"’More Than 600,000 Students and Teachers Use Z-Library’"

Pirate eBook repository Z-Library has shared some interesting data concluding that more than 600,000 students and scholars use the site. This is likely an underestimation, as the findings are based on email addresses. The United States is excluded from the analysis, Z-Library notes, due to the criminal prosecution of two alleged operators of the site.

https://bit.ly/4326X86

Digital Initiatives and Engagement Librarian at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo

As part of the library’s 2023 cluster hire, and under the direction of, and reporting to the Executive Director of Collection Strategies, Access and Systems this newly created position leads and develops the strategy, planning and design of the library’s digital platforms and public-facing digital interfaces, including the library website. Through the lens of equitable information access, this position gathers feedback and engages stakeholders to ensure continuous improvement of the library’s digital platforms that support teaching, learning, and scholarship

https://csucareers.calstate.edu/detail.aspx?pid=103981

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

Affordability and Digital Initiatives Librarian at St. Cloud State University

St. Cloud State University Library seeks a collaborative and innovative Affordability and Digital Initiatives Librarian to strengthen and support the University in the areas of affordable learning initiatives, institutional repositories, outreach, and library instruction and research services.

https://stcloudstate.peopleadmin.com/postings/3666

Paywall: "Automated Scholarly Paper Review: Concepts, Technologies, and Challenges"

In this paper, we propose the concept and pipeline of automated scholarly paper review (ASPR) and review the relevant literature and technologies of achieving a full-scale computerized review process. On the basis of the review and discussion, we conclude that there is already corresponding research and preliminary implementation at each stage of ASPR. We further look into the challenges in ASPR with the existing technologies.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2023.101830