September 2024 – DigitalKoans

"Changes to Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Plan Progress Reporting and the Submission of Revised DMS Plans Are Coming on October 1"

On October 1, NIH is adding several new Data Management and Sharing (DMS) questions to Research Performance Progress Reports (RPPRs) and updating the process for submitting revised DMS Plans to NIH for review. In brief:

As mentioned in a May 2024 Guide Notice, NIH is including several new questions about DMS activities in RPPRs submitted on or after October 1, 2024 (See Guide Notice NOT-OD-24-175). For awards for which the NIH DMS Policy applies, recipients will now be asked:

Whether data has been generated or shared to date

What repositories any data was shared to and under what unique digital identifier

If data has not been generated and/or shared per the award’s DMS Plan, why and what corrective actions have or will be taken to comply with the plan

If significant changes to the DMS Plan are anticipated in the coming year, recipients will be asked to explain them and provide a revised DMS Plan for approval.

NIH is updating the processes for submitting requests to revise a DMS Plan through the Just in Time (JIT) Module, the Prior Approval Module, and the RPPR Module in eRA Commons (See Guide Notice NOT-OD-24-176).

https://tinyurl.com/4mxwtn8k

Audio & Moving Image Digitization Librarian at University of Michigan

The Audio & Moving Image Digitization Librarian is a full-time Librarian position versed in A/MI digitization and metadata standards. This position will expand our audio and moving image preservation program by providing technical expertise to an expanding roster of formats, update our metadata practices, overhaul our workflows, and work closely with stakeholders to support their preservation and access needs. This position will also organize and guide the work of the A/MI technician, oversee the work of interns or other temporary staff, and provide training and project management for specific projects as needed.

https://tinyurl.com/ybzmrk9u

"Enabling Preprint Discovery, Evaluation, and Analysis with Europe PMC"

Preprints provide an indispensable tool for rapid and open communication of early research findings. Preprints can also be revised and improved based on scientific commentary uncoupled from journal-organised peer review. The uptake of preprints in the life sciences has increased significantly in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when immediate access to research findings became crucial to address the global health emergency. With ongoing expansion of new preprint servers, improving discoverability of preprints is a necessary step to facilitate wider sharing of the science reported in preprints. To address the challenges of preprint visibility and reuse, Europe PMC, an open database of life science literature, began indexing preprint abstracts and metadata from several platforms in July 2018. Since then, Europe PMC has continued to increase coverage through addition of new servers, and expanded its preprint initiative to include the full text of preprints related to COVID-19 in July 2020 and then the full text of preprints supported by the Europe PMC funder consortium in April 2022. The preprint collection can be searched via the website and programmatically, with abstracts and the open access full text of COVID-19 and Europe PMC funder preprint subsets available for bulk download in a standard machine-readable JATS XML format. This enables automated information extraction for large-scale analyses of the preprint corpus, accelerating scientific research of the preprint literature itself. This publication describes steps taken to build trust, improve discoverability, and support reuse of life science preprints in Europe PMC. Here we discuss the benefits of indexing preprints alongside peer-reviewed publications, and challenges associated with this process.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303005

Copyright and Scholarly Communications Librarian at University of Florida

The George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida seek a collaborative and engaging Copyright & Scholarly Communications Librarian to provide leadership and direct outreach and support to the University community on issues related to scholarly communications, intellectual property law and policy, and open scholarship.

This position provides expertise in alternative publishing models, open scholarship, author rights, copyright, and compliance with public-access requirements for federally funded research and is responsible for tracking trends that affect access to scholarly information. This position also supports and informs policies for the UF Author Rights Policy, LibraryPress@UF, Affordable UF, the Institutional Repository at the University of Florida (IR@UF), and other campus support programs and initiatives.

https://tinyurl.com/yeykxwkx

"Mapping Research Data Landscape in Africa Using the re3data and Data Citation Index"

Despite the efforts made by most African countries in incubating the practice of research data sharing, little is known on the status of the research data sphere in the African landscape. This study was conducted to establish the status of research data and research data repositories (RDRs) in Africa. Specifically, the study intended to identify the country-wise contributions in terms of research data and research data repositories, trends of publication of research data by African countries, content type and the nature of research data repositories hosted by African countries. The study applied the quantitative research approach. The registry of research data repositories (re3data), which is the prominent worldwide registry for the research data repository, and the data citation index (DCI) hosted by the Web of Science were used in this study. Re3data and DCI index research data repositories and datasets respectively, from almost all the countries around the world. The study identified parameters that were extracted from re3data and DCI using the browse and search facilities. The extracted data were recorded into Google Sheets, refined, and analysed using MS Office Excel. The study found little contribution from the African countries regarding research data and research data repositories to re3data and DCI. The study found further that, despite the presence of a few repositories, most of them had restricted access to external users. This study concludes that African countries are still having a lot to do for the research data practices to be fully incubated. The study suggests that governments and other stakeholders should improve the facilitating conditions, including establishing relevant policies and infrastructures for the practice to be fully embraced.

https://doi.org/10.1177/02666669241284239

Head of Digital Scholarship Services at University of Texas Austin

The Head of Digital Scholarship Services leads the Digital Scholarship (DS) Team in support of evolving campus research needs around digital scholarship services. The team manages the Scholars Lab, a digital scholarship center that provides researchers with infrastructure, access to subject librarian and domain-situated expertise, and opportunities for learning, collaboration, and presentation. . . . Within the Scholars Lab, the DS Team supports campus research and digital scholarship needs and collaborates with other teams to provide related services around open scholarship, research data, the digital humanities, and other evolving aspects of research support.

https://tinyurl.com/5ya3uwm2

"Knowledge Infrastructures are Growing Up: The Case for Institutional (Data) Repositories 10 Years After the Holdren Memo"

Institutional data repositories are uniquely positioned to support researchers in sharing scholarly outputs. As funding agencies develop and institute policies for research data access and sharing, institutional data repositories have emerged as a critical feature in ecosystems for data stewardship and sharing. We show that institutional data repositories can meet and exceed the requirements and recommendations of federal data policy, thereby maximizing the benefits of data sharing. We present results of a mixed-method study which explores the adoption and usage of institutional repositories to share data from 2017 to 2023. Data from two previous studies were combined with data collected in 2023 on the data sharing solutions of Association of Research Libraries member institutions in the United States and Canada. The analysis of the aggregated data indicates that data stewardship has increased in both institutional repositories and institutional data repositories with an increase in complementary infrastructure to support data sharing. We then conduct an “infrastructural inversion” (Bowker & Star, 1999) to ‘surface invisible work’ of making data repositories function well, and demonstrate that institutional data repositories have advantages for providing sustainable stewardship, curation, and sharing of research data. Finally, we show that institutional data repositories may produce additional benefits through established infrastructure, local interoperability, and control.

https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2024-046

Coordinator of Systems & Licensing, Libraries at University of The Incarnate Word

The Coordinator of Systems & Licensing for the UIW Libraries is responsible for the administration and management of all systems and platforms in support of library operations, including the library system platform – ALMA, the discovery system PRIMO, instructional and data collection systems – LibWizard suite, the digital repository – ExLibris, Library websites, all servers that support library operations, and all other library cloud-based systems related to library operations.

https://jobs.uiw.edu/postings/26931

"In Which Fields Can ChatGPT Detect Journal Article Quality? An Evaluation of REF2021 Results"

Time spent by academics on research quality assessment might be reduced if automated approaches can help. Whilst citation-based indicators have been extensively developed and evaluated for this, they have substantial limitations and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT provide an alternative approach. This article assesses whether ChatGPT 4o-mini can be used to estimate the quality of journal articles across academia. It samples up to 200 articles from all 34 Units of Assessment (UoAs) in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, comparing ChatGPT scores with departmental average scores. There was an almost universally positive Spearman correlation between ChatGPT scores and departmental averages, varying between 0.08 (Philosophy) and 0.78 (Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience), except for Clinical Medicine (rho=-0.12). Although other explanations are possible, especially because REF score profiles are public, the results suggest that LLMs can provide reasonable research quality estimates in most areas of science, and particularly the physical and health sciences and engineering, even before citation data is available. Nevertheless, ChatGPT assessments seem to be more positive for most health and physical sciences than for other fields, a concern for multidisciplinary assessments, and the ChatGPT scores are only based on titles and abstracts, so cannot be research evaluations.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.16695

Clemson University at Digital Collections Archivist

Clemson University Libraries seeks an innovative, collaborative, and service-oriented Digital Collections Archivist. This faculty member will provide leadership and expertise in the collection, transfer, storage, description, and preservation of born-digital and digitized materials, including developing workflows, policies, and procedures that help staff carry out these tasks. The Digital Collections Archivist works across manuscript collections and the university archives on digital archiving projects.

https://tinyurl.com/46psafum

"The Benefits of Diamond Are Not Crystal Clear"

One misunderstanding seems to be that these costs are the same for commercial and non-profit publishers, and that commercial firms chisel out a profit on top of these allegedly equal costs. . . .

And diamond, non-profit publishing projects will likely face higher costs than commercial publishing houses, particularly given they will struggle to replicate large companies’ synergies and economies of scale. . . .

But this [market power] could be weakened by higher competition between publishers rather than embarking on the vast task of internalising the entire production process into university libraries. . . ..

Finally, even though seeing non-profit open access as inherently good is a valid position, it is equally valid to question the appetite for diamond journals, especially newly founded ones, among their clientele of academics.

https://tinyurl.com/2uw645dy

University Librarian at California Institute of Technology

The Sherman Fairchild Library is the main library on campus. SFL is complemented by three branch libraries: Humanities and Social Sciences (Dabney), Astrophysics (Cahill), and Geology (North Mudd). Caltech Hall also houses additional collections, including archives and digital repositories. Reporting to the Vice Provost, and as a member of the faculty, the University Librarian (“UL”) will work with the senior leadership team to support Caltech’s mission. The UL oversees an operating budget of approximately $8.1 million and a staff of approximately 45 individuals.

https://rebrand.ly/222873

"Open Book Futures InfoHub Scoping Report"

One of the deliverables of Copim’s Open Book Futures project is to establish a ‘knowledge base’ (or equivalent) to provide comprehensive resources on alternative funding models and modes of publishing, acquiring and archiving open access books, alongside new training and guidance on archiving and preservation best practice. The deliverable states that we will (a) develop resources for stakeholders, (b) consolidate existing resources, (c) promote business models best practice, and (d) showcase project work on metadata, experimental publishing and archiving. By providing a comprehensive tool suite of resources we will accelerate outreach to libraries, publishers, academics and the wider public, to advocate for, advise on and encourage open access publishing and initiatives.

This scoping report is the first step in this process. Drawing on the myriad of resources we know exist (produced within and outside the OBF project), it presents an overview of existing assets and guidance for OA book publishing, a gap analysis, and our initial recommendations for the OBF working group to consider, all of which will be used to scope the direction and final format of the ‘knowledge base’.

https://tinyurl.com/2xv52u6b

"Hacker Plants False Memories in ChatGPT to Steal User Data in Perpetuity"

Within three months of the rollout [of a long-term conversation memory feature], [Johann] Rehberger found that memories could be created and permanently stored through indirect prompt injection, an AI exploit that causes an LLM to follow instructions from untrusted content such as emails, blog posts, or documents. The [security] researcher demonstrated how he could trick ChatGPT into believing a targeted user was 102 years old, lived in the Matrix, and insisted Earth was flat and the LLM would incorporate that information to steer all future conversations.. . .

While OpenAI has introduced a fix that prevents memories from being abused as an exfiltration vector, the researcher said, untrusted content can still perform prompt injections that cause the memory tool to store long-term information planted by a malicious attacker.

https://tinyurl.com/bddcxjj4

Digital Projects Specialist at George Washington Presidential Library

Reporting to the manager of the Center for Digital History, the Digital Projects Specialist will collaborate closely with the CDH manager and other Mount Vernon staff in the creation and maintenance of data-driven digital humanities projects which seek to promote and preserve knowledge of George Washington’s life and times.

https://tinyurl.com/5n7ndj8p

"The ‘Publish or Perish’ Mentality Is Fuelling Research Paper Retractions – And Undermining Science"

In the past decade, there have been more than 39,000 retractions, and the annual number of retractions is growing by around 23% each year.

Nearly half the retractions were due to issues related to the authenticity of the data. For example, in August the United States Office of Research Integrity found that Richard Eckert, a senior biochemist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, faked data in 13 published papers. Four of these papers have been corrected, one has been retracted and the remainder are still awaiting action.

Plagiarism was the second most common reason research papers were retracted, accounting for 16% of retractions. . . .

However, the use of fake peer reviewers has increased tenfold over the past decade. There has also been an eightfold rise in publications linked to so-called “paper mills”, which are businesses that provide fake papers for a fee.

In 2022, up to 2% of all publications were from paper mills.

The prevailing reward system in academia often prioritises publication quantity over quality. When promotions, funding, and recognition are tied to the number of papers published, scientists may feel pressured to cut corners, rush experiments, or even fabricate data to meet these metrics.

Initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment are pushing for change. This initiative advocates for evaluating research based on its quality and societal impact rather than journal-based metrics such as impact factors or citation counts.

https://tinyurl.com/4c2pjem9

Intellectual Property Librarian at Georgia Tech

Reporting to the Head of Academic Engagement, this position contributes to and supports a culture of entrepreneurship and commercialization at Georgia Tech. This person provides IP programming and outreach for the patent, trademark, tangible property, and licensing needs of the Georgia Tech community. Individuals will plan and provide course-integrated instruction, workshops, asynchronous tutorials, and one-on-one consultations on intellectual property. This position also supports library and campus efforts in connecting to external organizations like the USPTO. The worksite location is Atlanta, GA, and onsite.

https://tinyurl.com/mw8vfnrr

OCLC Research: Improving Open Access Discovery for Academic Library Users

The research findings shared in this report analyze the efforts made by library staff to make OA publications discoverable and explore user behaviors at seven institutions in the Netherlands. The findings can serve as a catalyst for academic libraries worldwide to engage in meaningful conversations about enhancing OA discoverability given local contexts and user needs.

Key Contributions of the Report:

Provides valuable insights into the measures taken by library staff in the Netherlands to facilitate the discoverability of OA publications.

Highlights library staff’s successful efforts to support user needs and explores opportunities to improve.

Identifies key stakeholders in the OA landscape and provides actionable suggestions for them to maximize the impact of their contributions.

https://tinyurl.com/2m8638y5

Digital Preservation Coordinator at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Reporting to the Collections Strategist for Repository Services and Digital Sustainability, the Digital Preservation Coordinator has primary responsibilities for product ownership of the Comprehensive Digital Preservation Service (which currently includes Archivematica and Digital Preservation Storage), digital preservation planning, and co-leading the cross-directorate Digital Sustainability Team, which has responsibilities for evaluating and increasing the sustainability of digital collections and infrastructure the Libraries support and/or imp

https://tinyurl.com/22496h5c

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI

Figure 2 presents our main results. The first bar shows that 39.4 percent of all August 2024 RPS respondents say that they used generative AI, either at work or at home. About 32 percent of respondents reported using generative AI at least once in the week prior to the survey, while 10.6 percent reported using it every day last week. About 28 percent of employed respondents used generative AI at work in August 2024, with the vast majority (24.1 percent) using it at least once in the last week and 10.9 percent using it daily. Usage outside of work was more common (32.7 percent), but slightly less intensive, with 25.9 percent using it at least once in the last week and 6.4 percent using it every day. Appendix Figure A.1 presents the share of respondents using specific generative AI products. ChatGPT is used most often (28.5 percent), followed by Google Gemini (16.3 percent).

https://tinyurl.com/mfhr6ujr

" It Takes a Village A Distributed Training Model for AI-Based Chatbots "

The introduction of Large Language Models (LLM) to the chatbot landscape has opened intriguing possibilities for academic libraries to offer more responsive and institutionally contextualized support to users, especially outside of regular service hours. While a few academic libraries currently employ AI-based chatbots on their websites, this service has not yet become the norm and there are no best practices in place for how academic libraries should launch, train, and assess the usefulness of a chatbot. In summer 2023, staff from the University of Delaware’s Morris Library information technology (IT) and reference departments came together in a unique partnership to pilot a low-cost AI-powered chatbot called UDStax. The goals of the pilot were to learn more about the campus community’s interest in engaging with this tool and to better understand the labor required on the staff side to maintain the bot. After researching six different options, the team selected Chatbase, a subscription-model product based on ChatGPT 3.5 that provides user-friendly training methods for an AI model using website URLs and uploaded source material. Chatbase removed the need to utilize the OpenAI API directly to code processes for submitting information to the AI engine to train the model, cutting down the amount of work for library information technology and making it possible to leverage the expertise of reference librarians and other public-facing staff, including student workers, to distribute the work of developing, refining, and reviewing training materials. This article will discuss the development of prompts, leveraging of existing data sources for training materials, and workflows involved in the pilot. It will argue that, when implementing AI-based tools in the academic library, involving staff from across the organization is essential to ensure buy-in and success. Although chatbots are designed to hide the effort of the people behind them, that labor is substantial and needs to be recognized.

https://tinyurl.com/3y654j2r

Associate Archivist for Digitization at Missouri Historical Society

The Associate Archivist for Digitization will work under the supervision of the Archivist to digitize and catalog the archival collections of the Missouri Historical Society. This position is responsible for digitization, metadata creation, and maintaining the Archives’ online collection.

https://tinyurl.com/ychba27z

Paywall: "Creating and Evaluating MARC 21 Bibliographic Records Using ChatGPT"

The findings demonstrated that although ChatGPT was promising as an assisting tool for human catalogers, it struggled with complex bibliographic patterns and nuanced cataloging rules. Notable errors were observed in various fields, such as primary and additional authorized access points, title statements, edition statements, publication details, and series statements, highlighting areas for improvement.

https://tinyurl.com/mtj4e8cz

Digital Archivist at American Museum of Natural History

The Library is seeking a full-time Digital Archivist to manage digital assets produced and collected at AMNH throughout all stages of the digital life cycle. This includes existing digitized material and born-digital content. In addition to overseeing all digital archival processes in the AMNH Research Library collections, the digital archivist assists the Museum Archivist with outreach and acts as advisor for digital archive projects throughout the Museum. They assist the Digital Systems Manager as needed in the administration of the Museum Digital Asset Management System.

https://careers.amnh.org/postings/4260

"New ‘Fair Source’ Movement Aims to Bridge the Gap Between Open Source and Proprietary Licensing"

Key principles of the model include publicly available source code, allowing third-party use and modification with “minimal restrictions,” and a delayed open-source publication clause, where the software transitions to a true open-source license after a predefined period (two years under Sentry’s Functional Source License).

https://tinyurl.com/ypswkw3j