June 2024 – DigitalKoans

Digital Content Manager at University of St Andrews

The postholder will work to manage and develop the digitisation service, managing projects and processes, working with senior managers to input to the strategic development of the service.

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"Contracts in Publishing: A Toolkit for Authors and Publishers"

A toolkit for authors and publishers provides information on copyright-related aspects and contractual options in the publishing sector. With a balanced approach considering the interests of both authors and publishers, the publication offers guidance to building basic knowledge and skills for successful publishing, co-publishing and licensing deals, targeting an audience of authors, visual artists, translators and publishers, especially in developing countries.

https://tinyurl.com/bdea9cp8

Data Curation Officers at he Science and Technology Facilities Council

Liaise with DAFNI [Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure] Project stakeholders nationally and internationally to identify data and modelling needs within their use cases.

Identify datasets and models with a potential high utility for DAFNI’s infrastructure research community and make them available via the DAFNI platform.

Maintain a catalogue of models and datasets on the DAFNI platform, identifying under-provisioned areas for infrastructure research.

Populate appropriate metadata for assets to improve the quality of annotation for search, discovery and reuse.

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"Why Does AI Hallucinate?"

But none of these techniques will stop hallucinations fully. As long as large language models are probabilistic, there is an element of chance in what they produce. Roll 100 dice and you’ll get a pattern. Roll them again and you’ll get another. Even if the dice are, like large language models, weighted to produce some patterns far more often than others, the results still won’t be identical every time. Even one error in 1,000—or 100,000—adds up to a lot of errors when you consider how many times a day this technology gets used.

https://tinyurl.com/2w2y3d94

UI/UX Designer at Boston College

Lead the technical development and design of the Libraries’ primary discovery interfaces including the Libraries’ website, Primo VE, ArchivesSpace PUI, and related user-facing web content management systems.

Coordinate changes and updates to the Libraries’ user-facing discovery platforms to ensure adherence to established standards for usability, accessibility, style guidelines, accuracy, and timeliness.

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"Evaluating Open Access Advantages for Citations and Altmetrics (2011-21): A Dynamic and Evolving Relationship"

Differences between the impacts of Open Access (OA) and non-OA research have been observed over a wide range of citation and altmetric indicators, usually finding an Open Access Advantage (OAA) within specific fields. However, science-wide analyses covering multiple years, indicators and disciplines are lacking. Using citation counts and six altmetrics for 38.7M articles published 2011-21, we compare OA and non-OA papers. The results show that there is no universal OAA across all disciplines or impact indicators: the OAA for citations tends to be lower for more recent papers, whereas the OAAs for news, blogs and Twitter are consistent across years and unrelated to volume of OA publications, whereas the OAAs for Wikipedia, patents and policy citations are more complex. These results support different hypotheses for different subjects and indicators. The evidence is consistent with OA accelerating research impact in the Medical & Health Sciences, Life Sciences and the Humanities; that increased visibility or discoverability is a factor in promoting the translation of research into socio-economic impact; and that OA is a factor in growing online engagement with research in some disciplines. . . .

Furthermore, the advantages of OA are not evenly distributed: while there is evidence that some fields (Medical & Health Science, Life Sciences, Humanities) are being strengthened by OA adoption, there is the possibility that others (Social Sciences) are being weakened. Additionally, it is notable that while some fields appear to have their visibility and socio-economic impact boosted by their OA status, others (Humanities, Social Sciences) are not similarly benefited.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.10535

Librarian – Electronic Resources at Samuel Merritt University

Primarily responsible for managing key e-resource information systems and will be responsible for the production and collection of statistics related to resource (both print and electronic) acquisition, licensing, and usage. Responsible for instruction, reference, and outreach services.

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"A Framework for Measuring Relevancy in Discovery Environments: Increasing Scalability and Reproducibility"

Institutional discovery environments now serve as central resource databases for researchers in the academic environment. Over the last several decades, there have been numerous discovery layer research inquiries centering primarily on user satisfaction measures of discovery system effectiveness. This study focuses on the creation of a largely automated method for evaluating discovery layer quality, utilizing the bibliographic sources from student research projects. Building on past research, the current study replaces a semiautomated Excel Fuzzy Lookup Add-In process witha fully scripted R-based approach, which employs the stringdist R package and applies the Jaro-Winkler distance metric as the matching evaluator. The researchers consider the error rate incurred by relying solely on an automated matching metric. They also use Open Refine for normalization processes and package the tools together on an OSF site for other institutions to use. Since the R-based approach does not require special processing or time and can be reproduced with minimal effort, it will allow future studies and users of our method to capture larger sample sizes, boosting validity. While the assessment process has been streamlined and shows promise, there remain issues in establishing solid connections between research paper bibliographies and discovery layer use. Subsequent research will focus on creating alternatives to paper titles as search proxies that better resemble genuine information-seeking behavior and comparing undergraduate and graduate student interactions within discovery environments.

https://tinyurl.com/3k4s7s96

Dev-Ops Specialist (Analyst Programmer) at California State University, San Marcos

Under the lead direction of the Head of Collections, Delivery, and Access (CDA/Library Technology Initiatives and Development (LTID), the Analyst/Programmer (Expert), and the general supervision of the Associate Dean, the incumbent administers and supports technology applications, data stores, information resources, and systems. The incumbent works closely with Library departments, Instructional & Information Technology Services (IITS), and vendors to help implement and support technology solutions that fulfill the mission of the Library and the university. Technical duties include working with Library functional areas to develop requirements, resolve issues, prepare documentation, test, evaluate, and configure complex applications.

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"On-Demand Circulation of Software Licenses: Checking Out Software on Patron’ Own Devices"

The Miami University Libraries (MUL) developed an open-source Software Checkout system to allow patrons to make use of software licenses owned by the library. The system takes advantage of user-based licensing under the Software as a Service (SaaS) license model and vendor-created APIs to easily and legally assign access to users. The service currently supports Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro, and Logic Pro software. MUL has successfully used this software for three years. This article describes the expansion of offerings and the increasing use of the service over that time. Built on a model developed by Pixar for managing employee software licenses, the Software Checkout system is believed to be the first of its kind for circulating licenses to library patrons. Both this lending model and the open-source software developed by MUL are available to other libraries. This paper is intended to prompt libraries to take advantage of the legal and technical environment to expand software license sharing to other libraries.

https://tinyurl.com/yx4fyw98

Digital Initiatives Librarian at California Institute of Integral Studies

Reporting to the Assistant Library Director for Public Services and Research Support, the Digital Initiatives Librarian is responsible for managing and leading the development of the CIIS institutional repository, archives, and digital collections, in collaboration with the Assistant Library Director for Systems and Technical Services. . . . This position will provide leadership in the areas of scholarly publishing, copyright, fair use, and open access as well as the development of digital initiatives by providing a full range of collection management, metadata, and preservation and digitization services.

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D5.2 National Overviews on Sustaining Institutional Publishing in Europe

This report shows how national contexts differ and create unique conditions for Diamond OA publishing in each country. Diamond OA particularly flourishes in countries with strong community leadership and public funding. In some countries, national journal publishing is financially supported through public financing to maintain a prosperous and locally relevant scholarly communication environment in national languages, often realised through Diamond OA publishing. In countries where institutional publishers are coordinated at the national level, more public funding may be available for Diamond OA. However, this is not necessarily a condition for robust national infrastructures to support Diamond publishing. Creating conditions for Diamond OA publishing to flourish in a national context requires recognising the following factors:

The role of Diamond OA in the scholarly publishing landscape differs across countries

Large mature Diamond publishing platforms have been developed through collaboration and are mature in France and Croatia. Most publishers operate on the basis of not-for-profit models in Croatia, and Diamond OA journals predominate. Learned societies are also a significant driving force among Diamond OA publishers in Poland, and especially in Finland, where a national umbrella organisation coordinates learned societies. The scholarly publishing landscape in the UK has become notably diverse over the last decade as new university presses and scholar-led publishers that offer Diamond publishing or related services have emerged on the scene. However, Gold and Hybrid remain the dominant OA models nationally. Academic institutions and their libraries are the most prevalent Diamond journal publishers here. Some well-established large commercial publisher communities in certain countries, such as Germany, have yet to transition from Gold or hybrid to Diamond OA publishing. Many countries have limited quantitative data on the number of Diamond journals, which speaks to the need for better discovery and indexing services for these types of publications internationally.

Diamond OA is by and for the national community

Collaboration between higher education institutions and research funders is vital for OA publishing industries to flourish and a condition for Diamond OA. The level at which institutional publishers are coordinated within a country varies between national contexts. Bottom-up initiatives promote and enable Diamond OA in several national contexts. Croatia is exemplary in demonstrating how national OA publishing in small countries can almost exclusively follow the Diamond model when serving the national community. In Norway, a consortium for journal funding organises the funding through a central model. In Finland, a robust national umbrella organisation for learned societies is a crucial driving force for delivering technical services, distributing public financing, and speaking to policymakers on behalf of institutional publishers. In contrast, even though the quality of journals is evaluated by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, scholarly publishing in this country is notably decentralised.

Diamond OA must be incentivised

Researchers in Norway and the Netherlands are incentivised to publish OA via the national research assessment systems, while in Finland, OA is incentivised through the funding model of public higher education institutions. Strategic changes to research evaluation in the Netherlands support the national transition to 100% open science, especially by rewarding researchers who have an open science track record. Spain is one of several countries where the primary research funding bodies require that publications from publicly-funded research and the data necessary to validate them be deposited in open access repositories. However, in Italy, the relatively small presence and limited monitoring of Diamond OA publishing reflects the fact that researchers are not incentivised to publish OA. Comparing the state of institutional publishing in different European countries reveals a connection between research evaluation practices and Diamond OA publishing.

Public funding is necessary for IPSPs and infrastructures that enable Diamond

Across Europe, more institutional funding needs to be directed towards Diamond. Public research funding in Norway requires that all nationally funded journals comply with the Diamond OA business model. This form of organised national support for Diamond OA differs from most other countries. In Poland, institutional publishers are primarily institutionally funded, while government funds are available to those striving to increase their impact or quality rather than those publishing OA. Some universities/libraries fund Diamond OA publishing independently of national funding bodies. Community-led and publicly-funded infrastructures enable the prevalence of Diamond OA publishing in Croatia. A very high level of collaboration in France has created a system of national infrastructures for OA, but these infrastructures are still underfunded. Even as this sector grows, as in the UK, thanks to institutional and library support, dedicated public funding is still needed to extend the reach of Diamond publishers and service providers.

National strategies for open science can, but do not always, promote Diamond publishing

Some countries have developed effective strategies to achieve their open science goals via robust, centralised mandates. In the UK, despite the absence of national funding to support Diamond OA journals or publishing platforms (although a funding programme for Diamond OA books exists), government and research funders have had a pivotal role in driving the shift towards OA since 2003. Norway has a long-term plan for research and higher education that includes OA promotion and, specifically, a transition to Diamond OA publishing for journals. This stands apart from the national plans of other countries like Spain, where Diamond is not yet prioritised over other routes to OA publication.

https://zenodo.org/records/11383941

Program Specialist, NNLM National Center for Data Services at NYU Health Sciences Library

Responsibilities for this position include serving as a director for courses offered by the NCDS, project managing NCDS undertakings such as codeathons and symposia, collaborating on the development of online educational resources. The Program Specialist will collaborate with other NCDS and NNLM personnel to develop and deliver classes to a national audience of information professionals in a range of data topics, including research data management, data standards, and/or coding.

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"Developing and Improving the Capability of Scientific Communities in Open Research Data: A Maturity Continuum Model: Concepts, Elements, and Applications"

This article presents a new tool developed to assess and increase the maturity level of a research community in terms of Open Research Data (ORD) practices and culture. This model, called the Maturity Continuum Model, is divided into four successive steps, starting from the awareness and initiation of the community to its full maturity in ORD, through the building and strengthening of this community. Each step has its own intermediate objectives, and each benefits from tools and means to support the process of gaining maturity. The steps are separated by evaluation boundaries that are used to assess whether the process can move to the next step. Key stakeholders are diverse and contribute at different stages of the process. The Maturity Continuum Model was inspired by the Data Curation Continuum Model (Treloar et al., 2007; Treloar and Klump, 2019). Considering the aspects in which these two tools differ, they can be seen as complementary tools in the broad field of research data management. Our model may be used at the level of a specific research community, with several possible purposes, such as assessing, developing, and monitoring its maturity. It can also be used to compare the maturity level of several communities at the same time and to identify the success factors of more advanced research communities in order to transfer them to less advanced ones. We have designed and created this model primarily to get an overview of a complicated topic, to find a common language, to provide a common basis for discussion, and to enable implementation over a long period of time. Successful implementation of the model would also allow for consolidation of scientific communities in terms of ORD, provide standards, and allow for evaluation.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.16320

Open Resources and Scholarly Communications Librarian at Susquehanna University

faculty members and researchers in their scholarly activities and in lowering the textbook cost burden on students. This position advances research and scholarship initiatives within the academic institution, promotes open access principles, and facilitates faculty engagement with scholarly communication processes. Supports the academic community’s access to high-quality, openly available educational materials. This position is responsible for overseeing the development, organization, and promotion of open educational resources (OER) within the library.

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"Biomedical Data Repository Concepts and Management Principles"

The demand for open data and open science is on the rise, fueled by expectations from the scientific community, calls to increase transparency and reproducibility in research findings, and developments such as the Final Data Management and Sharing Policy from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a memorandum on increasing public access to federally funded research, issued by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy. This paper explores the pivotal role of data repositories in biomedical research and open science, emphasizing their importance in managing, preserving, and sharing research data. Our objective is to familiarize readers with the functions of data repositories, set expectations for their services, and provide an overview of methods to evaluate their capabilities. The paper serves to introduce fundamental concepts and community-based guiding principles and aims to equip researchers, repository operators, funders, and policymakers with the knowledge to select appropriate repositories for their data management and sharing needs and foster a foundation for the open sharing and preservation of research data.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03449-z

Data Services Librarian at Boston College

The Data Services Librarian is primarily responsible for DSG collaborations and services related to data gathering, manipulation, management, curation, documentation, and data skills training. Such activities include consulting on faculty and student data-driven projects; providing data skills training on data manipulation and management methods, best practices, and tools to faculty and staff; providing data skills instruction for undergraduate and graduate courses, and driving library-based curricula development (i.e., library instruction and modules) and resource creation/collection for data-centric and data science programs.

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"Understanding the Value of Curation: A Survey of Us Data Repository Curation Practices and Perceptions"

Data curators play an important role in assessing data quality and take actions that may ultimately lead to better, more valuable data products. This study explores the curation practices of data curators working within US-based data repositories. We performed a survey in January 2021 to benchmark the levels of curation performed by repositories and assess the perceived value and impact of curation on the data sharing process. Our analysis included 95 responses from 59 unique data repositories. Respondents primarily were professionals working within repositories and examined curation performed within a repository setting. A majority 72.6% of respondents reported that "data-level" curation was performed by their repository and around half reported their repository took steps to ensure interoperability and reproducibility of their repository’s datasets. Curation actions most frequently reported include checking for duplicate files, reviewing documentation, reviewing metadata, minting persistent identifiers, and checking for corrupt/broken files. The most "value-add" curation action across generalist, institutional, and disciplinary repository respondents was related to reviewing and enhancing documentation. Respondents reported high perceived impact of curation by their repositories on specific data sharing outcomes including usability, findability, understandability, and accessibility of deposited datasets; respondents associated with disciplinary repositories tended to perceive higher impact on most outcomes. Most survey participants strongly agreed that data curation by the repository adds value to the data sharing process and that it outweighs the effort and cost. We found some differences between institutional and disciplinary repositories, both in the reported frequency of specific curation actions as well as the perceived impact of data curation. Interestingly, we also found variation in the perceptions of those working within the same repository regarding the level and frequency of curation actions performed, which exemplifies the complexity of a repository curation work. Our results suggest data curation may be better understood in terms of specific curation actions and outcomes than broadly defined curation levels and that more research is needed to understand the resource implications of performing these activities. We share these results to provide a more nuanced view of curation, and how curation impacts the broader data lifecycle and data sharing behaviors.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301171

Electronic Services Librarian at George Washington University

Provides vision and expertise to develop and maintain the electronic resource collection; manages electronic resources in the library’s ILS

Leads interdepartmental library efforts to select, implement, maintain, and provide access to electronic resources, including collaborating with Burns Law Library colleagues and GWU campus libraries, coordinating with vendors and publishers, creating user awareness of the collection, coordinating and improving access to the collection, and gathering usage data . . . .

Coordinates and seeks improvements in access to electronic resources, including strategic use of discovery tools, the library website, LibGuides, and the Law School portal. . . .

Leads review of electronic resource licenses and manages license compliance issues

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"EBSCO FOLIO Celebrates the Implementation of More Than 200 Libraries and Library Systems Using Folio LSP"

Current EBSCO FOLIO sites represent more than 200 libraries, including academic research libraries, consortia, shared systems, universities of all sizes, community colleges, and public institutions. Some sites share the open source LSP across multiple libraries, such as the University of Missouri Libraries sharing FOLIO across six libraries, GALILEO sharing the system with 27 libraries, and MOBUIS with 62 libraries. EBSCO FOLIO Services consultants are located worldwide and provide services in multiple languages.

https://tinyurl.com/2kf2xad8

Systems & Technology Librarian at Texas A&M International University

Participating in the design, testing, deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, administration, and evaluation of multiple essential discovery, delivery, and inventory systems in the Library’s portfolio including Alma/Primo VE, OpenAthens, the Springshare LibApps suite, and Application Program Interfaces (APIs) from Library vendors;

Researching, evaluating, recommending, testing, and implementing new technologies in collaboration with librarians and library staff; . . . .

Providing training and support for the Library on the configuration of library systems and services through troubleshooting, data analytics, and system enhancements;. . . .

Developing strategies for collaboration, program planning, and support for interdisciplinary digital projects and initiatives;

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"Exploring the Relationship between Traditional Bibliometrics and Altmetric Scores in the Primary Care Literature"

There is some evidence that Altmetric scores correlate with citations in medical research, but this is not consistent across different specialties.

No previous studies have examined the association between Altmetric score and citation amongst primary care research journals.

Using correlation coefficients and log–log linear regression modelling, this study found a relationship between Altmetric score and citations.

A 10% increase in Altmetric score was associated with a 1.68% (95% CI: 0.87%–2.50%) increase in citations.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1584

Electronic Resources Access Coordinator at Ohio State University Libraries

The Electronic Resources Access Coordinator serves as an integral member of the Electronic Resources Management Team (Acquisitions and Discovery Program, Content and Access Division) with a focus on facilitating access management and enhancing discovery for the continuously expanding University Libraries electronic resource portfolio. The position coordinates electronic content access by overseeing the activation, configuration and data management needs for electronic resources. Specific duties include activation and maintenance of access to the Libraries electronic resources, including databases, journals, books and newer formats such as streaming video and purchased data sets; configuration of supporting interfaces for user discovery, including cataloging; and trouble-shooting reported access problems.

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"An Open Dataset of Article Processing Charges From Six Large Scholarly Publishers (2019-2023)"

This paper introduces a dataset of article processing charges (APCs) produced from the price lists of six large scholarly publishers — Elsevier, Frontiers, PLOS, MDPI, Springer Nature and Wiley — between 2019 and 2023. APC price lists were downloaded from publisher websites each year as well as via Wayback Machine snapshots to retrieve fees per journal per year. The dataset includes journal metadata, APC collection method, and annual APC price list information in several currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, JPY, CAD) for 8,712 unique journals and 36,618 journal-year combinations. The dataset was generated to allow for more precise analysis of APCs and can support library collection development and scientometric analysis estimating APCs paid in gold and hybrid OA journals.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.08356

OER Digital Learning Librarian at University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire

Working in a team-based environment, the OER and Digital Learning Librarian identifies instructional needs that can be addressed with digital tools. This position has primary responsibility for creating interactive online tutorials, course modules, and digital learning objects, advancing library and campus information literacy efforts. The OER and Digital Learning Librarian plays a pivotal role in advancing access to and adoption of affordable and open educational resources on campus.

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