February 2025 – Page 3

“California Universities and Oxford University Press Sign Landmark Open Access Agreement”

The 10-campus University of California system (UC), 20 of 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and 30 private academic and research institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) have reached a comprehensive four-year transformative open access agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP). The agreement begins this month and will provide affiliated researchers with access to OUP’s world-leading journals and support for publishing their work open access. . . .

This major agreement harnesses the resources of research institutions, private liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and special libraries across California by redirecting existing library subscription funds to support authors publishing open access. The agreement enables authors at the participating institutions to publish articles using an open access license at reduced or no cost in more than 500 hybrid and fully open access OUP journals. Authors with grant funds available will pay a discounted open access publishing fee across OUP’s hybrid and fully open access journals. Authors who do not have grant funds available will be able to publish open access in hybrid journals at no cost to them.

https://tinyurl.com/f5tjynus

Head of Digitisation at University of London

The Head of Digitisation will lead the Digitisation team, delivering the Library’s ambitious digitisation programme and managing the SOAS Digital Library. The role holder will ensure that SOAS Library provides its internal and external users with a digital library service, providing access to the Library’s digitised collections. Through collaboration with the Library’s collection managers and with the SOAS academy, Research and Advancement teams, the role holder will develop and deliver digitisation programmes drawing on the Library’s collections, including developing innovative digital solutions for delivering content and engaging with and supporting SOAS’ users. This will include developing and contributing to fundraising proposals, liaising with external stakeholders, and engaging with commercial vendors.

https://tinyurl.com/2x8um6h2

“How Will We Prepare for an Uncertain Future? The Value of Open Data and Code for Unborn Generations Facing Climate Change”

What is the unit of knowledge that we would most like to protect for future generations? Is it the scientific publication? Or is it our datasets? Datasets are snapshots in space and time of n-dimensional hypervolumes of information that are resources in and of themselves—each giving numerous insights into the measured world [134,135]. New publishing paradigms, such as Octopus, allow researchers to link multiple ‘Analysis’ and/or ‘Interpretation’ publications to a single ‘Results’ publication as alternative analyses and interpretations of the same data [159]. A more traditional research paper, on the other hand, is one realization of many possible assessments of the data that were originally collected, and a wide diversity of results can be obtained when many individuals analyse one dataset with the same research question in mind [160,161]. That is, publications are one version of an oversimplified projection through n-dimensional space which communicate stories that our human minds can comprehend. Manuscript narratives, by necessity, leave out information to craft such a story.

This is not to say that scientific publications in and of themselves are not useful. On the contrary, they frame our current and historical understanding of the world and put scientific inquiry into the relevant spatial and temporal context. Scientific articles offer analysis and interpretation of data which will allow future generations to understand why certain policies, management actions, or approaches were attempted and/or abandoned. However, if future researchers are not granted access to our (past) data, future humans will have to repeat costly (e.g. time and resources) experiments, laboriously extract information directly from figures, tables and text in the articles themselves (assuming the relevant information is available and detailed enough, although there is evidence that this is not the case in at least some disciplines [55,162]) or will have to trust our analytical procedures and our intuitions and perceptions about the data we collected [160,161].

https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.1515

Computational Literacy Librarian at University of Florida

This twelve-month, tenure-track faculty position will help the UF community become critical users of digital technologies, such as AI powered tools, data visualization programs, data wrangling or storytelling tools, digital scholarship or data repositories, etc.. . . As data becomes an increasingly critical and valuable research asset, this position will also play a role in advising the Libraries on policies and best practices related to the selection and acquisition of datasets for inclusion in the Libraries’ collections. This position will guide and support the Libraries’ efforts to use local and open-source collections to create research datasets and explore the use of machine learning and AI methodologies to facilitate research using those datasets.

https://tinyurl.com/5n83susk

U.S. Copyright Office: Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy

The Copyright Office released Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy, produced by a group of economic scholars discussing the economic issues at the intersection of artificial intelligence and copyright policy.

The group engaged in several months of substantive discussions, consultation with technical experts, and research, culminating in a daylong roundtable event.

The group’s goal was identifying the most consequential economic characteristics of AI and copyright and what factors may inform policy decisions. The roundtable discussion aimed to provide a structured and rigorous framework for considering economic evidence so that the broader economic research community can effectively answer specific questions and identify optimal policy choices.

This publication serves as a platform for articulating the ideas expressed by participants as part of the roundtable. All principal contributors submitted written materials summarizing the group’s prior discussions on a particular topic, with editorial support provided by the Office of the Chief Economist. The many ideas and views discussed in this project do not necessarily represent the views of every roundtable participant or their respective institutions. The Copyright Office does not take a position on these ideas for the purposes of this project.

https://tinyurl.com/5n7yd36r

Digital and Data Literacy Librarian at San José State University

The Digital and Data Literacy Librarian will lead the collaborative design, delivery, and evaluation of a comprehensive range of digital and data literacy services for the SJSU community. This role will work closely with liaison librarians, campus faculty, and relevant departments to integrate digital and data literacy into relevant courses and research programs, fostering an environment that enhances the use of digital scholarship and data management tools. Working with the Data Services Librarian, the librarian will also provide consultations on data management and sharing, helping researchers comply with open research practices and meet funder, publisher, and institutional requirements. This position will develop and lead initiatives that promote open access to research data, and will represent SJSU Library in these areas on campus and within the CSU system.

https://tinyurl.com/3esce45s

Generative AI: “Do We Trust Ourselves? Is the Human the Weak Link?”

Generative artificial intelligence tools are becoming ubiquitous in applications across personal, professional and educational contexts. Similar to the rise of social media technologies, this means they are becoming an embedded part of people’s lives, and individuals are using these tools for a variety of benign purposes. This article examines how existing information literacy understandings will not work for artificial intelligence literacy, and provides an example of artificial intelligence searching, demonstrating its shortcomings. Present approaches may fall short of the answer required to navigate these new information tools, and this begs the question of what comes next. The current scope of information literacy and technology necessitates a multidisciplinary approach to solving the question of ‘what to do with artificial intelligence’ and arguably most impactfully requires one to acknowledge that what has worked may no longer suffice.

https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352251315845

Open Scholarship and Data Resident Librarian at Washington and Lee University

Reporting to the Head of DIME, the Open Scholarship and Data Resident Librarian is responsible for facilitating digital scholarship at W&L and supporting data discovery and management with an emphasis on scholarly communication, open educational resources, and open data. This position supports faculty, students, and staff in creating open scholarship and data discovery and visualization through outreach, instruction, and consultation.

https://apply.interfolio.com/162007

“DeepGreen—A Data Hub for the Distribution of Scholarly Articles From Publishers to Open Access Repositories in Germany”

DeepGreen is an automated delivery service for open access articles. Originally conceived to take advantage of the so-called open access component—a secondary publication right in Alliance and National licences in Germany to promote green open access—it aims to streamline open access processes by automating the distribution of full-text articles and metadata from publishers to repositories.

The service, developed by a consortium and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in its initial phase, has successfully established itself as a national service, facilitating open access content distribution and contributing to Germany’s open access infrastructure.

As of December 2024, DeepGreen distributes articles from 14 publishers to 84 institutional repositories and 6 subject-specific repositories.

This article describes the role of the DeepGreen service in Germany, its collaboration with publishers and the potential of automated processes for storing articles in open access repositories, which, as publicly owned institutional infrastructures, ensure sustainable access and provide secure, redundant storage.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.70000

Strategic Acquisitions Librarian at Yale University

The Strategic Acquisitions Librarian collaborates across units in ERSM to promote coordinated, efficient acquisition and description of e-resources, paying particular attention to locally managed licensed digital assets and other resources with acquisitions or access complexities. Works with key stakeholders to actively manage the full life cycle of e-resources, including trials, pre-order support, and licensing. Supports the creation and management of accurate data about e-resources across a variety of systems, including the Library Management System (LMS) and discovery systems.

https://tinyurl.com/48fpva8k

2025 EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study: Into the Digital AI Divide

Key Findings

Strategy and Leadership

A larger proportion of respondents to this year’s survey agreed that “we view AI as a strategic priority” compared with last year’s respondents, at 57% and 49%, respectively.

“Training for faculty” (63%) and “training for staff” (56%) topped the list of the most commonly selected elements in institutions’ AI-related strategic planning efforts.

A mere 2% of respondents said that their institution is accommodating new AI-related costs through new sources of funding, and a plurality of executive leaders (34%) said that their institution has tended to underestimate AI-related costs.

Policies and Guidelines

The proportion of respondents reporting that their institution has AI-related AUPs increased from 23% last year to 39% this year, and only 13% of respondents reported that institution-wide policies have not been impacted by the emergence of AI.

Only 9% of respondents reported that their institution’s cybersecurity and privacy policies are adequate for addressing AI-related risks to the institution.

Use Cases

Teaching and learning is the functional area at the institution most focused on using AI, with particular focus on the areas of academic integrity (74%), coursework (65%), assessment practices (54%), and curriculum design (54%).

Two-thirds (68%) of respondents reported that students use AI “somewhat more” or “a lot more” than faculty, while only 2% reported that faculty use AI more than students, despite institutions’ strategically emphasizing faculty training over student training.

Workforce

A plurality of respondents reported that their institution is supporting needed AI skills by upskilling or reskilling existing faculty or staff (37%) rather than by hiring new staff (1%).

Asked about the AI-related skills needed among their faculty and staff, respondents highlighted “AI literacy” for both staff and faculty, as well as “boosting productivity” for staff and “best practices for teaching” for faculty.

The Digital AI Divide between Institutions

Respondents from smaller institutions are remarkably similar to respondents from larger institutions in their personal use of AI tools, their motivations for institutional use of AI, and their expectations and optimism about the future of AI.

Respondents from small and larger institutions differ notably, however, in the resources, capabilities, and practices they’re able to marshal for AI adoption.

https://tinyurl.com/yc8zpjtu

Digital Archivist at Brigham Young University

Create and maintain department best practices and procedures for the appraisal of born-digital materials and their acquisition.

Oversee the day-to-day operations of the BYU Web Archive.

Collaborate with the curators to evaluate existing physical collections for the presence of digital materials in legacy formats.

Facilitate curators’ efforts to select and prepare collections for digitization.

Establish department procedures for providing access to born-digital materials, including types and lengths of access and use restrictions.

https://tinyurl.com/ycyypvh5

“Questioning the Predator of the Predatory Journals: How Fair Are Global Publishing Standards?”

What is concerning now is far from just publishing in predatory journals. It is the new emerging trend where academics and non-academics misuse the term ‘predatory’ by applying it to any lesser-known publishers or those publishers mentioned in blog lists of predatory journals. This oversimplification can blur the boundary between what is actually predatory and what is not. It prevents from having any possible scholarly discussions. It can delegitimise any legitimate emerging journal and even discourage researchers who lack funding from attaining any form of publication. Which means that this misuse of the term, even unintentionally, has the potential to marginalise academic communities. Considering this trend, it is vital to educate ourselves on the distinction between predatory journals and what is regarded as a new, lesser-known emerging journal.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1662

Digital Initiatives Librarian at University of Central Florida

Reporting to the Head of Digital Scholarship in the Digital Strategies, Impact, & Visibility division, this position leads the management of UCF’s institutional repository (STARS) and advances the visibility and accessibility of UCF’s scholarship and unique collections. . . . The Digital Initiatives Librarian will collaborate with library and campus stakeholders to develop and sustain digital projects, with a particular focus on expanding STARS services. The ideal candidate will bring experience in digital preservation and digitization, along with knowledge of emerging trends and digital scholarship methodologies.

https://tinyurl.com/5c3fnzk9

“Leveraging Task-Specific Large Language Models to Enhance Research Data Management Services”

Applying prompt engineering and RAG [Retrieval-Augmented Generation ] to research data management and sharing activities offers numerous opportunities for enhancing institutional research data support services. Here, we present just a few illustrative examples that highlight how these technologies could significantly improve service efficiencies, reduce researcher burden, and support adherence with evolving policies. These examples aim to inspire further exploration and future work rather than serve as extensive case studies.

Task-Specific, Agent-Based Chatbots for Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMSPs): Agent-based chatbots can assist researchers in drafting DMSPs by prompting for specific information based on funder requirements. This would offer researchers an interactive, guided experience that streamlines the process of developing a DMSP. The chatbot can be pre-loaded with knowledge of DMSP policies, institutional resources, and common pitfalls observed during plan reviews. Moreover, by incorporating review criteria, these chatbots could also provide real-time feedback on draft plans, allowing researchers to refine their submissions before institutional review.

Automated Text Extraction for Structured Compliance Reporting: Using these approaches, institutions can also automate the extraction of key details from narrative-based DMSPs and transform them into structured, formatted fields. This could be particularly useful for converting narrative-based DMSPs into actionable steps for researchers, service providers, and compliance officers, enabling efficient monitoring and follow-up on data management and sharing commitments.

Customized Knowledge Retrieval for Policy Guidance and Updates: Institutions can further leverage these approaches to develop tools that offer researchers up-to-date guidance on data management and sharing policies from major funders and publishers as well as institutional requirements. For instance, a researcher could query these tools to receive the latest mandates, institutional requirements, or best practices related to data management and sharing. This capability would reduce the burden for researchers in tracking down the most recent policy update.

https://tinyurl.com/bdee5u29

Data Librarian for the Health Sciences at Yale University

Develops and coordinates research data support services.

Develops and leads instructional sessions about the use of various data resources and tools, and best practices for data access, collection, management, preservation and dissemination with a targeted focus on medical and health-related data.

Provides data lifecycle support to faculty, students and staff in academic departments, schools and research center through consultations and in-person and virtual reference services

Assists in locating external datasets, writing data management plans, and identifying data management resources. Offers data management education tailored to the needs of departments and labs.

https://tinyurl.com/5n7ejyjb

“The Business of Transformative Agreements”

Large publishers are adopting a transformative approach because of a combination of needs and environmental factors: their main potential for growth is to generate more revenue from existing customers and products; TA reduce administrative charges in comparison with collecting APCs; TA are often consortial, again reducing costs associated with multiple negotiations with individual libraries; institutions such as libraries are more willing to pay for academic digital content than individuals; government incentives influence researchers to seek OA publishing; Researcher-publisher relationships have been damaged by high APCs; and TA stabilize revenue compared with APCs. In addition, there is an added incentive of a potential for higher revenue once this model is established, and for researchers to advocate for and expect TA from libraries.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2025.103020

Integrated Systems Librarian at Northeastern University

The Integrated Systems Librarian will be the primary contact with our system vendor Ex Libris, coordinating the use of Alma, Primo, and Leganto platforms throughout the University Library and across our global university system. As an expert in system configurations and analytics, the Integrated Systems Librarian will provide instruction, assist in creating custom reports, and co-chair the Alma and Primo operations committees.

https://tinyurl.com/mvkjnjz9

“Tracking Transformative Agreements through Open Metadata: Method and Validation Using Dutch Research Council NWO Funded Papers”

Transformative agreements have become an important strategy in the transition to open access, with almost 1,200 such agreements registered by 2025. Despite their prevalence, these agreements suffer from important transparency limitations, most notably article-level metadata indicating which articles are covered by these agreements. Typically, this data is available to libraries but not openly shared, making it difficult to study the impact of these agreements. In this paper, we present a novel, open, replicable method for analyzing transformative agreements using open metadata, specifically the Journal Checker tool provided by cOAlition S and OpenAlex. To demonstrate its potential, we apply our approach to a subset of publications funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and its health research counterpart ZonMw. In addition, the results of this open method are compared with the actual publisher data reported to the Dutch university library consortium UKB. This validation shows that this open method accurately identified 89% of the publications covered by transformative agreements, while the 11% false positives shed an interesting light on the limitations of this method. In the absence of hard, openly available article-level data on transformative agreements, we provide researchers and institutions with a powerful tool to critically track and evaluate the impact of these agreements.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/tz6be_v1

Digital Preservation Librarian at University of Calgary

Reporting to the Acting Associate University Librarian, Collections, Content Services & Research Support through the Director, Digital Services, the Digital Preservation librarian will play a central role in managing a digital preservation program and is responsible for creating and maintaining policies, procedures, workflows, and strategies related to digital preservation projects and practices. The incumbent will facilitate access and long-term preservation to digitized and born-digital materials, work with stakeholders across LCR and the University to assess, develop and enhance preservation services, and optimize workflows.

https://tinyurl.com/bdebcdnh

Paywall: Data Culture in Academic Libraries: A Practical Guide to Building Communities, Partnerships, and Collaborations

In five parts, Data Culture in Academic Libraries: A Practical Guide to Building Communities, Partnerships, and Collaborations can help you foster an institutional culture that favors the curation, creation, and wider use of datasets.

Data at all Levels

Data Services and Instruction

Data Outreach

Data Communities

Data Partnerships

https://tinyurl.com/ydsmdjbj

Director, Open Initiatives & Scholarly Communication at University of Oklahoma

As part of the Digital Strategies and Innovation Division, the Director will lead a team of librarians in advancing scholarly communication services, playing a key role in implementing the University’s recently adopted Open Access (OA) policy to expand OU’s impact of research, teaching, and learning.

Guided by OU’s objective of becoming a top-tier public research university and its vision to change lives, the Director will champion the expansion of open and public scholarship, advancing the OA policy. Through vision and strategy, they will develop, implement, and assess sustainable, technology-driven models for scholarly and open educational content creation and stewardship that amplify the university’s global impact.

https://tinyurl.com/eb23ea39

“News & Views Special Edition: How Much Scholarly Publishing Is Affected by Us Presidential Executive Orders?”

If federal agencies are being instructed to withhold or withdraw submissions, then, to quantify what this might mean to publishers, we have estimated the volume of output from a few key federal agencies? . . . .

The data span the previous 5 years.

The US accounted for around 15% of global output.

The CDC accounted for a tiny share: 0.1% of global output and 0.6% of US output.

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), of which the CDC is a part, accounted for just under 6% of global output, but just over 40% of US output.

The NIH produces around 95% of DHHS output.

https://tinyurl.com/yr44kt7k

Web Applications Developer at NC State University

The Web Applications Developer works within the Discovery Systems unit. . . .

Responsibilities include designing and implementing user interfaces; architecting, developing, and supporting new and active applications; and implementing automated testing and configuration management as appropriate. Discovery Systems supports a wide range of applications spanning multiple programming languages including Python, PHP, Ruby, and Java; the incumbent will be matched with a portfolio based on their existing skills and development goals. The position reports to the Discovery Systems Manager.

https://jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/214959

“Hurdles to Open Access Publishing Faced by Authors: A Scoping Literature Review from 2004 to 2023”

Over the past two decades, numerous widespread efforts and individual contributions to shift scientific publishing to open access (OA) faced a number of obstacles. Due to the complexity of knowledge production dimension and knowledge dissemination, the challenges encountered by researchers, publishers, and readers differ. While examples of such barriers exist across multiple parties, no attempt has been made to synthesize these for active researchers. Thus, this scoping review explores the barriers documented in the scientific literature that researchers encounter in their pursuit of publishing open access. After screening 1,280 relevant sources, 113 papers were included in the review. A total of 82 distinct barriers were identified and grouped into four subclusters: Practical Barriers, Lack of Competency, Sentiment, and Policy & Governance. The largest cluster in terms of barriers assigned was Sentiment, accounting for 51.2% (n=42) of all barriers identified, suggesting that perceived barriers are the strongest determinants of publishing OA, while the most frequently occurring barrier was “high article processing charges”, reported in 88 papers. Furthermore, burdens faced specifically due to the location of the researcher were identified. Understanding and acknowledging these barriers is essential for their effective elimination or mitigation.

https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/vzefj_v1