April 2024 – Page 3 – DigitalKoans

Predatory Publishing: "The Publication Facts Label: A Public and Professional Guide for Research Articles"

These two questions—on public concerns over misinformation and academic apprehensions over journal and article quality—reflect a spirit of distrust that we, as former school teachers now involved in scholarly publishing, have felt was too important an instructional opportunity for us to leave to others. As a result, we are prototyping an educational strategy to help readers, both the "common reader, " as Virginia Woolf named them (1925) and researchers, learn a little more about what to make of work in the unfamiliar journals that come to their attention.

We [John Willinsky and Daniel Pimentel] are calling it a publication facts label (PFL). It is intended to appear with each research article. It emulates the look and feel of the Nutrition Facts label on food products in the United States. At this point in its development, the PFL draws data and links from the journal’s publishing platform on eight critical elements for scholarly publishing and presents to readers: (a) the publisher’s identity; (b) the journal’s scholarly editorial oversight; (c) the journal’s article acceptance rate; (d) the indexing of the journal; (e) the article’s number of peer reviewers and reviewer backgrounds; (f) the article authors’ competing interests; (g) the research study’s data availability; and (h) the funders of the research (Fig. 1).

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1599

Software Developer at The University of Texas at Austin

Write, test and debug programming for UTL systems.

Provide operational and customer support for UTL services, including monitoring systems, providing customer service, issue investigation, and documentation.

Participate as an active member of one or more project teams. Tasks may include planning and monitoring of project tasks, communicating project status to stakeholders, and ensuring timely completion of milestones. Work collaboratively with customers and stakeholders to elicit requirements, identify functional and technical solutions, and investigate and resolve issues.

https://tinyurl.com/bdfadj7b

"Launch of UPLOpen.com: Revolutionizing Access to Open Knowledge and Empowering Global Sustainability Goals"

In an ambitious move to democratize access to scholarly knowledge and advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), the De Gruyter eBound Foundation is thrilled to unveil UPLOpen.com, a product of University Press Library Open (UPLO), an innovative website that curates high-quality, open access scholarship from the world’s leading university presses. . . .

At launch, UPLOpen.com proudly hosts more than 350 open access books from over thirty university presses, including two landmark collections: Luminos, from the University of California Press, and TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), a pilot project of the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and Association of University Presses (AUPresses), which concluded in 2022 but continues to release new titles. By mid-2024, the number of titles hosted on UPLOpen.com is expected to exceed 2,500, with further plans for significant growth already in motion for 2025 and beyond.

https://tinyurl.com/5ftcmx2p

Chief, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center

The Chief is a visionary, people-focused leader with broad responsibility for the NAVCC’s overall strategic direction. This includes setting strategic objectives aligning the activities of its curatorial units and business operations to the Library’s strategic plan, as well as guiding outreach initiatives that contribute leadership to audiovisual preservation communities at home and abroad. The Chief leads change by overseeing the strategic evolution of the division’s programs and services, and by partnering to chart its technical direction. . . .

The incumbent is responsible for effective oversight of NAVCC operations through the Assistant Chief, and direct oversight for all aspects of curation and stewardship for its audiovisual materials. The position maintains productive relationships within industry and academic communities to support engaged stewardship of the nation’s audiovisual heritage, including through the work of the two Preservation Boards for Film and Sound Recordings which advise the Librarian of Congress on the National Registries.

https://www.usajobs.gov/job/786561600

"Red States Threaten Librarians with Prison — As Blue States Work to Protect Them"

But the majority of the bills work the same way. They eliminate long-established exemptions from prosecution for librarians — sometimes teachers and museum employees, too — over obscene material. . . .

Removing the exemption means librarians, teachers and museum staffers could face years of imprisonment or tens of thousands in fines for giving out books deemed sexually explicit, obscene or "harmful" to minors. For example, an Arkansas measure passed last year says school and public librarians can be imprisoned for up to six years or fined $10,000 if they hand out obscene or harmful titles.

Seventeen states are weighing some version of this measure, The Post found. That comes after at least eight states enacted such laws between 2021 and last year, although two were later vetoed and one was blocked by the courts.

Includes detailed chart of bills proposed in 2024 that restrict or protect libraries.

https://tinyurl.com/4uyfxjp8

Instructional Services and Scholarly Communications Librarian at University of Alabama in Huntsville

This position works with teaching faculty to develop library instruction materials for assignment-focused, course-specific needs, as well as identify opportunities for outreach in assigned academic departments.. . . This position will also support future scholarly communications endeavors, such as Open Access Initiatives, Open Educational Resources, and scholarly publishing trends, including providing support for faculty and student scholarly communication endeavors, such as promoting the use of open educational resources and awareness of the university’s institutional repository.

https://tinyurl.com/5bsdmezz

"Researchers Need ‘Open’ Bibliographic Databases, New Declaration Says"

Some of the best known databases, such as the Web of Science and Scopus, are proprietary and offer pay-to-access data and services supporting these and other metrics, including university rankings and journal impact factors. But in a declaration posted today, more than 30 research and funding organizations call for the community to commit to platforms that instead are free for all, more transparent about their methods, and without restrictions about how the data can be used.

https://tinyurl.com/2nvzf9dh

Scholarly Communications and Metadata Librarian at George Washington University

The George Washington University’s Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library seeks a dynamic, collaborative information professional to provide leadership and expertise in scholarly communications, copyright, open access, data management, and research impact. This position also manages Himmelfarb’s cataloging and oversees the organization and management of the library’s catalog and institutional repository.

https://www.gwu.jobs/postings/109746

Open Access Press: "UCL [University College London] Press Downloads Hit 10 Million"

UCL Press’s pioneering Open Access (OA) programme spans many of the major academic disciplines, from history to philosophy and the sciences to anthropology. The Press has published 339 books that have been downloaded more than 8.7 million times, while its 14 journals have attracted more than 2.6 million downloads. . . .

Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost at UCL LCCOS (Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science), commented: "Started in 2015, UCL Press continues to get better and better. 10,000,000 downloads and consultations underline the transformative effect that Open Access can have, particularly in the OA monograph space. UCL is proud to be developing a sustainable model for institutional OA publishing in Europe."

https://tinyurl.com/ym76wmbh

Computer Vision Specialist (AI) at University of Florida

The George A. Smathers Libraries seek a creative, collaborative, and service-oriented candidate to enhance computer vision research services to strategically increase support of the university’s AI initiative (https://ai.ufl.edu/) and to further the Libraries’ commitment to "AI for everyone." In conjunction and close collaboration with the Natural Language Processing Specialist and other personnel from across the libraries, this position provides leadership to the Libraries’ efforts to build foundational AI services for all UF students, faculty, and staff interested in incorporating AI technology and techniques in their discipline-specific teaching and research. The Computer Vision Specialist is a year-round (12 month) tenure-track faculty position with primary responsibilities in instruction, consultation, and project work in computer vision and other areas relevant to artificial intelligence and data science.

https://tinyurl.com/3t42hjam

Stanford: Artifical Intelligence Index Report 2024

AI has surpassed human performance on several benchmarks, including some in image classification, visual reasoning, and English understanding. Yet it trails behind on more complex tasks like competition-level mathematics, visual commonsense reasoning and planning. . . .

According to AI Index estimates, the training costs of state-of-the-art AI models have reached unprecedented levels. For example, OpenAI’s GPT-4 used an estimated $78 million worth of compute to train, while Google’s Gemini Ultra cost $191 million for compute. . . .

New research from the AI Index reveals a significant lack of standardization in responsible AI reporting. Leading developers, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, primarily test their models against different responsible AI benchmarks. This practice complicates efforts to systematically compare the risks and limitations of top AI models. . . .

Despite a decline in overall AI private investment last year, funding for generative AI surged, nearly octupling from 2022 to reach $25.2 billion.

https://tinyurl.com/53wsjxyj

Project Manager (NORF) at Digital Repository of Ireland (Term)

This is a fixed term contract working as a project manager to support the implementation of Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research(link is external). This plan sets out objectives and actions for the next chapter in Ireland’s transition towards Open Research. The successful candidate will contribute to the implementation of this plan by ensuring efficient administration of funded activities, facilitating cross-project coordination and alignment, liaising with all stakeholders, and assisting with communications and outreach. The successful candidate will be based at the DRI at the Royal Irish Academy and will work closely with the National Open Research Coordinator and the National Open Research Forum.

https://tinyurl.com/2a48c5uf

"Is ChatGPT Transforming Academics’ Writing Style?"

Based on one million arXiv papers submitted from May 2018 to January 2024, we assess the textual density of ChatGPT’s writing style in their abstracts by means of a statistical analysis of word frequency changes. Our model is calibrated and validated on a mixture of real abstracts and ChatGPT-modified abstracts (simulated data) after a careful noise analysis. We find that ChatGPT is having an increasing impact on arXiv abstracts, especially in the field of computer science, where the fraction of ChatGPT-revised abstracts is estimated to be approximately 35%, if we take the output of one of the simplest prompts, "revise the following sentences", as a baseline. We conclude with an analysis of both positive and negative aspects of the penetration of ChatGPT into academics’ writing style.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.08627v1

Digital and Web Services Librarian at Otterbein University

Otterbein University is seeking a Digital and Web Services Librarian to lead the collection, curation, management, preservation and dissemination of university’s digital intellectual property in the institutional repository. They provide support and management for library web services and website content management systems.

https://tinyurl.com/2v7bs2xh

"Gates Open Access Policy Refresh Increases Compliance Burden and Eliminates Financial Support "

Broadly considered, the only grantees who are genuinely free to publish where they wish are those with other funding sources besides Gates with which to pay publication fees. Grantees who do not have other funds will not be able to publish in subscription journals that charge publishing fees or in fully open access journals that charge an APC. . . .

Grantees who do not have other funding sources to pay publication fees will need to identify journals that do not charge a fee to publish open or that do not charge any fees to publish a non-open article. But, it cannot be assumed that such journals will consider a manuscript that asserts the mandated rights retention statement (RRS): "Under the grant conditions of the Foundation, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License has already been assigned to the Author Accepted Manuscript version that might arise from this submission."

https://tinyurl.com/4mjctu2u

Digital Scholarship Librarian at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Responsible for the development of digital initiatives and research data management projects that support scholarly communication at UTRGV.

Provides guidance to students, faculty, and staff in working with digital repositories, open data initiatives, digital exhibits, and scholarly impact tools.

Provides education and support for the use of tools specific to the curation, description, indexing, and accessibility of digital scholarship.

https://careers.utrgv.edu/postings/42513

"Digital Humanities: Mission Accomplished? An Analysis of Scholarly Literature"

The field of digital humanities (DH) has evolved throughout the parallel evolution of computers, software and networking techniques, as well as the different attitudes of interested scholars. Since the earliest historical phases of this research field, scholars have been debating whether it can be considered as a new academic discipline and whether it is revolutionary in nature. About 20 years ago, the early denotation of ‘humanities computing’ evolved to the present label of DH, and deep changes occurred in digital information technologies, as well as in their humanities applications. Meanwhile, dedicated academic curricula were launched, thus adding an argument in favor of the debated disciplinarity of DH. This paper gives an account of the relevant scholarly debate, distinguishing between the early period and the most recent years; it then tries to frame this process in a model of scientific revolution.

https://doi.org/10.1177/20966083241234379

"CHORUS Forum: 12 Best Practices for Research Data Sharing — Summary And Comments"

At last month’s CHORUS Forum: 12 Best Practices for Research Data Sharing speakers addressed the Joint Statement on Research Data Sharing by STM, DataCite and Crossref. The forum was moderated by Howard Ratner, Executive Director, CHORUS and sponsored by AIP Publishing, Association of American Publishers, Crossref, GeoScienceWorld, and STM.

https://tinyurl.com/3ubnw4db

Digital Collections Manager at Washington and Lee University

The Digital Collections Manager is responsible for digitization of archival materials, metadata creation, and quality control of the University Library’s digital assets. The Manager produces, adds and updates materials in the digital asset management system and other platforms. Reporting to the Digital Scholarship Librarian, the Digital Collections Manager works collaboratively with the Digital Information Management and Education (DIME) team to evaluate and improve workflows, policies, and guidelines related to digitization, digital preservation, and digital collection creation. As the subject area expert for digital collection management, the position also supervises student workers and reviews their work, providing quality assurance of all materials existing in the digital collections.

https://tinyurl.com/y386bpt2

"Open Data Ownership and Sharing: Challenges and Opportunities for Application of Fair Principles and a Checklist for Data Managers"

The amount of data generated across various disciplines has been steadily increasing and is projected to experience exponential growth in the foreseeable future. This underscores the pressing need for proficient and streamlined data management. Data has proven to be a crucial tool in addressing complex societal challenges on a global scale. However, the challenge of producing and openly disseminating data that are easily discoverable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) has emerged as a significant concern for policymakers. The potential for data to be repurposed for advancing scientific research and innovation across different disciplines is contingent on its willingness to be shared. This paper employs a systematic literature review to investigate the motivating factors, advantages, and obstacles associated with open data sharing. Additionally, it explores governance frameworks that can create unique opportunities for implementing FAIR principles in real-time scientific research.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2024.101157

Collections as Data Librarian at Cornell University Library

We are looking for someone who will help students and scholars become more confident and critical users of digital technologies in public-facing scholarship, such as digital collections, interactive data visualizations, collections-as-data strategies, community archives, and other emerging forms of digital scholarly publishing. We want you to have some technical experience, and enthusiasm for building more experience on the job. But most importantly, we want you to bring a wide-ranging curiosity, a dedication to helping varied learners develop and grow, and a desire to help build an equitable and interdisciplinary collective for applied information science within the Library.

https://tinyurl.com/3x42y4e6

1 Million Images and Counting: "AI-Startup Launches Ever-Expanding Library of Free Stock Photos and Music"

StockCake is a new platform by AI startup Imaginary Machines. The site currently hosts more than a million pre-generated images. These images can be downloaded, used, and shared for free. There are no strings attached as all photos are in the public domain.

https://tinyurl.com/mvjd3683

StockCake

Electronic Resources Librarian/Specialist at University of Arizona

The Electronic Resources Librarian/Specialist, as part of the Discovery Unit within the Collection Services department, leads the effort to provide continual, reliable, and seamless access to the Libraries’ electronic resources. The successful candidate will be responsible for the lifecycle of the Libraries’ licensed electronic resources including onboarding, maintenance, troubleshooting, and offboarding. Additionally, in collaboration with the Libraries’ IT and Discovery Unit team members, the Electronic Resources Librarian/Specialist handles Tier 1 support for the authentication, including EZProxy and SSO.

https://tinyurl.com/4f9vdhe2

COMMUNIA: "New Policy Paper on Access to Publicly Funded Research"

Today, COMMUNIA is releasing Policy Paper #17 on access to publicly funded research (also available as a PDF file), in which we propose a targeted intervention in European copyright law to improve access to publicly funded research. . ..

We recommend a three-tiered approach to open publicly funded research outputs to the public, immediately upon publication, where a secondary publication obligation co-exists with a secondary publication right. We consider that an obligation by the funding recipients to republish is a more consequential approach to protect the public interest, as it makes Open Access (OA) mandatory, ultimately ensuring that publicly funded research outputs are republished in OA repositories. A right is, however, necessary to ensure that the authors, and subsequently the funding recipients, retain the rights necessary to comply with the obligation. A right also provides a legal framework for the dissemination in OA repositories of publicly funded research outputs published before the entry into force of a secondary publication obligation.

In addition, we recommend the introduction of a copyright exception for the benefit of knowledge institutions, such as libraries and archives, to further support the task of making available research outputs published before the entry into force of secondary publication rights and obligations.

https://tinyurl.com/5yuaet4v

Metadata Technologies Librarian at NCSU

The Metadata Technologies Librarian participates in describing and providing access to electronic, print, and manuscript resources, with focus on user discovery systems. They are significantly involved in database maintenance operations in the Libraries’ integrated library system/library services platform (ILS/LSP) and discovery layers. They also contribute to data control activities, including data quality, standardization, batch loading, and data transfer. The position provides metadata consulting and project analysis services for patrons and colleagues. . . . The position will contribute to the planning and implementation of future ILS/LSP, discovery, and retrieval services, including the department’s and Libraries’ anticipated 2026-2027 ILS migration.

https://tinyurl.com/mrynzu7k