February 2024 – DigitalKoans

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/

"Your Organization Isn’t Designed to Work with GenAI "

A good example is the customer service model employed by Jerry, a company valued at $450 million with over five million customers that serves as a one stop-shop for car owners to get insurance and financing. Jerry receives over 200,000 messages a month from customers. With such high volume, the company struggled to respond to customer queries within 24 hours, let alone minutes or seconds. By installing their GenAI solution in May 2023, they moved from having humans in the lead in the entirety of the customer service process and answering only 54% of customer inquiries within 24 hours or less to having AI in the lead 100% of the time and answering over 96% of inquiries within 30 seconds by June 2023. They project $4 million in annual savings from this transformation.

UX Designer at California Digital Library

The User Experience (UX) Designer will report to CDL’s UX Manager and will work as a highly collaborative member of the CDL UX team to support the development and improvement of CDL’s online tools and services. The UX Designer will be an experienced professional who will apply UX assessment and design concepts to a range of tasks that will utilize the complete user-centered design process (user research, web content development, service assessment, and interaction design). The UX Designer will regularly work on multiple potentially broad projects and will provide in-depth evaluation and assessment of variable factors with the goal of resolving critical issues and improving the usefulness of CDL websites and services.

http://tinyurl.com/yjb6axyn

U.S. Copyright Office Update on Its Artificial Intelligence Initiatives

In March 2023, the Office announced a broad initiative to examine the copyright implications of the current forms of generative AI. Although we had previously examined the scope of copyright in works created using AI, the increasing sophistication and public adoption of generative AI tools raised new questions about the process of training and the legal status of the outputs. Our goal was to gather information from a full range of knowledgeable and interested parties in order to produce a report to assist Congress, thecourts, and others in formulating policy in this area. In taking this initiative forward, we are monitoring related work being done in other agencies, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Federal Trade Commission, and communicating with them on an ongoing basis.

This letter summarizes the Office’s work so far and describes our agenda for the rest of 2024, including the release of the report, updates to the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, and the publication of a proposed economic research agenda.

http://tinyurl.com/4tpeyw3t

Electronic Resources and Metadata Manager at Texas A&M University – Commerce

The Electronic Resources and Metadata Manager, under direction of the Associate Dean, Collections and Discovery, manages the electronic resources workflow to ensure consistent and integrated access and coordinates the evaluation, acquisition, processing, troubleshooting, and maintenance of electronic resources, including journals, books, databases, and locally created content.

http://tinyurl.com/mrxvxtff

"Collaborating to Support the Use and Development of Open Educational Resources: A White Rose Libraries Research Project"

Interest in open educational resources (OER) has grown recently due to many external factors, including the restrictive, unsustainable and expensive business models for teaching materials that are being used by some publishers. In February 2021, the libraries of the UK White Rose University Consortium (White Rose Libraries) initiated a research project to explore the potential of OER and to create guidance in the form of an OER toolkit that could be used across all three institutions, and more widely. The project also aimed to seek improvements in the discovery of OER in the Ex Libris Primo discovery service which is used by all three libraries. This article outlines the methodology used to ascertain the needs of the libraries’ user groups to inform the development of the toolkit. A survey of academic staff across all three institutions was conducted, followed by user experience interviews. The survey findings established that more than half of respondents knew little or nothing about OER, and over half also said that they would be likely or extremely likely to consider using or adapting OER, clearly demonstrating the need for more awareness raising and guidance. The survey interview findings were then used to develop and refine the toolkit.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.622

Digital Archivist at University of Virginia

Reporting to the Head of Technical Services, the Digital Archivist facilitates acquisition, processing, discoverability, and access for the rare and unique holdings of Small Special Collections, in both paper and digital format. The individual in this position will be responsible for processing digital archival materials, utilizing ArchivesSpace to create finding aids and digital objects for online publication to full national standards. Primary duties will also include leading the Special Collections web archiving program.

http://tinyurl.com/3f2b6tbu

"Stamp—Standardized Data Management Plan for Educational Research: A Blueprint to Improve Data Management across Disciplines"

To provide more tailored, discipline-specific guidance on data management, Science Europe suggested the concept of domain data protocols. Based on this concept, the project Domain Data Protocols for Educational Research developed a first domain data protocol for educational research, titled Standardized Data Management Plan for Educational Research (Stamp). Its multi-level approach includes minimal conditions on managing data according to the FAIR Data Principles and checklists with concrete activities to reach each minimal condition; also included are auxiliary materials to support researchers in educational research in planning, implementing, and realizing different data management activities. Although we developed the Stamp for educational research, its design and flexible structure enables transferring it to other (research) domains and communities. To investigate this flexibility, we organized two workshops, discussing to what extent the Stamp can be used beyond educational research, with representatives from other social science domains as well as from research domains beyond the social sciences. In sum, there was consensus among participants of both workshops on the usability of the Stamp outside educational research, at least if the same types of data are processed and analyzed with similar methods. For other types of data, the Stamp serves as a blueprint to develop further domain data protocols, in terms of standardized data management plans, according to the specific needs of the respective domain.

https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2024-007

Applied Artificial Intelligence Specialist at University of South Carolina

The Applied Artificial Intelligence Specialist will work closely and collegially with others throughout the University Libraries to increase understanding of artificial intelligence pertaining to research and teaching on campus. This position will be responsible for developing, assessing, and curating applied AI tools and resources for the Libraries. . . . The Applied Artificial Intelligence Specialist will design and deliver consulting services and workshops to faculty and students and will collaborate with other campus units providing AI support.

https://uscjobs.sc.edu/postings/164319

"Scaling up Open Access Publishing through Transformative Agreements: Results from 2019 to 2022"

The Biochemical Society’s transformative Read & Publish (R&P) agreements follow an all-inclusive and unlimited model (developed in collaboration with other society publishers) that cover all titles, both hybrid and fully open access (OA), and does not place caps on article numbers.

This case study shows that these R&P agreements have significantly boosted OA uptake in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

It also shows that the agreements are most effective in regions where there is adequate funding, high research output and a willingness from institutions to engage collectively (through consortium agreements).

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1601

Paywall: "GPT-4 Developer Tool Can Hack Websites without Human Help"

OpenAI’s artificial intelligence model GPT-4 has the capability to hack websites and steal information from online databases without human help, researchers have found. That suggests individuals or organisations without hacking expertise could unleash AI agents to carry out cyber attacks.

http://tinyurl.com/24u7bnud