July 2023 – Page 5 – DigitalKoans

Replacing Academic Journals

Replacing traditional journals with a more modern solution is not a new idea. Here, we propose ways to overcome the social dilemma underlying the decades of inaction. Any solution needs to not only resolve the current problems but also be capable of preventing takeover by corporations: it needs to replace traditional journals with a decentralized, resilient, evolvable network that is interconnected by open standards and open-source norms under the governance of the scholarly community. It needs to replace the monopolies connected to journals with a genuine, functioning and well-regulated market. In this new market, substitutable service providers compete and innovate according to the conditions of the scholarly community, avoiding sustained vendor lock-in. Therefore, a standards body needs to form under the governance of the scholarly community to allow the development of open scholarly infrastructures servicing the entire research workflow. We propose a redirection of money from legacy publishers to the new network by funding bodies broadening their minimal infrastructure requirements at recipient institutions to include modern infrastructure components replacing and complementing journal functionalities. Such updated eligibility criteria by funding agencies would help realign the financial incentives for recipient institutions with public and scholarly interest.

Ownership involves socially recognized economic rights, first and foremost the exclusive control over that property, with the self-efficacy it affords. The inability to exert such control over crucial components of their scholarly infrastructure in the face of a generally recognized need for action for over three decades now, evinces the dramatic erosion of real ownership rights for the scholarly community over said infrastructure. Thus, this proposal is motivated not only by the now very urgent need to restore such ownership to the scholarly community, but also by the understanding that through their funding bodies, scholars may have an effective and proven avenue at their disposal to identify game-changing actions and to design a financial incentive structure for recipient institutions that can help realize the restoration of ownership, with the goal to implement open digital infrastructures that are as effective and as invisible as their non-digital counterparts.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5526634

"Threats of Mass Resignation from Board of Elsevier Journal"

Peter Lloyd, professor of design methodology at the Delft University of Technology, was told in an email sent last month that his term as editor in chief of Design Studies was ending. . . .

But in the February email, executive publisher Lily Khidr set a target of publishing 250 papers in 2023. At the time, Lloyd pushed back on the target as "unrealistic" and said he wanted to grow acceptances to a more modest 50 a year.

Now Elsevier’s decision to replace him with Cara Wrigley, professor of design innovation at the University of Queensland, has provoked a rebellion among the journal’s editorial board. Critics have highlighted that Wrigley has not previously published or been involved with the journal and is not a member of its parent society.

https://tinyurl.com/2v9adf5u

10 AI Researchers on How AI Can Either Improve the World or Destroy It

Steve Rose of The Guardian interviews the experts.

Five Ways AI Could Improve the World: ‘We Can Cure All Diseases, Stabilise Our Climate, Halt Poverty’

Five Ways AI Might Destroy the World: ‘Everyone on Earth Could Fall over Dead in the Same Second’

"Exploring Faculty Perspectives on Open Access at a Medium-Sized, American Doctoral University"

Faculty hold widely varying perspectives on the benefits and challenges afforded by open access (OA) publishing. In the United States, conversations on OA models and strategy have been dominated by scholars affiliated with Carnegie R1 institutions. This article reports findings from interviews conducted with faculty at a Carnegie R2 institution, highlighting disciplinary and individual perspectives on the high costs and rich rewards afforded by OA. The results reiterate the persistence of a high degree of skepticism regarding the quality of peer review and business models associated with OA publishing. By exploring scholars’ perceptions of and experiences with OA publishing and their comfort using or sharing unpublished, publicly available content, the authors highlight the degree to which OA approaches must remain flexible, iterative and multifaceted — no single solution can begin to accommodate the rich and varying needs of individual stakeholders.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.620

Data and Visualization Librarian at North Carolina A&T State University

Reporting to the Head of Digital Scholarship and Research Data Services, this individual will develop and provide services that support students, faculty and researchers in the discovery, use, preservation, and visualization of data. The individual will coordinate and teach instruction sessions and programming related to research data management and data visualization and will provide consultations for researchers in collaboration with subject librarians.

https://jobs.ncat.edu/postings/28977

"What Those Responsible for Open Infrastructure in Scholarly Communication Can Do about Possibly Predatory Practices"

This chapter presents a three-phase analysis of the 521 journals that use the open source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS) while appearing on Beall’s list of predatory publishers and journals and/or in Cabells Predatory Reports, both of which purport to identify journals that charge authors article processing fees (APC) to publish in the pretense of a peer-reviewed journal. . . . The first phase involved the researchers reaching out to publishers and editors on Beall’s list using OJS; the second phase involves determining the extent to which journals using OJS appeared on the two predatory lists, and the third reports on a new system, involving trade organizations, such ORCID and Crossref, for authenticating journal practices.

https://tinyurl.com/2xwb94ue

OER, Graphic Design, and Digital Publishing Specialist at Virginia Tech

Reporting to the Assistant Director of Open Education, the OER, Graphic Design, and Digital Publishing Specialist supports the work of the Open Education Initiative which is committed to collaborative work resulting in adoption, adaptation, creation and public sharing of peer-reviewed faculty-authored course materials that are publicly released under open licenses. The specialist works with the Assistant Director of Open Education, Virginia Tech authors, and other team members to ideate, design, develop, adapt, and publish open educational resources and related ancillary learning resources in a variety of formats

https://tinyurl.com/3yjexpt5

"Concordia Welcomes Amy Buckland as University Librarian"

Since August 2021, Buckland has held the position of assistant deputy minister for collections at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). In this role, she leads a team of 500 staff and manages an annual budget of $50 million. . . . Prior to joining LAC, Buckland was head of research and scholarship at the University of Guelph Library, where she oversaw the collaborative development of a digital infrastructure to support the needs of research teams and new forms of scholarly communication progressively and sustainably.

https://tinyurl.com/mk85rxf9

Head of Digital Scholarship and Research Data Services at North Carolina A&T State University

Reporting to the Assistant Dean of Library Services, this position will bring a deep understanding of the major strategies, opportunities, challenges and trends facing academic research libraries today in the areas of open publishing, data and digital scholarship, the preservation and curation of digital assets, and the enhancement of research, teaching and learning through digital services and throughout the research lifecycle.

https://jobs.ncat.edu/postings/28976

"Why Does the U.S. Copyright Office Require Libraries to Lie to Users about Their Fair Use Rights? They Won’t Say."

The problem is that although Section 108 makes clear that the [library] copyright warning notice it requires is not intended to restrict artificially the fair use rights of document users, the code itself doesn’t provide the language for the notice. It specifies that the "warning of copyright" shall be written "in accordance with requirements that the Register of Copyrights shall prescribe by regulation." And the language prescribed by the Register of Copyrights in that regulation is, unfortunately, false and misleading. And worse, libraries are required to include the prescribed language "verbatim."

https://tinyurl.com/y94dy9fn

Project Manager – American Congress Digital Archives Portal at West Virginia University (Term and Remote)

Engage partner institutions on project digitization and metadata standards and perform quality control on harvested materials and metadata.

In coordination with developers, assist partner institutions with harvest configurations.

Work with developers to test and provide feedback on deliverables.

https://tinyurl.com/45xvc9pw

Paywall: The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals: A Business History of a Dynamic Marketplace, 2000–2020

This book analyzes the various economic and marketing strategies utilized by the five major STM commercial scholarly journal publishers since 2000. This period has witnessed tremendous economic, marketing, and technological growth including the migration from a print only to a hybrid publishing format. With this growth, the industry has also seen the rise of open access publishing, copyright challenges by websites such as Sci-Hub, the emergence of sharing platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, as well as the impact of Plan S on publishers, universities, and authors.. . . Scrutinizing the different managerial, marketing, technology, and economic-financial strategies crafted by scholarly journal publishers between 2000-2020, this book offers a comprehensive assessment of the industry’s attempts to identify, understand, cope with, and minimize or defeat the herculean threats to its business model.

https://tinyurl.com/5n6rd8xy

Digital Humanities Specialist at Washington University in St Louis

The Digital Humanities Specialist works with faculty, staff, and students to develop and/or deploy software, data management, and training solutions in support of faculty research projects in the humanities and in support of the long-term goals of the Humanities Digital Workshop (HDW) in Arts & Sciences Computing. . . . 1) The Digital Humanities Specialist should have a solid foundation in the humanities, the better to translate faculty research goals into technology solutions; 2) The Digital Humanities Specialist should be able to learn and deploy new software, programming languages, and data management practices since often new solutions are required by the faculty lead’s evolving research goals.

https://tinyurl.com/2e76tx98

"The Status of Open Access Repositories in the Field of Technology: Insights from OpenDOAR"

The study found that 125 nations contributed a total of 4,045 repositories in the field of research, with the USA leading the list with the most repositories. Maximum repositories were operated by institutions having multidisciplinary approaches. The DSpace and Eprints were the preferred software types for repositories. The preferred upload content by contributors was "research articles" and "electronic thesis and dissertations."

https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-11-2022-0119

Immersive Technologies Librarian at University of Notre Dame

Through the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship (NFCDS), the Hesburgh Libraries are transforming scholarship at Notre Dame by empowering the ND community to critically engage with and utilize emerging digital technologies. To advance the Center’s mission to provide access to digital scholarship expertise and resources across all Notre Dame disciplines and audiences, the Immersive Technologies Librarian is responsible for coordinating activities for, and managing a broad range of, immersive extended reality (XR) devices, applications, and practices in the Libraries (such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality).

https://apply.interfolio.com/127445

"Wikipedia Moves to CC 4.0 Licenses&quot

This change was made through a revision to the project’s Terms of Use, where all new edits to Wikipedia will be under version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license. Older edits will remain under BY-SA 3.0, which allows adaptations to be made with 4.0-licensed material. This presents a small amount of complexity for reusers, but over time, as more and more of the project is revised, this will become less of a practical concern.

Version 4.0 of the CC licenses, first published in 2013, introduced several important updates and improvements. Some of the key benefits of this upgrade include greater internationalization, more practical attribution requirements, a grace period for correcting reuse errors, improved clarity and simplicity, and better handling of rights outside copyright, such as database rights. These changes make it an ideal fit for Wikimedia’s mission of simple, globally accessible reuse in a wide variety of contexts.

https://tinyurl.com/yzrs4sew