Reports and White Papers

"Better Together: BTAA [Big Ten Academic Alliance Libraries] Libraries, CDL and Lyrasis Commit to Strengthen Diamond Open Access in the United States"

Representatives from the Big Ten Academic Alliance Libraries (BTAA Libraries), California Digital Library (CDL) and Lyrasis attended the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access in Toluca, Mexico in October 2023. The Summit convened the international community to engage in dialog about how to advance Diamond Open Access (OA) to secure scholarly research as a public good and ensure equitable access to both the publishing and reading of that research. You can learn more from the recently released Report of the 2nd Diamond Open Access Conference.

https://tinyurl.com/39emttzk

Stanford: Artifical Intelligence Index Report 2024

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

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

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

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

https://tinyurl.com/53wsjxyj

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

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

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

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

https://tinyurl.com/5yuaet4v

"New Report on the Sustainability of Diamond OA in Europe"

A new report from the DIAMAS work package that SPARC Europe looks at understanding how institutional publishing is sustained today. Institutional publishers and service providers are diverse due to their missions, size and service provision. In addition, there is no definitive set of tasks that all institutional publishers share. These characteristics influence the sustainability options available to them and the choices they make. . . .

Diamond OA publishing needs more stable and long-term funding. IPSPs utilise diverse funding models, and 40% depend on time-limited grants to support their operations and many are burdened by the administration that these grants demand. They rely primarily on parent organisations for basic support, especially in-kind support, such as personnel, and services. Personnel are more central to IPSPs’ financial sustainability than revenue streams, but they are often employed outside the boundary of the IPSP itself, which means that IPSPs have to negotiate for resources.

https://tinyurl.com/yw9ythtx

Report

"Evolving AI Strategies in Libraries: Insights from Two Polls of ARL Member Representatives over Nine Months—Report Published"

To effectively chart this [AI] transition, two quick polls were conducted among members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to capture changing perspectives on the potential impact of AI, assess the extent of AI exploration and implementation within libraries, and identify AI applications relevant to the current library environment.

Today, ARL has released the results of the two polls—analyzing and juxtaposing the outcomes of these two surveys to better understand how library leaders are managing the complexities of integrating AI into their operations and services. The report also includes recommendations for ARL research libraries.

https://tinyurl.com/2t9nywcv

Report

Ithaka S+R Report: Censorship and Academic Freedom in the Public University Library

[W]e spoke to 10 library leaders from five states with restrictive policies, comparing their experiences to five library leaders in five states without such policies.[2] Based on these interviews, conducted in September and October 2023, we find that:

Academic library collections are not being directly censored by policy or subject to large-scale, systematic content challenges.

Decisions around collection building are, however, being influenced by state and university policy and politics.

University academic freedom policies continue to serve as a defense against content challenges.

University and library leadership require an extensive amount of political savvy, balancing commitments to different groups with sometimes differing values or perspectives.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, programs, and units in universities and their libraries are being eliminated, renamed and/or reorganized in a number of states. Even among interviewees who suggest that the underlying services and their impacts will be unhindered, a critical issue is that many of their employees are scared, which is impacting the workplace.

Library directors in certain states feel it has become more difficult to recruit and retain top talent, especially when prospective employees or their family members are LGBTQ+.

Library directors are seeking opportunities to speak to others at peer institutions about these issues without drawing public attention. They do not want organizations to speak for them or advocate on their behalf, out of fear that it will draw negative attention to their libraries.

https://tinyurl.com/9e48w9a7

"Publicly Shared Data: A Gap Analysis of Researcher Actions and Institutional Support throughout the Data Life Cycle"

[This report] examines research data management and sharing practices at six research-intensive academic institutions: Cornell University, Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, and Washington University in St. Louis. Sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (grant #2135874) and part of ARL’s Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative, this report highlights where service gaps may exist between researchers’ needs and the services and support provided by institutions.

https://tinyurl.com/mtdjvecu

D3.2 Extensible Quality Standard in Institutional Publishing (EQSIP) V2.0 for Diamond Open Access

The objective of EQSIP for Diamond Open Access is to set a common quality standard for IPs that publish scholarly journals, based on the seven core components of scholarly publishing outlined in the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access[3] (Ancion et al. 2022, 4), which were subsequently revised and modified by the DIAMAS project team. These are:

Funding

Legal ownership, mission and governance

Open Science

Editorial management, editorial quality and research integrity

Technical service efficiency

Visibility, communication, marketing, and impact

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB), multilingualism and gender equity

EQSIP for Diamond Open Access applies to scholarly journals. EQSIP’s underlying goal is to set a common quality standard for publishing as a public good, i.e. defined and controlled by the public through expert communities, thus guaranteeing that academic contributions in scholarly journals are also a public good.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10726732

"The British Library Hack Is a Warning for All Academic Libraries"

The British Library’s computer systems were recently attacked by the notorious ransomware group Rhysida. The attack led to many of the Library’s core systems remaining unavailable for months and the auction of 573GB of employees’ personal data on Rhysida’s .onion site. Though the Library is slowly recovering and has admirably published their cyber-incident review paper openly, the incident highlights failures of senior management and devaluing of library technical skills that are widely applicable to libraries across UK higher education.

https://tinyurl.com/bdex73fv

The Research Data Services Landscape at US and Canadian Higher Education Institutions

The following are our high-level findings:

While there are wide divergences in the number and variety of services offered both within and across Carnegie Classifications, R1 institutions offer approximately three times the number of services offered by R2s, and more than nine times the number offered by liberal arts colleges.

General research data services are the most common type offered regardless of institution type. Statistical services, geospatial services, and visualization services are also common at research universities, which typically offer a much wider range of specialized services than liberal arts colleges.

Libraries remain the largest provider of research data services at US and Canadian research universities, but IT and units associated with the research office play important collaborative roles, especially with specialized services.

Bioinformatics services are offered almost exclusively through the interdisciplinary units associated with the research office or core facilities associated with medical schools.

Consulting services are the most common mode of service provision, comprising almost three quarters of all data services.

https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.320420

White Paper: AI Perceptions at the University of Baltimore

This white paper, produced by the UBalt AI team, explores the perceptions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and generative AI within the UBalt community. It aims to uncover how students, faculty, and staff view AI’s role and implications in the educational landscape. The university collaborated with Ithaka S+R to acquire established, reliable and valid surveys from the AI literature, which was then adapted by the UBalt AI team to meet the needs of our academic community. This survey included a blend of both quantitative and qualitative questions, ensuring a deep understanding of the respondents’ views. . . . The responses obtained were then analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as an exploratory qualitative analysis to extract meaningful insights, setting the stage for informed discussions and decision-making around AI in education.

http://tinyurl.com/mr47zx3j

Current State and Future Directions for Open Repositories in Europe

In January 2023, OpenAIRE, LIBER, SPARC Europe, and COAR launched a joint strategy aimed at strengthening the European repository network. As a first step, a survey of the European repository landscape was undertaken in February-March 2023. The survey found that, collectively, European repositories acquire, preserve and provide open access to tens or possibly hundreds of millions of valuable research outputs and represent critical, not-for-profit infrastructure in the European open science landscape. They are used for sharing articles that may be pay-walled in published journals, but also for providing access to a large variety of other types of research outputs including research data, theses/dissertations, conference papers, preprints, code, and so on.

However, in order to ensure the European repository network is fit for purpose and able to support the evolving needs of the research community, the survey also identified three areas in particular that could be strengthened: maintaining up-to-date, highly functioning software platforms; applying consistent and comprehensive good practices in terms of metadata, preservation, and usage statistics; and gaining appropriate visibility in the scholarly ecosystem.

Despite the challenges, the current climate offers exciting opportunities for repositories. Many funders are actively promoting the repository route for articles because of their role in supporting equitable access to content (i.e. no fees to access or deposit). The value proposition for open science is growing and repositories are increasingly recognised as the main mechanism for collecting and providing access to a wide range of other research outputs. Add to this, the nascent, but growing, interest in the publish-review-curate model in which repositories have a central function, and it seems they are well placed to expand their current role in the ecosystem.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10255559

STM: "New White Paper Launch: Generative AI in Scholarly Communications"

The paper looks at the ethical, legal, and practical aspects of GenAI, highlighting its potential to transform scholarly communications, and covers a range of topics from intellectual property rights to the challenges of maintaining integrity in the digital age. The paper provides best-practice principles and recommendations for authors, editorial teams, reviewers, and vendors, ensuring a responsible and ethical approach to the use of GenAI tools.

https://tinyurl.com/4m6m8n9j

MIT: "New White Paper ‘Access to Science and Scholarship: Key Questions about the Future of Research Publishing’"

The project—including MIT Press’s Director and Publisher Amy Brand and Director of Journals and Open Access Nick Lindsay—examines the current state of the research enterprise and what might come next. . . .

To illustrate how researcher behavior, funder policies, and publisher business models and incentives interact, part 1 of this report presents an historical overview of open access publishing. Part 2 of the report provides a list of key questions for further investigation to understand, measure, and best prepare for the impact of new policies related to open access in research publishing, categorized into six general areas: access and business models, research data, preprint publishing, peer review, costs to researchers and universities, and infrastructure.

https://tinyurl.com/2s3fb7n8

Two Reports on Scientific Publishing from the International Science Council

The Council’s studies led to development of eight essential principles for modern scientific publication, which were endorsed by over 90% of the membership present at its 2021 General Assembly. The principles are listed in Paper One, The Key Principles for Scientific Publishing accompanied by an analysis of the extent to which they are observed operationally. . . .

Paper Two, The case for reform of scientific publishing, identifies many of the failures to observe the principles in Paper One as lying within the commercial sector of scientific publication. It lies not only in so-called predatory publishing, where lax or non-existent editorial standards provide a low barrier to publication, but also in journals that, although they have far higher standards, compromise the essential global distribution of scientific knowledge by excessive prices and profit margins.

International Science Council members include 45 international scientific Unions and Associations, over 140 national and regional scientific organizations, and other organizations.

https://tinyurl.com/mnavvrxt

Navigating Risk in Vendor Data Privacy Practices: An Analysis of Elsevier’s ScienceDirect

Navigating Risk in Vendor Data Privacy Practices: An Analysis of Elsevier’s ScienceDirect documents a variety of data privacy practices that directly conflict with library privacy standards, and raises important questions regarding the potential for personal data collected from academic products to be used in the data brokering and surveillance products of RELX’s LexisNexis subsidiary. By analyzing the privacy practices of the world’s largest publisher, the report describes how user tracking that would be unthinkable in a physical library setting now happens routinely through publisher platforms. The analysis underlines the concerns this tracking should raise, particularly when the same company is involved in surveillance and data brokering activities. Elsevier is a subsidiary of RELX, a leading data broker and provider of "risk" products that offer expansive databases of personal information to corporations, governments, and law enforcement agencies.

https://zenodo.org/records/10078610

"Results of the 2022 NDSA Web Archiving Survey Report Now Available"

The Web Archiving Survey Working Group is excited to announce the publication of the results of the 2022 Web Archiving Survey. The 2022 survey builds upon surveys previously conducted in 2017, 2016, 2013, and 2011 — and though previous surveys were focused on the United States, the 2022 survey was open to international audiences as well. The 26-question survey was completed by 190 respondents over a 10-day period. This report details the outcomes of the web archiving survey that was distributed to various local, national, and international professional organizations and topical groups in October 2022. Topics discussed included archiving policies, tools and services, and access and discovery.

https://tinyurl.com/mpjjdfse

Delta Think Open Access Journals Report: "Market Sizing Update 2023"

2022’s OA market grew by a little over 24% from 2021. This is around two thirds of the growth we saw in 2021. . . .

Given the exceptionally high growth in 2020 and 2021, a correction in 2022 was expected. . . .

Growth in hybrid revenues was a major factor driving growth in OA, although all types of OA saw improved revenues per article, which helped to drive growth.

Currency effects contributed to reduced growth. Many publishers operate in non-USD currencies, which lost value against the US dollar in 2022. . . .

Just over 49% of all scholarly articles were published as paid-for open access in 2022, accounting for just under 20% of the total journal publishing market value.

We anticipate a 2022-2025 CAGR (average growth each year) of 13% in OA output and 13% in OA market value.

https://tinyurl.com/5n7m6n5k

Access to Science and Scholarship: Key Questions about the Future of Research Publishing

The health of the research enterprise is closely tied to the effectiveness of the scientific and scholarly publishing ecosystem. Policy-, technology-, and market-driven changes in publishing models over the last two decades have triggered a number of disruptions within this ecosystem:

Ongoing increases in the cost of journal publishing, with dominant open access models shifting costs from subscribers to authors

Significant consolidation and vertical (supply chain) integration in the publishing industry, and a decline in society-owned subscription journals that have long subsidized scientific and scholarly societies

A dramatic increase in the number of "predatory" journals with substandard peer review

Decline in the purchasing power of academic libraries relative to the quantity and cost of published research

To illustrate how researcher behavior, funder policies, and publisher business models and incentives interact, this report presents an historical overview of open access publishing. The report also provides a list of key questions for further investigation to understand, measure, and best prepare for the impact of new policies related to open access in research publishing, categorized into six general areas: access and business models, research data, preprint publishing, peer review, costs to researchers and universities, and infrastructure.

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152414

"2024 EBSCO Serials Price Projection Report"

Each year, EBSCO strives to help its academic and academic medical library customers plan their library budgets by projecting publisher price increases for the upcoming year. We use recent information received from publishers, as well as historical price data to calculate these projections. As of now, we expect the overall effective publisher price increases for academic and academic medical libraries in 2024 to be in the range of three to four percent for individual titles and two to three percent for e-journal packages.

https://tinyurl.com/2s3akjmw

Looking Towards a Brighter Future: The Potentiality of AI and Digital Transformations to Library Spaces

At the University of Leeds, we have developed an ambitious, bold vision for our libraries called Knowledge for all. Knowledge for all sets out the libraries’ direction for 2030, and digital transformation is critical in making our vision a reality. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Libraries Project forms the basis of this report and it is one of the steps the library is taking to achieve its bold vision. This vision is fully embraced by the University of Leeds as part of the university’s development strategy.

https://tinyurl.com/44v2c5w8

"Indeed’s ‘AI at Work Report’ Finds GenAI will Impact Almost Every Job in America"

Indeed’s AI at Work Report analyzed more than 55 million job postings on Indeed and 2,600 job skills to identify the exposure level (low/moderate/high) GenAI will have on jobs and the skills required to perform them. . . .

Software development jobs face the highest potential exposure, with GenAI "good" or "excellent" at 95% of the skills mentioned in Indeed job postings. Driving jobs, like truck and taxi drivers, face the lowest potential exposure, with GenAI proficient at less than a third (29%) of the skills mentioned. Retail jobs fell in the middle with GenAI being effective at 57.6% of the skills.

https://tinyurl.com/5y8j7a7y

Knowledge Exchange Report: "Alternative Publishing Platforms. What Have We Learnt?"

From our sample, no pattern emerged of any discipline appearing to be more innovative than any others, and indeed most alternative platforms seemed to be open to use by all fields.

Most platforms within this survey were replacing the function of existing publishers in publishing research articles, books and conference proceedings. There was some innovation around peer review. Considering both of these aspects, only a small group of fewer than 10 of the 45 platforms should probably be described as truly exploring "alternative ways" of doing things.

Only 11 of the platforms said that they solely concentrated on the methodological quality of the work, 2 solely on the impact of the work. Most said it was up to the editors to decide on criteria for assessment — the platforms themselves were agnostic. This is an area where further work might help elucidate the philosophies of different platforms when it comes to research assessment.

https://tinyurl.com/59eknvy6

"Meta Sets GPT-4 as the Bar for Its Next AI Model, Says a New Report"

The company reportedly plans to begin training the new large language model early in 2024, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg evidently pushing for it to once again be free for companies to create AI tools with. . . .

OpenAI said in April that it wasn’t training a GPT-5 and "won’t for some time," but Apple has reportedly been dumping millions of dollars daily into its own "Ajax" AI model that it apparently thinks is more powerful than even GPT-4.

https://tinyurl.com/5e85vyu6

Pew Research Center: What Americans Know About AI, Cybersecurity and Big Tech

Overall, Americans answer a median of five out of nine questions correctly on a digital knowledge survey that Pew Research Center conducted among 5,101 U.S. adults from May 15 to May 21, 2023. The questions span a range of topics, including cybersecurity practices, facts about major technology companies, artificial intelligence and federal online privacy laws.

Some 26% of U.S. adults can answer at least seven of the nine questions accurately, but just 4% can correctly answer all nine.

https://tinyurl.com/582bwmf3

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