June 2025 – DigitalKoans

Electronic Resources and Discovery Librarian at Miami University Libraries

The Electronic Resources & Discovery Librarian manages ongoing technical access to electronic resources and collaborates with other librarians and staff to maximize discovery of resources for patrons; Works with the Library Systems team to configure discovery services and coordinate troubleshooting; Takes lead in gathering and making usage data accessible; Supports, recommends, and implements workflows, initiatives, and emerging tools (such as A.I.); Works closely with library consortia to manage shared electronic collections, serials and discovery; Supports acquisition and accessibility of varied electronic materials, and budgetary management, reporting and analysis activity . . .

https://tinyurl.com/3ct33z7c

Paywall: “NIH-Funded Science Must Now Be Free to Read Instantly: What You Should Know”

From 1 July, researchers funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be required to make their scientific papers available to read for free as soon as they are published in a peer-reviewed journal. . . .

Several publishers, including Elsevier and Springer Nature, require that papers published in closed-access journals remain available only to subscribers for an embargo period — 6 or 12 months, for instance — before they can be placed in repositories such as PubMed Central. . . .

These publishers might steer authors towards their OA journals (or the OA parts of their hybrid journals) to comply with the policy. .. .

“Authors should know that in advance, and if they don’t want to pay the APC, but still want to comply with the NIH policy, then they have to go somewhere else,” [Peter] Suber says.

https://tinyurl.com/5dbwzw9n

Digital Scholarship Coordinator at University of Georgia

The Digital Scholarship Coordinator will assist researchers in navigating a changing technology and policy landscape, consulting on techniques and practices for data gathering, organization, analysis, and visualization for their data-driven project needs. The Digital Scholarship Coordinator will also assist researchers by connecting them to applicable resources, including promoting policy information; collections as data; research data management, publishing, and archival resources; as well as research funding and collaboration opportunities.

https://tinyurl.com/yhwwv487

“ChatGPT in Academic Writing: A Scientometric Analysis of Literature Published Between 2022 and 2023”

This paper reviews the disruptive role of ChatGPT in academic writing, focusing on its implications for scholarly practices and emerging ethical challenges. Using document co-citation analysis (DCA), it maps the thematic and intellectual structure of the discourse on ChatGPT in academic knowledge production. Drawing on a dataset of 171 peer-reviewed articles from Scopus, the analysis, conducted using CiteSpace, identified 10 major thematic clusters, including ethical risks, practical applications, and pedagogical innovations. The resulting high-modularity network (Q = 0.8989, S = 0.9466), comprising 866 nodes and 2,274 edges, ensured methodological rigor and thematic clarity. The findings reveal widespread recognition of ChatGPT’s value in enhancing writing and supporting innovative educational frameworks, especially for non-native speakers. Concerns persist regarding hallucinated references, plagiarism, authorship ethics, and the reliability of AI-detection tools. Our paper accentuates the need for proactive oversight and policy development to ensure responsible integration of generative AI in research and education.

https://doi.org/10.1177/15562646251350203

Scholarly Communications Librarian for the Performing Arts and Humanities at Miami University Libraries

Duties and responsibilities include supporting research output visibility and impact through a new service embedded within the Marta and Austin Weeks Music Library; collaborating with subject liaison librarians and faculty stakeholders to build the Scholarship@Miami knowledge base, ensuring bibliographic citations of research outputs are represented in campus research information management systems, discovery systems, and search engines; working with Research Impact and Assessment Librarians to identify methods and workflows to address gaps in the capture of research outputs; promoting the Libraries’ research information hub, Scholarship@Miami, as a place to host creative works and other research and creative output for faculty and students; will also involve teaching and promoting open access digital publishing services and initiatives.

https://tinyurl.com/4k3by55a

“Generative AI and Open Access Publishing: A New Economic Paradigm”

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in scholarly publishing presents both opportunities and challenges for open access. AI can streamline workflows, reduce costs, and enhance the discoverability of research, potentially making open access more financially sustainable. However, the same AI capabilities also raise concerns about exclusivity and the creation of a tiered system that limits access to knowledge. Publishers face a strategic decision between embracing open access and leveraging AI for proprietary content and services. Libraries play a crucial role in advocating for open access and ethical AI use, building expertise, and influencing policy development. Balancing the benefits of AI with the principles of equity and inclusivity requires collaboration among stakeholders. By working together, publishers, librarians, and policymakers can harness the power of AI to democratize access to knowledge while upholding ethical standards, fostering a more inclusive and equitable academic community.

https://tinyurl.com/2d52e37d

“Understanding the Influence of Predatory Journals Articles Included within Systematic Reviews: A Scoping Review”

The primary objective of this study is to understand the extent of our current knowledge on how predatory publishing impacts evidence syntheses. The secondary objective is to collect and implement a set of strategies to minimize the inclusion of predatory journals. . . . Different strategies were discussed [in relevant articles|, such as tools to assess quality and common indicators of predatory articles, information on indexing and its significance, and a team based approach with experts in the field to establish correct research protocols.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2025.2523389

Digital Projects and Metadata Coordinator at University of Kansas

Ensure preparation and delivery of Dole [ Institute of Politics] Archives material for inclusion in the Portal through effective project management, including:

Understanding and implementing existing workflows, and assisting with evaluating and improving workflows moving forward to more effectively accomplish grant objectives

Training, supervising, and reviewing student transcription, digitization, and metadata work for digital photographs, documents, audio, and video

Working with archives staff to coordinate and manage any materials sent off site for digitization

Ingesting, reviewing, and publishing items and metadata in Omeka-S and other digital platforms

https://tinyurl.com/4y3w2nt3

“How Are Us Institutions Putting Public Access Into Practice? Insights from Our ‘Reasonable Costs’ Institutional Research”

Today, we [Invest in Open Infrastructure] are releasing the results of this collaboration in three documents:

“Between the Memo and the Mandate: Institutional Perspectives on Public Access Readiness”: a summary of the survey responses, including which policies and practices institutions already have in place, and what units are responsible for different actions.

A packet of workflows, constructed in collaboration with colleagues at each institution, illustrating a variety of approaches to sponsored project administration for different institution sizes and types. . . .

“Preparing for Public Access: Mapping Institutional Workflows for Sponsored Research Success”: a full methodology and results summary from conducting the surveys and interviews and constructing the workflows. . . . This document also contains four appendices containing the text of each of the two surveys and two interviews.

https://tinyurl.com/bdzptfkk

Digital Projects Librarian at Colorado State University

The Digital Projects Librarian will apply advanced professional practices to oversee and manage digitization projects and metadata creation and acts as a liaison with vendors for outsourced digital projects and ensures their successful implementation.

https://tinyurl.com/3d956yby

“Meta Secures Bittersweet Fair Use Victory in AI ‘Piracy’ Case”

In a pivotal moment for artificial intelligence and copyright law, Meta has secured a bittersweet partial fair use victory in its defense of a ‘piracy’ lawsuit filed by several book authors. . . .

The court denied the authors’ motion to hold Meta liable for direct copyright infringement after it obtaining pirated books from shadow libraries via BitTorrent.

Judge Chhabria also granted Meta’s cross-motion for partial summary judgment, concluding that Meta’s use of the copyrighted books for LLM training indeed qualifies as fair use based on the arguments presented. . . .

The motion only covers part of the copyright claim, as Meta’s alleged distribution of pirated books was not part of it. In addition, the ruling only applies to the thirteen named authors included in this case.

https://tinyurl.com/3mrham8e

“Scoop: Trump Admin Cuts Contracts with Scientific Publishing Giant”

The Trump administration has terminated millions worth of funding for Springer Nature, a German-owned scientific publishing giant that has long received payments for subscriptions from National Institutes of Health and other agencies, Axios has learned.

https://tinyurl.com/yww23ks8

“Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI”

Based on the same principles that gave rise to the CC licenses and tens of billions of works openly licensed online, CC signals will allow dataset holders to signal their preferences for how their content can be reused by machines based on a set of limited but meaningful options shaped in the public interest. They are both a technical and legal tool and a social proposition: a call for a new pact between those who share data and those who use it to train AI models.

https://tinyurl.com/psxrvc8f

Paywall: “AI and Systematic Reviews: Can AI Tools Replace Librarians in the Systematic Search Process?”

Focusing on the search stage of the systematic review process, the author examines the features and viability of select AI-based tools, evaluates their integration into existing systematic review workflows, and addresses issues related to transparency, reproducibility, and trustworthiness. The study also assesses whether these AI tools can be effectively and reliably incorporated into systematic review processes and discusses the evolving roles and responsibilities of librarians in using these technologies.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0194262X.2025.2521519

“Large Language Models for Automated Scholarly Paper Review: A Survey”

Large language models (LLMs) have significantly impacted human society, influencing various domains. Among them, academia is not simply a domain affected by LLMs, but it is also the pivotal force in the development of LLMs. In academic publication, this phenomenon is represented during the incorporation of LLMs into the peer review mechanism for reviewing manuscripts. LLMs hold transformative potential for the full-scale implementation of automated scholarly paper review (ASPR), but they also pose new issues and challenges that need to be addressed. In this survey paper, we aim to provide a holistic view of ASPR in the era of LLMs. We begin with a survey to find out which LLMs are used to conduct ASPR. Then, we review what ASPR-related technological bottlenecks have been solved with the incorporation of LLM technology. After that, we move on to explore new methods, new datasets, new source code, and new online systems that come with LLMs for ASPR. Furthermore, we summarize the performance and issues of LLMs in ASPR, and investigate the attitudes and reactions of publishers and academia to ASPR. Lastly, we discuss the challenges and future directions associated with the development of LLMs for ASPR. This survey serves as an inspirational reference for the researchers and can promote the progress of ASPR for its actual implementation.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10326

Pew Research Center: “34% of u.s. Adults Have Used ChatGPT, About Double the Share in 2023”

As in previous years, young adults stand out in their ChatGPT use. Today, 58% of adults under 30 say they have used it, up from 43% in 2024 and 33% in 2023. While use is rising in older age groups as well, they remain less likely to have used ChatGPT:

41% of adults ages 30 to 49 have used it.

25% of those 50 to 64 say the same.

10% of those 65 and older report ever using ChatGPT.

https://tinyurl.com/3ms78bxt

“From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery”

Twenty-five years ago, Harvard University was in the early stages of a project to build a first-generation digital library infrastructure. The project was carefully named the Library Digital Initiative (LDI), signifying that ‘digital’ would be an integral and integrated aspect of ‘library’ and not a separate entity. The initiative aimed to develop knowledge and expertise relating to digital objects, as well as technical infrastructure to create, curate, access and preserve them, and to integrate the new digital collections with Harvard’s extensive tangible collections.

Today, we still benefit from the foresight of this first-generation development and the subsequent ones it spawned, but we are also at a pivotal point of reflecting on lessons learned and opportunities to be seized as we rebuild and reimagine our digital infrastructure and services in a vastly expanded data ecosystem. Predicting what libraries will look like two decades ahead is always conjecture. What we do know, however, is that while the themes and challenges from the past two decades endure, the way we are tackling them is different. This paper examines what has changed since early library digital initiatives, and the imperatives we see for the future.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v19i1.1068

“U.S. Copyright Office Replaces Online Public Catalog with Copyright Public Records System”

Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is pleased to announce that the Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) has replaced its Online Public Catalog. CPRS provides copyright registration and recordation data with advanced search capabilities, filters, and improved interfaces for public users and Office staff. CPRS is the second component of the Office’s Enterprise Copyright System (ECS) to be made publicly available.

https://tinyurl.com/mu9epzee

University Librarian and Head of Library Services at University of Strathclyde

The University is seeking to appoint a proactive strategic thinker and leader to drive the continuing development of all elements of the Library and Information Resources (LIR) services and facilities that support research, teaching and learning. Within its portfolio the library service includes converged support services for library and IT, with all operational areas of the library service being Customer Service Excellence (CSE) accredited since 2019. . . .

We are known for the development and implementation of innovative technology, leadership in Open Access and excellent in-person and online user services.

https://tinyurl.com/pvkdvk67

Open Licensing Models in the Cultural Heritage Sector

This document reports on a study of open licensing practices among cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) carried out by researchers in the CREATe Centre at the University of Glasgow and the Centre for Archive Studies at the University of Liverpool. The purpose of this study – funded by Creative Commons – is to advance understanding of how open licensing is being used in CHIs in practice and to enable information sharing about potential strategies. The authors do not endorse any singular approach – the findings reflect responses by a wide range of institutions in their own local contexts

https://tinyurl.com/yck7necz

Digital Library Software Developer at University of Edinburgh

This position will begin by focusing on important development work on our newly developed digital preservation solution. It will entail designing and implementing digital preservation workflows from our wide-ranging systems through Archivematica and into long-term storage, working closely alongside the Digital Archivist to align with digital preservation best practice. You will also work on our suite of tools supporting research data sharing and preservation, meeting funder requirements to store research datasets for the long-term.

https://tinyurl.com/3dtnzrcs

“‘It’s Messy and It’s Massive’: How Has the Open Science Debate Developed in the Post-COVID Era?”

he COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the global adoption of open science (OS) practices. However, as the pandemic subsides, the debate around OS continues to evolve. This study investigates how the pandemic has shaped the OS discourse and identifies key issues and challenges. Interviews were conducted with influential stakeholders across the research and publishing communities. The findings show that while many areas of debate remained constant, the ways in which they were discussed exposed underlying systemic challenges, which must be addressed if OS is to progress. These issues included the scope and definition of OS; regional variations in its implementation; the relationship between OS and fundamental questions of the purpose and practice of science; and the need to reform incentives and reward structures within the research system. A more complex understanding of OS is required, which takes into account the importance of equity and diversity and the challenges of implementing OS in different cultural and geographical contexts. The study emphasises the importance of shifting scientific culture to prioritise values such as quality, integrity, and openness, and reforming rewards structures to incentivise open practices.

https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.162577.1

Library IT DevOps Engineer at University of Michigan

The University of Michigan Library is looking for a DevOps Engineer to join the Library IT Architecture and Engineering (A&E) team in building and maintaining the technology infrastructure that supports the Library’s public and staff-facing enterprise services. . . . Architecture and Engineering, a department of Library IT, supports these projects with the application, server, storage, security, and workflow infrastructure required for hosting web applications and processing digital library data and metadata.

https://tinyurl.com/ps6fzjhd

“Anthropic Wins a Major Fair Use Victory for AI — But It’s Still in Trouble for Stealing Books ”

The judge ruled that digitizing a legally purchased physical book was fair use, and that using those digital copies to train an LLM was sufficiently transformative to also be fair use. . . .

Despite these wins for Anthropic, Judge Alsup writes that Anthropic’s decision to store millions of pirated book copies in the company’s central library — even if some weren’t used for training — isn’t considered fair use. . . .

Judge Alsup says the court will hold a separate trial on the pirated content used by Anthropic, which will determine the resulting damages.

https://tinyurl.com/5f6mx9ne

Royal Society of Chemistry: “Changing with the Times: Our Evolving Approach to Open Access”

In 2022, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) announced our ambition to transition all of our RSC-owned journals to open access (OA) within the next five years. This ambition made us the first chemistry publisher to publicly commit to a fully OA future.

Since then, we embarked on a global programme to engage with our community and to understand the ways in which we could collaboratively build a fully OA future, overcoming local challenges and supporting stakeholders to adapt to open access. Based on the conversations we had across the world and in response to shifts in the global research landscape, we are evolving our OA strategy. Rather than a universal transition to 100% open access by 2028, we are moving toward regionally tailored approaches to OA and models that support diverse pathways to openness, based on local needs, funding landscapes, and infrastructure.

https://tinyurl.com/mrxn2bvj