March 2023 – Page 5 – DigitalKoans

Data Services Librarian at University of Notre Dame

To advance the Center’s mission to provide access to digital scholarship expertise and resources across all Notre Dame disciplines and audiences, the Data Services Librarian is responsible for coordinating and managing high-quality data literacy support and research data services throughout the research lifecycle. As part of a highly collaborative team in the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, the Data Services Librarian provides instruction and outreach related to finding, accessing, creating, manipulating, managing, and visualizing quantitative/qualitative data to meet the diverse needs of the Notre Dame community.

https://apply.interfolio.com/120148

"PreprintMatch: A Tool for Preprint to Publication Detection Shows Global Inequities in Scientific Publication"

Preprints, versions of scientific manuscripts that precede peer review, are growing in popularity. They offer an opportunity to democratize and accelerate research, as they have no publication costs or a lengthy peer review process. Preprints are often later published in peer-reviewed venues, but these publications and the original preprints are frequently not linked in any way. To this end, we developed a tool, PreprintMatch, to find matches between preprints and their corresponding published papers, if they exist. This tool outperforms existing techniques to match preprints and papers, both on matching performance and speed. PreprintMatch was applied to search for matches between preprints (from bioRxiv and medRxiv), and PubMed. The preliminary nature of preprints offers a unique perspective into scientific projects at a relatively early stage, and with better matching between preprint and paper, we explored questions related to research inequity. We found that preprints from low income countries are published as peer-reviewed papers at a lower rate than high income countries (39.6% and 61.1%, respectively), and our data is consistent with previous work that cite a lack of resources, lack of stability, and policy choices to explain this discrepancy. Preprints from low income countries were also found to be published quicker (178 vs 203 days) and with less title, abstract, and author similarity to the published version compared to high income countries. Low income countries add more authors from the preprint to the published version than high income countries (0.42 authors vs 0.32, respectively), a practice that is significantly more frequent in China compared to similar countries. Finally, we find that some publishers publish work with authors from lower income countries more frequently than others.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281659

Library Systems and E-Resources Lead at California State University, Long Beach

The Library Systems Lead is responsible for the overall administration, daily operations, management, and integrity of the Integrated Library System (ILS). CSULB belongs to the CSU system wide Unified Library Management System (ULMS), which all CSU libraries participate in. This position is a designated ULMS Certified General System administrator. In addition, this position is responsible for the oversight and maintenance of the University Library’s electronic resources (databases, e-book packages, streaming media, etc.).

bit.ly/3kUrFGe

"Is Writing a Book Chapter Still a Waste of Time?"

How has digital open access transformed academic communication for the better? LSE Press’s Editor in Chief, Patrick Dunleavy, explores the impact of chapters in edited books. Once the Cinderella of academic publishing, doomed to obscurity under paywall books’ formal and de facto access restrictions, chapters in books are, thanks to digital open access, once again rivalling journal articles in their visibility to academic communities, their usefulness as teaching resources, and in their ability to tackle innovative and state of-the-art topics.

bit.ly/3KYRMq6

Scholarly Engagement Librarian Humanities & Sciences at Tulane University

Scholarly Engagement Librarians collaboratively plan and deliver innovative library services to faculty, staff and students through instruction, workshops, consultations, guides, tutorials, and other means. They serve on cross-departmental teams to support interdisciplinary teaching and research initiatives that may include information discovery, data literacy, open research, research impact, research data management, data curation, and/or data visualization. They collaborate within the department and across the library on collection development and management for assigned areas.

https://apply.interfolio.com/107202

"Some Thoughts on Five Pending AI Litigations – Avoiding Squirrels and Other AI Distractions"

Regardless, as of this writing there are now five cases that may provide some clarity on this less frequently discussed but foundational issue of the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials as training data for AI (I use "AI" here as a shorthand which also includes text and data mining and machine learning). Each of these cases is unique, fact dependent, and likely, if fully litigated on the merits, to shed light on different aspects of copyright law.

bit.ly/41Qrrk3

Open Educational Resources Strategist at Bowling Green State University

Reporting to the Associate Dean of the University Libraries, the Open Educational Resources (OER) Strategist leads the University Libraries (UL) efforts to support all aspects of BGSU’s faculty adoption, adaptation, and creation of open educational resources through advocacy, training, and outreach. The OER Strategist will serve as the campus liaison for open educational resource topics and work collaboratively to guide BGSU faculty in the discovery, creation, dissemination, identification, adoption, and assessment of open and affordable learning materials. Creates resources and develops programming related to the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER.

bit.ly/3L3xRpS

Are the Humanities Ready for Data Sharing?

To get a sense of trends in data sharing within the humanities, we conducted semi-structured interviews with key personnel at several humanities projects with strong data components. The interviews focused on identifying where and how they planned to share their research data, how they imagined it might be used by others, and their perspective on barriers and opportunities to data sharing in the humanities. The research agendas, skills, and perspectives of the people we spoke with are not representative of most humanities-oriented research. However, the interviews provide important insight into the thinking of humanists who are already working across the cultural divide around data that separate the humanities from most other academic disciplines. We use them here as a springboard for consideration of what humanities data is, how to access and preserve it, and how it fits into the larger goals of creating an open research culture.

https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.318526

Discovery Systems Librarian at McGill University

This member of the McGill Library’s Digital Initiatives department will contribute to the overall management of the Library’s discovery layer(s) and Library Services Platform, support the integration of these systems with others, and serve as lead in designing, implementing, and maintaining additional tools for user discovery and inventory of Library-managed resources.

bit.ly/3ZnM3hO

"Revisiting Methodology for Identifying Open Access Advantages"

This study revisited the methodology for identifying the effects of open access and revealed the causes for contradictory conclusions using four indices for journals that transitioned from subscription to open access. . . . Although the aggregated data of the eight journals indicated that open access had a positive effect, the effect varied across journals. A few journals produced different results between the two citation scores as well as between citation scores and number of citations or articles. Furthermore, a publisher’s choice of which journal to shift to open access influenced their performance after the shift.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-023-09946-0

Digital Engagement Librarian at York University Libraries

The successful candidate will join a diverse team of specialists collaborating in the areas of scholarly communication and publishing, digital scholarship, digital preservation, data visualization, open educational resources, virtual reality and media creation.

bit.ly/3Yonj80

"Twenty Years of Wikipedia in Scholarly Publications: A Bibliometric Network Analysis of the Thematic and Citation Landscape"

Results also show that the author collaboration network is very sparsely connected, indicating the absence of close collaboration among the authors in the field. Furthermore, results reveal that the Wikipedia research institutions’ collaboration network reflects a North–South divide as very limited cooperation occurs between developed and developing countries’ institutions. Finally, the multiple correspondence analysis applied to obtain the Wikipedia research conceptual map reveals the breadth, diversity, and intellectual thrust of the Wikipedia’s scholarly publications.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-023-01626-7

Digital Collections & Repository Infrastructure Librarian at McGill University

This member of the McGill Library’s Digital Initiatives department will lead planning and design for technical infrastructure for digitized content according to our organizational vision, serve as project manager for digital collections projects, and oversee the distribution of McGill digital collections to appropriate venues.

bit.ly/3SP6At4

"Ten Lessons for Data Sharing with a Data Commons"

A data commons is a cloud-based data platform with a governance structure that allows a community to manage, analyze and share its data. Data commons provide a research community with the ability to manage and analyze large datasets using the elastic scalability provided by cloud computing and to share data securely and compliantly, and, in this way, accelerate the pace of research. Over the past decade, a number of data commons have been developed and we discuss some of the lessons learned from this effort.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02029-x

Library Data Scientist at Arizona State University

Under the general direction, design, implement, and/ordeploys tools for statistical analysis, machine learning, data acquisitions, data cleaning, modeling, data visualation. Perform professional work in training and mentoring students, collaborates with university-wide disciplines and library units toward shared goals; and the research, design, development, implementation and maintenance of data science projects. Work typically involves researching, writing algorithms and code to answer questions about data sets using machine learning or analytical tools to solve complex problems and or questions. May work with or lead others on larger project.

bit.ly/3Yp892n

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

MEAP [Modern Endangered Archives Program] Program Manager at UCLA

The MEAP Program Manager works closely with MEAP grantees around the world and strengthens relationships across the UCLA Library as part of our overall effort to support the documentation and digitization of at-risk cultural heritage collections. In particular, the MEAP Program Manager will manage operations related to grantee content, including: (1) Support for grantees to ensure successful results based on grant deliverables; (2) Quality control for all digital files and metadata; and (3) Publication of collection items on the MEAP Digital Repository.

bit.ly/3SP6At4

"Scaling Identifiers and Their Metadata to Gigascale: An Architecture to Tackle the Challenges of Volume and Variety"

Persistent identifiers are applied to an ever-increasing variety of research objects, including software, samples, models, people, instruments, grants, and projects, and there is a growing need to apply identifiers at a finer and finer granularity. Unfortunately, the systems developed over two decades ago to manage identifiers and the metadata describing the identified objects no longer scale. Communities working with physical samples have grappled with these three challenges of the increasing volume, variety, and variability of identified objects for many years. To address this dual challenge, the IGSN 2040 project explored how metadata and catalogues for physical samples could be shared at the scale of billions of samples across an ever-growing variety of users and disciplines. In this paper, we focus on how we scale identifiers and their describing metadata to billions of objects and who the actors involved with this system are. Our analysis of these requirements resulted in the definition of a minimum viable product and the design of an architecture that not only addresses the challenges of increasing volume and variety but, more importantly, is easy to implement because it reuses commonly used Web components. Our solution is based on a Web architectural model that utilises Schema.org, JSON-LD, and sitemaps. Applying these commonly used architectural patterns on the internet allows us to not only handle increasing variety but also enable better compliance with the FAIR Guiding Principles.

http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2023-005

Digital Humanities Data Analyst at Arizona State University

Under general direction, design, implement, and/or deploys tools for statistical analysis, text analysis, data mining, modeling and simulation, information design, network analysis, and data visualization. Performs professional work in training and mentoring students; collaborates with university-wide disciplines and library units toward shared goals; and the research, design, development, implementation and maintenance of data science projects. Work typically involves researching a complex problem and providing knowledge about the tools, methods, and theoretical issues and innovative digital methods to humanistic research questions using data science tools. May work with or lead others on larger projects.

bit.ly/3KTYTQB

"DH Eh? A Survey of Digital Humanities Courses in Canadian LIS Education"

Library and librarian involvement in digital humanities (DH) has grown over the past few years. However, it is unclear whether current library and information studies (LIS) programs are properly preparing students for this type of work. This study analyzed course offerings at Canadian ALA-accredited LIS programs. While Canadian ALA-accredited LIS programs offer DH-relevant courses, the number of courses offered and their range/scope vary greatly among institutions. Although many are teaching the technical skills required by the field of DH librarianship, collaboration and project management training remain elusive in most programs.

https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.84.2.228

Copyright Librarian at Illinois State University

The Copyright Librarian, reporting to the Scholarly Communication Librarian, has primary responsibility for helping faculty, staff, and students with questions and issues concerning all aspects of copyright in higher education instruction, scholarly and creative productivity, and publishing, with a secondary focus on broader scholarly communication topics. This highly collaborative position will work closely with the Scholarly Communication Librarian and the Scholarly Communications Team.

bit.ly/3mmInhS

"Lack of Sustainability Plans for Preprint Services Risks Their Potential to Improve Science"

Despite successfully building a revenue model that shares the burden between Cornell University, the Simons Foundation and several members and supporters, arXiv’s “funding is still outpaced by [their] growth” – the server hosts over 2 million preprints already and is growing by 10% each year. And while arXiv has been supporting more and more scholars to share and discover preprints, the team behind it has been through significant changes in leadership and is dealing with the urgent need to modernize their 30-year-old technology. As a former Executive Director of arXiv noted, “[arXiv’s success] may not last forever”. Similarly, the recent news that Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has renewed its financial support for the leading preprint servers in biology and medicine, bioRxiv and medRxiv is welcome relief, but this support is temporary, and the team must find a way to continue in the long run.

bit.ly/3y745Ji

Deputy Digital Archivist at Digital Repository of Ireland

The Deputy Digital Archivist will work closely with the Digital Archivist, Training and Engagement Manager and technical team to assess incoming digital collections and provide advice and hands-on assistance to DRI members to facilitate the ingesting, preservation and publication of their collections online.

The Deputy Digital Archivist will have responsibility for analysing and adapting metadata for digital collections to be uploaded to the DRI. The successful candidate will assist depositors with preparing their collections for ingestion to the DRI by providing advice on naming conventions, descriptive metadata and folder structure, by advising on the use of appropriate file formats and by ‘cleaning’ existing metadata using appropriate tools.

bit.ly/3y3yk3I

Bye, Bye Big Deal: "Indispensable or Unnecessary?: A Data-Driven Appraisal of Post-cancellation Access Rights"

When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.601

Service Manager for Archives and Special Collections Systems at Harvard College Library

The Service Manager will be embedded within Archives, Arts, and Special Collections of Harvard Library (AASC), a recently conceived administrative unit comprising the Fine Arts Library, the Harvard Film Archive, Harvard University Archives, Houghton Library, and the Eda K. Loeb Music Library. Situated within AASC Technical Services, the incumbent will coordinate use and support of systems for managing archives and special collections across the AASC special collections and archives community as well as Harvard Library repositories based in professional schools and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. While the position is defined as system agnostic, it would be expected to support users of Aeon, ArchivesSpace, Hollis for Archival Discovery, and other current and future systems.

bit.ly/3y8zgnm