Month: April 2018

CLIR/DLF Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Energy Research at University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is recruiting a CLIR/DLF Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Energy Research.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Associate University Librarian for IT and Digital Scholarship, the Fellow will work closely with the researchers at EPIC to conceptualize, design, and develop an Energy and Environmental Data Core at the University of Chicago. The Data Core will leverage the increasingly deep and diverse data generated by a growing group of EPIC-affiliated researchers to construct a first-of-its kind web-based platform for archiving, updating, and sharing energy, environmental, and climate data with a goal of unlocking promising future research.

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Bots in the Twittersphere

The Pew Research Center has released Bots in the Twittersphere.

Here's an excerpt:

Among the key findings of this research:

  • Of all tweeted links2, 3 to popular websites, 66% are shared by accounts with characteristics common among automated "bots," rather than human users.
  • Among popular news and current event websites, 66% of tweeted links are made by suspected bots—identical to the overall average. The share of bot-created tweeted links is even higher among certain kinds of news sites. For example, an estimated 89% of tweeted links to popular aggregation sites that compile stories from around the web are posted by bots.

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Dean, University Libraries at Florida State University

Florida State University is recruiting a Dean, University Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Dean is the senior academic and administrative officer of the University Libraries, home to 138 full time employees supported by a total annual operating budget of more than $18 million.

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"Converting the Literature of a Scientific Field to Open Access through Global Collaboration: The Experience of SCOAP3 in Particle Physics"

Alexander Kohls and Orcid and Salvatore MeleOrcid have published "Converting the Literature of a Scientific Field to Open Access through Global Collaboration: The Experience of SCOAP3 in Particle Physics" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Gigantic particle accelerators, incredibly complex detectors, an antimatter factory and the discovery of the Higgs boson—this is part of what makes CERN famous. Only a few know that CERN also hosts the world largest Open Access initiative: SCOAP3. The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics started operation in 2014 and has since supported the publication of 20,000 Open Access articles in the field of particle physics, at no direct cost, nor burden, for individual authors worldwide. SCOAP3 is made possible by a 3000-institute strong partnership, where libraries re-direct funds previously used for subscriptions to 'flip' articles to 'Gold Open Access'. With its recent expansion, the initiative now covers about 90% of the journal literature of the field. This article describes the economic principles of SCOAP3, the collaborative approach of the partnership, and finally summarizes financial results after four years of successful operation.

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Digital Library Software Engineer at University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is recruiting a Digital Library Software Engineer.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Digital Library Software Engineer will work with a close team of other developers on software systems ranging from relatively small scripts that perform data transformation, to large scale web applications with complex and highly domain-specific requirements. Development efforts are usually FOSS (Free and open-source software) projects and offer opportunities to collaborate with peers across the globe

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"Data Librarianship: A Path and an Ethic. A Conversation between Thomas Padilla and Vicky Steeves"

Thomas Padilla and Vicky Steeves have published "Data Librarianship: A Path and an Ethic. A Conversation between Thomas Padilla and Vicky Steeves" in dh+lib.

I think a lot about the corporate capture of the scholarly record, and how my work in data management and reproducibility can either contribute to or disrupt that. With the rise of reproducibility as a buzzword, there are plenty of commercial entities ready to profit from so-called 'reproducibility platforms'. This represents yet another corporate capture of scholarship. I try to disrupt this by advocating for community-run, open source software for reproducibility, such as ReproZip (which I work on), o2r, and Binder. The same goes for data management platforms. We're seeing a lot of new data services springing up from major publishers and this is also something I am actively trying to combat.

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Digital Publishing Librarian at Columbia University

Columbia University is recruiting a Digital Publishing Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Columbia University Libraries seek a creative, service-oriented Digital Publishing Librarian to lead publishing services for its Digital Scholarship division. This new position reports to the Assistant Director of Scholarly Communication and Projects and is part of a newly-formed team that encompasses scholarly communication, digital humanities, and emerging technologies.

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"Data Policies of Highly-Ranked Social Science Journals"

Mercè Crosas et al. have self-archived "Data Policies of Highly-Ranked Social Science Journals."

Here's an excerpt:

By encouraging and requiring that authors share their data in order to publish articles, scholarly journals have become an important actor in the movement to improve the openness of data and the reproducibility of research. But how many social science journals encourage or mandate that authors share the data supporting their research findings? How does the share of journal data policies vary by discipline? What influences these journals’ decisions to adopt such policies and instructions? And what do those policies and instructions look like?

We discuss the results of our analysis of the instructions and policies of 291 highly-ranked journals publishing social science research, where we studied the contents of journal data policies and instructions across 14 variables, such as when and how authors are asked to share their data, and what role journal ranking and age play in the existence and quality of data policies and instructions. We also compare our results to the results of other studies that have analyzed the policies of social science journals, although differences in the journals chosen and how each study defines what constitutes a data policy limit this comparison. We conclude that a little more than half of the journals in our study have data policies. A greater share of the economics journals have data policies and mandate sharing, followed by political science/international relations and psychology journals.

Finally, we use our findings to make several recommendations: Policies should include the terms "data," "dataset" or more specific terms that make it clear what to make available; policies should include the benefits of data sharing; journals, publishers, and associations need to collaborate more to clarify data policies; and policies should explicitly ask for qualitative data.

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"Malware in OA"

Walt Crawford has published "Malware in OA" in Walt at Random.

Here's an excerpt:

I've finished the first pass. There are a lot of journals with malware problems: 410, as compared to 67 in last year's run.

Yes, Indonesia makes up the bulk of them–but by no means all.

See also the spreadsheet of infected journals.

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Library Services Platform Manager at Louisiana Board of Regents

The Louisiana Board of Regents is recruiting a Library Services Platform Manager for LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

  • Provide primary support for the Library Services Platform (LSP) to 36 academic libraries
  • Participate in all aspects of the LSP support including support incidents, custom programming, and integration with the discovery layer and ancillary products used by statewide customers
  • Coordinate and participate in LSP software upgrades, Strategic Partnership Programs, new product and site implementations, and Beta testing by statewide members

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"What Do Data Librarians Think of the MLIS? Professionals’ Perceptions of Knowledge Transfer, Trends, and Challenges"

Camille V.L. Thomas and Richard J. Urban have published "What Do Data Librarians Think of the MLIS? Professionals' Perceptions of Knowledge Transfer, Trends, and Challenges " in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

There are existing studies on data curation programs in library science education and studies on data services in libraries. However, there is not much insight into how educational programs have prepared data professionals for practice. This study asked 105 practicing professionals how well they thought their education prepared them for professional experience. It also asked supervisors about their perceptions of how well employees performed. After analyzing the results, the investigators of this study found that changing the educational model may lead to improvements in future library data services.

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Senior Systems Librarian at MIT

MIT is recruiting a Senior Systems Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Head of Technology Systems and Support Services, the Senior Systems Librarian works to ensure optimal performance and reliability of the Libraries’ enterprise applications. S/he leads the migration from the Aleph ILS and onto the next generation Libraries’ Platform. The Library’s Enterprise Environment includes the Aleph ILS, Cognos reporting system, SFX EZProxy, Vera ERM, ILLiad, BorrowDirect, Visual Collection systems, archives management systems, and others.

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"SUNY Board of Trustees Open Access Resolution"

Darren Chase has published "SUNY Board of Trustees Open Access Resolution" in the Stony Brook University Libraries Open Access blog.

On March 22, 2018, the SUNY Board of Trustees passed an Open Access Policy and System Repository Resolution put forward by Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson.

The resolution instructs all SUNY campuses to adopt "an open access policy that recognizes each campus's unique mission and culture by no later than March 31, 2020."

See also: SUNY Board of Trustees Open Access Policy and System Repository Resolution and Stony Brook University Open Access Policy (2017).

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Library Data Scientist at Arizona State University

Arizona State University is recruiting a Library Data Scientist.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Under general direction, design, implement, and/or deploys tools for statistical analysis, machine learning, data acquisition, data cleaning, and data visualization.

Performs professional work in the research, design, development, implementation and maintenance of data science projects. Works typically involves researching a complex problem and implementing a machine learning or analytic tools to solve that problem.

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Audiovisual Metadata Platform (AMP) Planning Project: Progress Report and Next Steps

Jon W. Dunn et al. have self-archived Audiovisual Metadata Platform (AMP) Planning Project: Progress Report and Next Steps.

Here's an excerpt:

This report documents the outcomes of a workshop funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and hosted by Indiana University as part of a planning project for design and development of an audiovisual metadata platform (AMP). The platform will perform mass description of audiovisual content utilizing automated mechanisms linked together with human labor in a recursive and reflexive workflow to generate and manage metadata at scale for libraries and archives. The partners leading this planning project were the Indiana University (IU) Libraries, University of Texas at Austin (UT) School of Information, and AVP.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Research Data Management Services Coordinator at University of Alberta

The University of Alberta is recruiting a Research Data Management Services Coordinator.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Head, Digital Repository and Research Data Management Services in the Digital Initiatives Unit, and working within a team-oriented environment, the Research Data Management Services Coordinator will participate in and help shape all phases of the planning and development of a wide range of research data management initiatives, including proposal development, project plans, workflow coordination, quality assessment, training, and communications.

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Open Divide? Critical Studies on Open Access

Litwin Books has released Open Divide? Critical Studies on Open Access.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This book brings together seventeen short critical studies of scientists and librarians from different continents, all interested in open access, most of them supporting and accompanying the open access projects and initiatives since many years, each one with the motivation to better understand (and make understood) the ongoing transformation of scientific communication.

With the agreement of Litwin Books, some authors have made open access versions of their papers available.

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"A Framework for the Preservation of a Docker Container"

Iain Emsley and David De Roure have published "A Framework for the Preservation of a Docker Container" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

Reliably building and maintaining systems across environments is a continuing problem. A project or experiment may run for years. Software and hardware may change as can the operating system. Containerisation is a technology that is used in a variety of companies, such as Google, Amazon and IBM, and scientific projects to rapidly deploy a set of services repeatably. Using Dockerfiles to ensure that a container is built repeatably, to allow conformance and easy updating when changes take place are becoming common within projects. Its seen as part of sustainable software development. Containerisation technology occupies a dual space: it is both a repository of software and software itself. In considering Docker in this fashion, we should verify that the Dockerfile can be reproduced. Using a subset of the Dockerfile specification, a domain specific language is created to ensure that Docker files can be reused at a later stage to recreate the original environment. We provide a simple framework to address the question of the preservation of containers and its environment. We present experiments on an existing Dockerfile and conclude with a discussion of future work. Taking our work, a pipeline was implemented to check that a defined Dockerfile conforms to our desired model, extracts the Docker and operating system details. This will help the reproducibility of results by creating the machine environment and package versions. It also helps development and testing through ensuring that the system is repeatably built and that any changes in the software environment can be equally shared in the Dockerfile. This work supports not only the citation process it also the open scientific one by providing environmental details of the work. As a part of the pipeline to create the container, we capture the processes used and put them into the W3C PROV ontology. This provides the potential for providing it with a persistent identifier and traceability of the processes used to preserve the metadata. Our future work will look at the question of linking this output to a workflow ontology to preserve the complete workflow with the commands and parameters to be given to the containers. We see this provenance within the build process useful to provide a complete overview of the workflow.

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