Category: Reports and White Papers

State of the Commons

The Creative Commons has released State of the Commons.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today, we're releasing a new report that we think you will want to see. State of the Commons covers the impact and success of free and open content worldwide, and it contains the most revealing account we've ever published, including new data on what's shared with a CC license.

We found nearly 900 million Creative Commons-licensed works, dramatically up from our last report of 400 million in 2010. Creators are now choosing less restrictive CC licenses more than ever before – over half allow both commercial use and adaptations.

We're also celebrating the success of open policy worldwide. Fourteen countries have now adopted national open education policies, and open textbooks have saved students more than 100 million dollars. These are big moves making big impacts.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Discovery Services: A White Paper for the Texas State Library & Archives Commission

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has released Discovery Services: A White Paper for the Texas State Library & Archives Commission.

Here's an excerpt:

Discussions among libraries that have recently implemented discovery services are likely to result in agreement that implementation was challenging. However, once implemented, librarians are generally happy with their decisions to offer discovery services to their patrons. Based on librarian experiences of both the challenges and rewards of implementing a discovery service, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) contracted with Amigos Library Services to write a white paper that would include basic information concerning discovery services, as well as an overview of the major discovery vendors.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in the Post-Snowden Era

The Pew Research Center has released Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in the Post-Snowden Era.

Here's an excerpt:

Privacy evokes a constellation of concepts for Americans-some of them tied to traditional notions of civil liberties and some of them driven by concerns about the surveillance of digital communications and the coming era of "big data." While Americans' associations with the topic of privacy are varied, the majority of adults in a new survey by the Pew Research Center feel that their privacy is being challenged along such core dimensions as the security of their personal information and their ability to retain confidentiality.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Guideline for Preservation Planning: Procedural Model and Implementation (English Translation)

Nestor has released an English translation of version 2.0 of its Guideline for Preservation Planning: Procedural Model and Implementation.

Here's an excerpt:

The guideline for preservation planning describes a procedural model for the long-term archiving of digital objects and provides information on possible forms of implementation. It serves above all as a theoretical and practical implementation of the "Preservation Planning" functional unit of the OAIS reference model. Other key concepts introduced in the last 15 years have been included and brought together.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Registering Researchers in Authority Files

OCLC Research has released Registering Researchers in Authority Files.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Registering researchers in some type of authority file or identifier system has become more compelling as both institutions and researchers recognize the need to compile their scholarly output. The report presents functional requirements and recommendations for six stakeholders: researchers, funders, university administrators, librarians, identity management systems and aggregators (including publishers). It also provides an overview of the researcher identifier landscape, changes in the field, emerging trends, and opportunities.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Web Archiving in the United States: A 2013 Survey

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance has released Web Archiving in the United States: A 2013 Survey.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The goal of the survey was to better understand the landscape of web archiving activities in the U.S. by investigating the organizations involved, the history and scope of their web archiving programs, the types of web content being preserved, the tools and services being used, access and discovery services being provided and overall policies related to web archiving programs. While this survey documents the current state of U.S. web archiving initiatives, comparison with the results of the 2011-2012 survey enables an analysis of emerging trends. The report therefore describes the current state of the field, tracks the evolution of the field over the last few years, and forecasts future activities and developments.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Library Edition

NMC has released the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Library Edition.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

The NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Library Edition, examines key trends, significant challenges, and emerging technologies for their potential impact on academic and research libraries worldwide. While there are many local factors affecting libraries, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries and common questions; it was with these questions in mind that this report was created.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Economic Impacts of Adapting Certain Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright and Related Rights

The European Commission has released Economic Impacts of Adapting Certain Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright and Related Rights.

Here's an excerpt from the summary:

The first part of the study is the report by Charles River Associates "Assessing the economic impacts of adapting certain limitations and exceptions to copyright and related rights in the EU" (Langus et al., 2013, henceforth "CRA Methodology Report"), which establishes a methodology to assess exceptions and limitations to copyright. . . .

In turn, the present report uses the aforementioned methodology to assess the economic impacts of specific policy options in several topics of interest, in view of providing policy guidance on these topics. This report focuses on the following topics:

  • Digital preservation by cultural heritage and educational institutions;
  • The provision of remote access by cultural heritage and educational institutions to their collections for the benefit of their patrons;
  • E-lending by publicly accessible libraries;
  • Text and data mining for the purpose of scientific research;
  • Reproductions made by natural persons for private uses.

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The Evolving Scholarly Record

OCLC Research has released The Evolving Scholarly Record.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Here's an excerpt:

Key highlights:

  • A confluence of trends is accelerating changes to the scholarly record's content and stakeholder roles.
  • Scholarly outcomes are contextualized by materials generated in the process and aftermath of scholarly inquiry.
  • The research process generates materials covering methods employed, evidence used, and formative discussion.
  • The research aftermath generates materials covering discussion, revision, and reuse of scholarly outcomes.
  • The scholarly record is evolving to have greater emphasis on collecting and curating context of scholarly inquiry.
  • The scholarly record's stakeholder ecosystem encompasses four key roles: create, fix, collect, and use.
  • The stakeholder ecosystem supports thinking about how roles are reconfigured as the scholarly record evolves.

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Canadian Researchers’ Publishing Attitudes and Behaviours

Canadian Science Publishing has released Canadian Researchers' Publishing Attitudes and Behaviours.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Some key findings described in the report:

  • Researchers agree with principle, not cost, of open access (OA)
  • Almost half of the researchers reported publishing more than half of their research in open access format in past 2 years, yet availability of open access was 8 times less important than impact factor and 13 times less important than journal reputation when selecting a journal
  • For those who have published OA, institutions and tri-agency funding typically cover cost, yet many researchers indicated they did not know whether Canada's major funding bodies support OA
  • Peer review, reach, and discoverability are considered most important journal features
  • Use of repositories differs widely across disciplines
  • Laboratory/institutional blogs or websites and social media are increasingly being used for research dissemination

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The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025

The Pew Research Center has released The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025.

Here's an excerpt:

This current report is an analysis of opinions about the likely expansion of the Internet of Things (sometimes called the Cloud of Things), a catchall phrase for the array of devices, appliances, vehicles, wearable material, and sensor-laden parts of the environment that connect to each other and feed data back and forth. It covers the over 1,600 responses that were offered specifically about our question about where the Internet of Things would stand by the year 2025. The report is the next in a series of eight Pew Research and Elon University analyses to be issued this year in which experts will share their expectations about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, and net neutrality. It includes some of the best and most provocative of the predictions survey respondents made when specifically asked to share their views about the evolution of embedded and wearable computing and the Internet of Things.

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Comparative Analysis of Distributed Digital Preservation (DDP) Systems

The Educopia Institute has released Comparative Analysis of Distributed Digital Preservation (DDP) Systems.

Here's an excerpt:

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)-funded Chronicles in Preservation project (http://metaarchive.org/neh/) completed this Comparative Analysis of three Distributed Digital Preservation systems to analyze their underlying technologies and methodologies:

  • Chronopolis using iRODS (http://chronopolis.sdsc.edu/).
  • University of North Texas using Coda (http://www.library.unt.edu/).
  • MetaArchive Cooperative using LOCKSS (http://metaarchive.org/).

Chronicles in Preservation is a three-year effort to study, document, and model techniques for the preservation of digital newspaper collections. This Comparative Analysis is based on a series of test exchanges between academic libraries curating digital newspaper collections and the three above- mentioned DDP systems.

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Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians

Ithaka S+R has released Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians.

Here's an excerpt:

Having completed studies of historians and chemists, we turn in this report to art historians. This is a rich and diverse field of study, and the necessary support services must come from libraries, archives, museums, and technology providers. Digital technology has facilitated access to vast collections of resources that simply were not available before, and yet, the primacy of the actual art object has not diminished at all.

It would be unwise to draw conclusions from only three disciplines, but there are some interesting similarities among the three groups of scholars we have studied thus far. Scholars in the three fields have similar needs for assistance in managing and organizing non-institutional (i.e. personal or lab group) digital and digitized collections of primary source materials (digitized archival materials for historians, datasets for chemists, and image files for art historians). Meeting these needs will challenge support organizations to think differently about the services they provide and how they provide them.

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Preservation Health Check: Monitoring Threats to Digital Repository Content

OCLC Research has released Preservation Health Check: Monitoring Threats to Digital Repository Content.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Preservation Health Check: Monitoring Threats to Digital Repository Content presents the preliminary findings of Phase 1 of our Preservation Health Check investigation of preservation monitoring and suggests that there is an opportunity to use PREMIS preservation metadata as an evidence base to support a threat assessment exercise based on the Simple Property-Oriented Threat (SPOT) model.

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The Value and Impact of Data Sharing and Curation: A Synthesis of Three Recent Studies of UK Research Data Centres

JISC has released The Value and Impact of Data Sharing and Curation: A Synthesis of Three Recent Studies of UK Research Data Centres.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The data centre studies combined quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to quantify value in economic terms and present other, non-economic, impacts and benefits. Uniquely, the studies cover both users and depositors of data, and we believe the surveys of depositors undertaken are the first of their kind. All three studies show a similar pattern of findings, with data sharing via the data centres having a large measurable impact on research efficiency and on return on investment in the data and services. These findings are important for funders, both for making the economic case for investment in data curation and sharing and research data infrastructure, and for ensuring the sustainability of such research data centres.

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Report on DRM Preservation

APARSEN has released the Report on DRM Preservation.

Here's an excerpt:

This report places the subject of Digital Rights and Access Management (DRM) within the context of long-term digital preservation and examines the related risks and challenges which arise in connection with the long-term archiving and ongoing accessibility of DRM-protected objects, and also the safeguarding of associated rights. It reviews the results of initiatives and projects already undertaken in this field and provides the results of a recent survey. It also analyses current user scenarios both within and outside the APARSEN consortium before offering a summary of recommendations and best practices for dealing with digital rights and DRM protected objects.

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Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges

The Wellcome Trust has released Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In their report, published in March 2014, Björk and Solomon set out a series of scenarios for how funders might develop their approaches for supporting APCs. These cover both full open access journals (which operate exclusively by this model) and so-called hybrid journals (which offer this service for individual articles, while continuing to operate via the subscription model). The authors appraised three combined scenarios, which they conclude to be the most promising for further consideration.

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Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013

Ithaka S+R has released the Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In the Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013 report we examine how the leaders of academic libraries are approaching systemic changes in their environment and the opportunities and constraints they face in leading their organizations. While exploring key topics covered in our 2010 survey of library directors, such as strategic planning, collecting practices, and library services, in 2013 we also introduced a new emphasis on organizational dynamics, leadership issues, and undergraduate services.

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AV Digitisation and Digital Preservation TechWatch Report #01

The PrestoCentre has released the AV Digitisation and Digital Preservation TechWatch Report #01.

Here's an excerpt:

This first TechWatch Report has been written by members of PrestoCentre involved in the Presto4U project and was compiled through meetings they had with specialist technology vendors and researchers late 2013.

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Geospatial Data Stewardship: Key Online Resources

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance has released Geospatial Data Stewardship: Key Online Resources.

Here's an excerpt:

This document lists online resources that highlight key concepts and practices supporting the preservation and stewardship of digital geospatial data and information. GIS practitioners take the initial preservation actions in the decisions they make regarding data creation and management. Librarians, archivists and museum professionals are often called on to support access and the long-term historical and temporal analysis of these same materials. The resources below offer a starting point to methods, tools and approaches across the information lifecycle to assist in understanding current best practices in the stewardship of geospatial data.

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The Web at 25 in the U.S.

The Pew Research Center has released The Web at 25 in the U.S..

Here's an excerpt:

In a new national survey to mark the 25th anniversary of the Web, Pew Research finds further confirmation of the incredible spread and impact of the internet:

Adoption: 87% of American adults now use the internet, with near-saturation usage among those living in households earning $75,000 or more (99%), young adults ages 18-29 (97%), and those with college degrees (97%). Fully 68% of adults connect to the internet with mobile devices like smartphones or tablet computers. . . .

Impact: Asked for their overall judgment about the impact of the internet, toting up all the pluses and minuses of connected life, the public's verdict is overwhelmingly positive:

  • 90% of internet users say the internet has been a good thing for them personally and only 6% say it has been a bad thing, while 3% volunteer that it has been some of both.
  • 76% of internet users say the internet has been a good thing for society, while 15% say it has been a bad thing and 8% say it has been equally good and bad.

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Participatory Design in Academic Libraries: New Reports and Findings

The Council on Library and Information Resources has released Participatory Design in Academic Libraries: New Reports and Findings.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report looks at how staff at eight academic institutions gained new insight about how students and faculty use their libraries, and how the staff are using these findings to improve library technologies, space, and services.

Participatory design is a relatively recent approach to understanding library user behavior. It is based on techniques used in anthropological and ethnographic observation. The report's editor, anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster, led several participatory design workshops for CLIR from 2007 to 2013.

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The Benefits and Risks of the PDF/A-3 File Format for Archival Institutions

The NDSA has released The Benefits and Risks of the PDF/A-3 File Format for Archival Institutions.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report takes a measured look at the costs and benefits of the widespread use of the PDF/A-3 format, especially as it effects content arriving in collecting institutions. It provides background on the technical development of the specification, identifies specific scenarios under which the format might be used and suggests policy prescriptions for collecting institutions to consider.

For example, the report suggests that for memory institutions, the acceptance of embedded files in PDF/A documents would depend on very specific protocols between depositors and archival repositories that clarify acceptable embedded formats and define workflows that guarantee that the relationship between the PDF document and any embedded files is fully understood by the archival institution.

Additionally, the report notes that the complexity of the PDF format and the wide variance in PDF rendering implementations and creating applications suggests that PDF/A-3 may be appropriate for use in controlled workflows, but may not be an appropriate choice as a general-purpose bundling format.

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NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition

The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative have released the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This eleventh edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning

.

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Fixing the Broken Textbooks Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives

The U.S. PIRG Education Fund has released Fixing the Broken Textbooks Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today, a survey released by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund shows that 65% of student consumers have opted out of buying a college textbook due to its high price, and of those students, 94% they suffer academically.

Over the past decade, college textbook prices have increased by 82%, or at three times the rate of inflation. . . .

Open textbooks are faculty-written and peer-reviewed like traditional textbooks, but they are published under an open license, meaning they are free online, free to download, and affordable in print. 82% of survey respondents said they would do significantly better in a course if the textbook were free online and a hard copy was optional, which is exactly how open textbooks work.

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