April 2024 – Page 2 – DigitalKoans

Ithaka S+R: "Generative AI and Scholarly Publishing: Announcing a New Research Project"

To help, Ithaka S+R is launching a new study of the strategic implications of generative AI for scholarly publishing, with support from STM Solutions and a group of its members. The following key questions will guide our inquiry:

Will generative AI be integrated into the existing goals, processes, and infrastructures for scholarly publishing? Or, does this represent a transformative technology that will require fundamental restructuring of those goals, processes, and infrastructures?

Could generative AI effectively render our current assumptions about the role and purpose of publishers obsolete? What new roles could publishers play in a radically transformed information environment?

Which potential transformations should publishers encourage, and which risks require immediate coordinated responses while the technology is still taking root in the sector?

What new kinds of shared technical and/or social infrastructure are needed to support the ethical adoption of generative AI in support of the goals of scholarship and scholarly publishing? What systems and structures will be necessary to balance the needs of authors, readers, rights holders, publishers, and aggregators?

https://tinyurl.com/2s432pfh

Copyright and Scholarly Communications Librarian at Imperial College London

You will be responsible for the delivery and advocacy of the Library Services copyright and scholarly licensing service to advise, teach and inform students and research, academic, teaching and administrative staff. You will be a proactive advocate of the service and implement strategies to promote copyright literacy and engage with relevant groups across the university. You will want to actively address inequities in scholarly communications and access to learning and research material.

https://tinyurl.com/mrmks5uy

Paywall: "Rethinking Copyright Exceptions in the Era of Generative AI: Balancing Innovation and Intellectual Property Protection"

In response to these identified [copyright and AI] challenges, this paper proposes a hybrid model for TDM exceptions emerges, along with recommended specific mechanisms. The model divides exceptions into noncommercial and commercial uses, providing a nuanced solution to complex copyright issues in AI training. Recommendations incorporate mandatory exceptions for noncommercial uses, an opt-out clause for commercial uses, enhanced transparency measures, and a searchable portal for copyright owners. In conclusion, striking a delicate equilibrium between technological progress and the incentive for creative expression is of paramount importance. These suggested solutions aim to establish a harmonious foundation that nurtures innovation and creativity while honoring creators’ rights, facilitating AI development, promoting transparency, and ensuring fair compensation for creators.

https://doi.org/10.1111/jwip.12301

"Crossref as a Source of Open Bibliographic Metadata"

Several initiatives have been taken to promote the open availability of bibliographic metadata of scholarly publications in Crossref. We present an up-to-date overview of the availability of six metadata elements in Crossref: reference lists, abstracts, ORCIDs, author affiliations, funding information, and license information. Our analysis shows that the availability of these metadata elements has improved over time, at least for journal articles, the most common publication type in Crossref. However, the analysis also shows that many publishers need to make additional efforts to realize full openness of bibliographic metadata.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/smxe5

Digital Archivist at North Carolina Dept of Natural and Cultural Resources

Working in collaboration with other sections and units throughout the division to ensure that records/digital assets being produced on behalf of the State Archives are being created using appropriately identified file formats and preserved based on OAIS (ISO 14721) and ISO 16363 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Records.

Developing workflows, processes, and procedures regarding ingesting of materials into the digital repository, organization of data bags and digital objects within the repository, inventory management and preservation actions, and reference access. Performing regular inventory, virus scans, and preservation actions on files within the digital repository, creating and maintaining metadata and databases about these materials, and answering reference requests for items stored within the digital repository.

https://tinyurl.com/ywzw4nyh

"The Emerging AI Divide in the United States"

In this study, we characterize spatial differences in U.S. residents’ knowledge of a new generative AI tool, ChatGPT, through an analysis of state- and county-level search query data. In the first six months after the tool’s release, we observe the highest rates of users searching for ChatGPT in West Coast states and persistently low rates of search in Appalachian and Gulf states. Counties with the highest rates of search are relatively more urbanized and have proportionally more educated, more economically advantaged, and more Asian residents in comparison with other counties or with the U.S. average. In multilevel models adjusting for socioeconomic and demographic factors as well as industry makeup, education is the strongest positive predictor of rates of search for generative AI tooling. Although generative AI technologies may be novel, early differences in uptake appear to be following familiar paths of digital marginalization.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.11988

Digital University Archivist at Des Moines University

Coordinate workflows and digitize physical archives and special collections materials of all types for digital preservation, as well as manage ongoing digitization projects.

Work with the Des Moines University Medicine and Health Sciences (DMU) campus community in adherence to the records retention policy to identify and transfer both physical and born digital university history items to the archives.

Process and catalog archives and special collections materials, maintaining data and records pertaining to the archives and special collections materials including finding aids, donation records, usage statistics, and holdings within the integrated library system, the archives management system, and the institutional repository.

Responsible for digital archives content in the institutional repository, including developing and maintaining metadata standards and schemas.

https://tinyurl.com/25nhh75f

"State of Open Science in Cancer Research"

This study has been focused on assessing the Open Science scenario of cancer research during the period 2011–2021, in terms of the derived scientific publications and raw data dissemination. . . .

50,822 papers were recovered, 71% of which belong to first and second quartile journals. 59% of the articles were published in Open Access (OA) journals. The Open Access model and international collaboration positively conditioned the number of citations received. Among the most productive journals stood out Plos One, Cancers, and Clinical and Translational Oncology. 2693 genomics, proteomics and metabolomics datasets were retrieved, being Gene Expression Omnibus the favoured repository.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12094-024-03468-7

Associate College Librarian & Coordinator for Collection Management and Scholarly Communications at Haverford College

The Associate College Librarian & Coordinator for Collection Management and Scholarly Communications (ACL) oversees a division of 6 FTE with responsibility for the acquisition, description, processing, and management of library collections. . . . The ACL manages the collections budget, generates reports and forecasts, and negotiates licenses for e-resources. The ACL provides vision and leadership for the Libraries’ open access strategies and supports open publishing among Haverford scholars. The ACL administers Haverford’s repository of faculty publications and develops best practices for showcasing faculty scholarship.

https://tinyurl.com/ysykpv7r

"Assessing Quality Variations in Early Career Researchers’ Data Management Plans"

This paper aims to better understand early career researchers’ (ECRs’) research data management (RDM) competencies by assessing the contents and quality of data management plans (DMPs) developed during a multi-stakeholder RDM course. We also aim to identify differences between DMPs in relation to several background variables (e.g., discipline, course track). The Basics of Research Data Management (BRDM) course has been held in two multi-faculty, research-intensive universities in Finland since 2020. In this study, 223 ECRs’ DMPs created in the BRDM of 2020 – 2022 were assessed, using the recommendations and criteria of the Finnish DMP Evaluation Guide + General Finnish DMP Guidance (FDEG). The median quality of DMPs appeared to be satisfactory. The differences in rating according to FDEG’s three-point performance criteria were statistically insignificant between DMPs developed in separate years, course tracks or disciplines. However, using content analysis, differences were found between disciplines or course tracks regarding DMP’s key characteristics such as sharing, storing, and preserving data. DMPs that contained a data table (DtDMPs) also differed highly significantly from prose DMPs. DtDMPs better acknowledged the data handling needs of different data types and improved the overall quality of a DMP. The results illustrated that the ECRs had learned the basic RDM competencies and grasped their significance to the integrity, reliability, and reusability of data. However, more focused, further training to reach the advanced competency is needed, especially in areas of handling and sharing personal data, legal issues, long-term preserving, and funders’ data policies. Equally important to the cultural change when RDM is an organic part of the research practices is to merge research support services, processes, and infrastructure into the research projects’ processes. Additionally, incentives are needed for sharing and reusing data.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.873

"More CNI Spring 24′ Meeting Videos Live"

CNI has released eight new videos from its Spring 2024 meeting.

Here are three examples:

"Sorry We’re Open, Come in We’re Closed: Different Profiles in the Perceived Applicability of Open Science Practices to Completed Research Projects"

Open science is an increasingly important topic for research, politics and funding agencies. However, the discourse on open science is heavily influenced by certain research fields and paradigms, leading to the risk of generalizing what counts as openness to other research fields, regardless of its applicability. In our paper, we provide evidence that researchers perceive different profiles in the potential to apply open science practices to their projects, making a one-size-fits-all approach unsuitable. In a pilot study, we first systematized the breadth of open science practices. The subsequent survey study examined the perceived applicability of 13 open science practices across completed research projects in a broad variety of research disciplines. We were able to identify four different profiles in the perceived applicability of open science practices. For researchers conducting qualitative-empirical research projects, comprehensively implementing the breadth of open science practices is tendentially not feasible. Further, research projects from some disciplines tended to fit a profile with little opportunity for public participation. Yet, disciplines and research paradigms appear not to be the key factors in predicting the perceived applicability of open science practices. Our findings underscore the case for considering project-related conditions when implementing open science practices. This has implications for the establishment of policies, guidelines and standards concerning open science.

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230595

Digital Scholarship Librarian at Utah State University

Working with a team of librarians, the Digital Scholarship Librarian provides essential research support, instruction, and services that bolster robust digital research and learning and engagement with evolving technologies across all disciplines. Collaborating with library colleagues and groups across the university, this position will also help develop strategic initiatives and partnerships to promote and utilize the new Innovation Hub (opening fall 2024) including outreach and instruction with emerging research technologies.

https://tinyurl.com/5n6r6dk8

The Open Access Tracking Project Is Now 15 Years Old

Peter Suber has announced that the Open Access Tracking Project is now 15 years old. This project has made an invaluable contribution to the Open Access and Open Science movements. Readers are encouraged to considering joining it and posting new works of interest to it. Even occasional contributions are meaningful.

Here is a description of the project from its home page:

OATP is a crowd-sourced social-tagging project running on free software to capture news and comment on open access to research.

Its mission is (1) to create real-time alerts for OA-related news and comment, and (2) to organize knowledge of the field, by tag or subtopic, for easy searching and sharing.

OATP publishes a comprehensive primary feed of new OA developments, and hundreds of smaller secondary feeds on subtopics or subsets, for example, one feed for each project tag, one for each search, and one for each user-created boolean combination of its other feeds.

OATP runs on TagTeam, open-source software developed specifically for OATP and now available for open, tag-based research projects on any topic. See the OATP hub within TagTeam. TagTeam stores all OATP tag records for deduping, export, preservation, modification, and search. OATP started on Connotea and moved to TagTeam in September 2012.

Peter Suber launched OATP in April 2009, and wrote a full-length description of it in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter for May 2009. In mid-2011 OATP became part of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP).

https://tinyurl.com/m5ku5mxh

Licensing Librarian at University of California, Berkeley

Review and negotiate all UC Berkeley campus ("Tier 3") Library license agreements with publishers / vendors to reach favorable licensing terms, including on key issues like accessibility, fair use, text and data mining, artificial intelligence, privacy, and more.

Review and negotiate select UC multi-campus ("Tier 2") license agreements, and coordinate with other UC campuses as appropriate.

Assist the AUL for Scholarly Resources and the California Digital Library licensing team with UC systemwide ("Tier 1") licenses and licensing strategy.

https://tinyurl.com/ypt53pnk

"Benefits of Open Access to Researchers from Lower-Income Countries: A Global Analysis of Reference Patterns in 1980–2020"

The main objective of the open access (OA) movement is to make scientific literature freely available to everyone. This may be of particular importance to researchers in lower-income countries, who often face barriers due to high subscription costs. In this article, we address this issue by analysing over time the reference lists of scientific publications around the world. Our study focuses on key issues, including whether researchers from lower-income countries reference fewer publications in their research and how this trend evolves over time. We also investigate whether researchers from lower-income countries rely more on the literature that is openly available through different OA routes compared with other researchers. Our study revealed that the proportion of OA references has increased over time for all publications and country groups. However, publications from lower-income countries have seen a higher growth rate of OA-based references, suggesting that the emergence of OA publishing has been particularly advantageous to researchers in these countries.

https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515241245952

Open Publishing Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington

The Open Publishing Librarian is responsible for the IU Libraries’ Open Access (OA) journal publishing program, which publishes over 50 OA journals, including a number of student journals. This position serves as the primary liaison to editorial teams, conducts training and outreach, and supports the creation of new journals. The Open Publishing Librarian supports new journals with the creation of their journal and instructs them on the use of Open Journal System (OJS) and best practices for journal publishing. This position will work collaboratively with colleagues on other open publishing initiatives in the Libraries Scholarly Communication department and will coordinate and collaborate with Indiana University Press colleagues on journal publishing infrastructure and practices as a part of Indiana Publishing.

https://tinyurl.com/p6366u3h

Digital Scholarship and DigitalKoans Are Now 19 Years Old

Digital Scholarship and DigitalKoans were established on 4/20/2005. Digital Scholarship provides information and commentary about artificial intelligence, digital copyright, digital curation, open access, research data management, scholarly communication, and other digital information issues. Digital Scholarship is an open access noncommercial publisher. All of its publications are currently under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

DigitalKoans has published over 16,200 posts. Since 2008, over 5,600 job ads have been posted, with slightly over 4,000 of them for digital library jobs.

Digital Scholarship has published the following books and book supplements: the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (2005; published with the Association of Research Libraries), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition (2009), Digital Scholarship 2009 (2010), Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (2010), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 (2011), the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 (2011), the Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 (2011), the Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works (2012), the Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works, 2012 Supplement (2013), and the Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography (2021).

It has also published and updated the following bibliographies, webliographies, and weblogs: the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (1996-2011), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (2001-2013), the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography (2005-2021), the Google Books Bibliography (2005-2011), the Institutional Repository Bibliography (2009-2011), the Open Access Journals Bibliography (2010), the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography (2010-2011), the E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography (2011), the Digital Curation Resource Guide (2012), the Research Data Curation Bibliography (2012-2019), the Altmetrics Bibliography (2013), the Transforming Peer Review Bibliography (2014), the Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography (2018-2023), the Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography (2021), the Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography (2022), Digital Curation Certificate and Master’s Degree Programs (2023), the Academic Libraries and Research Data Management Bibliography (2023), and the Artificial Intelligence and Libraries Bibliography (2023).

Systems and Discovery Librarian at Flagler College

Administers all Library services accessed online.

Manages the life cycle of Library electronic resources, including maintaining relationships with vendors, setting up trials, and generating statistical data on Library database usage to drive decisions regarding updates to existing services and the purchase of new ones.

Administers the library services platform (FOLIO) and makes changes to values, parameters, and system preferences, including circulation rules and patron uploads.

Manages and supports the Library’s Discovery layer (EBSCO Discovery Service – EDS), link resolver (EBSCO Full-Text Finder), and single-sign-on authentication system (OpenAthens).

https://tinyurl.com/2f29xnwv

"Preprints, Journals and Openness: Disentangling Goals and Incentives "

I would argue that private funders such as the Gates Foundation or the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) could provide material support through grants and policies for quality peer review, baking peer review into selection of grantees. Such an approach will require careful structures and mechanisms for reviewer selection, and measures of success, or we may run the risk of creating further inequities. Mind you, in many fields it is just hard to find good reviewers prepared to put in the effort required for a considered, thoughtful review. Societies, such as my own, could also consider material ways to support peer review more actively — a philosophical and practical approach to raising the profile of peer review at an early stage in the life of a researcher.

https://tinyurl.com/ymckyb9x

Digital and User Services Coordinator at University of Cambridge

As the Digital and User Services Coordinator, you will bring expertise and experience to help identify service improvements to enhance the staff, student, and reader experience.

You will work across a variety of library systems and services liaising with different staff, teams, and libraries providing support and liaising with key stakeholders on a range of user-facing digital library services (Springshare Suite, Lean Library, ThirdIron products).

You will also create a sustainable support structure for the management of access to licensed online resources, assisting users with authentication issues, training colleagues and maintaining a “white” list for remote access.

https://tinyurl.com/2tmbxw4r

"Author Granted Copyright over Book with AI-Generated Text—with a Twist"

The USCO’s notice granting Shupe copyright registration of her book does not recognize her as author of the whole text as is conventional for written works. Instead she is considered the author of the "selection, coordination, and arrangement of text generated by artificial intelligence." This means no one can copy the book without permission, but the actual sentences and paragraphs themselves are not copyrighted and could theoretically be rearranged and republished as a different book.

https://tinyurl.com/bd97jbw6

Web Designer/User Researcher at University of Chicago

Performs graphic design and user research for UChicagoNODE, a web portal that unifies access to collections and archives at the University of Chicago.

https://tinyurl.com/4fmsz8xx

"Better Together: BTAA [Big Ten Academic Alliance Libraries] Libraries, CDL and Lyrasis Commit to Strengthen Diamond Open Access in the United States"

Representatives from the Big Ten Academic Alliance Libraries (BTAA Libraries), California Digital Library (CDL) and Lyrasis attended the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access in Toluca, Mexico in October 2023. The Summit convened the international community to engage in dialog about how to advance Diamond Open Access (OA) to secure scholarly research as a public good and ensure equitable access to both the publishing and reading of that research. You can learn more from the recently released Report of the 2nd Diamond Open Access Conference.

https://tinyurl.com/39emttzk

Data Science Facilitator at University of Wisconsin–Madison

More specifically, the Facilitator will consult with researchers on campus to recommend appropriate solutions to data science problems impeding their research, where solution pathways for the researcher will consider resources on campus and beyond, including existing learning resources, data management services, computing resources, consultations and collaboration with data science and computational methods experts, identification and pursuit of funding opportunities, and/or pathways for leveraging effort from campus data science teams and associated faculty. The Facilitator will also design workshops and teach existing trainings to help researchers learn data analysis tools and automation that will make their research more scalable and reproducible.

https://tinyurl.com/3ahthzfr