Category: Research Libraries

Research Data Services in Europe’s Academic Research Libraries

LIBER has released Research Data Services in Europe's Academic Research Libraries by Carol Tenopir et al.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Almost all of Europe's academic research libraries are working collaboratively, within and outside of their institutions, to help ensure that the scientific data of today is curated properly, so it can be accessed, shared and reused by future generations. . . .

The survey—which reflects answers from a representative sample of research libraries in 22 countries across Europe—also revealed that:

  • Libraries are currently offering more consultative-type RDS services (eg. how to find information on Data Management Plans, metadata standards, or data citation practices) than technological services (eg. own storage solutions);
  • Less than half of libraries say their institutions currently have policies relating to RDS;
  • Two-thirds of library directors express strongly that libraries need to offer RDS to remain relevant.

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"Developments in Research Data Management in Academic Libraries: towards an Understanding of Research Data Service Maturity"

Andrew M. Cox et al. have self-archived "Developments in Research Data Management in Academic Libraries: towards an Understanding of Research Data Service Maturity."

Here's an excerpt:

This paper reports an international study of research data management (RDM) activities, services and capabilities in higher education libraries. It presents the results of a survey covering higher education libraries in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the UK. The results indicate that libraries have provided leadership in RDM, particularly in advocacy and policy development. Service development is still limited, focused especially on advisory and consultancy services (such as data management planning support and data-related training), rather than technical services (such as provision of a data catalogue, and curation of active data). Data curation skills development is underway in libraries, but skills and capabilities are not consistently in place and remain a concern. Other major challenges include resourcing, working with other support services, and achieving 'buy in' from researchers and senior managers.

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"ARL Membership Convenes in Washington, DC, for Fall 2016 Meeting"

ARL has released "ARL Membership Convenes in Washington, DC, for Fall 2016 Meeting. "

Here's an excerpt:

Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member representatives, ARL leadership fellows, staff, and guests gathered in Washington, DC, on Tuesday-Wednesday, September 27-28, 2016, for the 169th Association Meeting. All available presentation slides are linked from the speakers' names or session titles in the following summary of the meeting.

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"New University Presses in the UK: Accessing a Mission"

Andrew Lockett and Lara Speicher have published "New University Presses in the UK: Accessing a Mission" in Learned Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

In the space of just a year, five new university presses were launched in the UK. Although very different in size and stages of development, all but one were launched first and foremost as open access presses, based in or supported by their university's library. Why should there have been such a significant flurry of activity in such a short space of time, and what can the stated objectives and activities of these presses tell us about the current UK scholarly publishing environment? To answer some of those questions, this article looks back to the original mission of the founding university presses, examines the policy and funding environments in which the new presses are operating, looks at overseas developments in recent years for comparison, and concludes with a review of the challenges these young presses face as well as the benefits all university presses, but particularly open access ones, can confer to their institutions.

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"Why Marriage Matters: A North American Perspective on Press/Library Partnerships"

Charles Watkinson has published "Why Marriage Matters: A North American Perspective on Press/Library Partnerships" in Learned Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

Key points

  • Around 30% of campus-based members of the Association of American University Presses now report to libraries, more than double the number 5 years ago.
  • Beyond reporting relationships, physical collocation and joint strategic planning characterize the most integrated press/library partnerships.
  • The main mutual advantages of deep press/library collaboration are economic efficiency, greater relevance to parent institutions, and an increased capacity to engage with the changing needs of authors in the digital age.
  • There is emerging interest in collaboration at scale among libraries and presses that may extend the impact of press/library collaboration beyond single institutions.

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"Library Collections in the Life of the User: Two Directions"

Lorcan Dempsey has published "Library Collections in the Life of the User: Two Directions" in .

Here's an excerpt:

The paper considers how the changing nature of research in digital environments is reshaping the nature of library collections and services in academic and research libraries. It describes two central directions, each a response to the centrality of the user in a network environment. First, the library has an increasing role in managing the research and other outputs of the university (the inside-out collection). Second, the library is facilitating access to a broader range of local, external and collaborative resources organized around user needs (the facilitated collection).

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"SCOAP3 Journals Double Downloads"

SCOAP3 has released "SCOAP3 Journals Double Downloads."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The four largest journals participating in SCOAP3, two published by Elsevier and two by SpringerNature in partnership with the Italian Physical Society (SIF), and the Italian Institute for Advanced Studies (SISSA) have now analysed their logs to understand the impact of SCOAP3.

Elsevier announced that downloads to their two journals, Physics Letters B and Nuclear Physics B have doubled since they became Open Access at the start of SCOAP3 in January 2014. This increase is remarkable as SCOAP3 covers the most recent 3,500 articles in the journals, while most of the historic content of over 77,000 articles, is available to subscribers.

SpringerNature announced that since January 2014 they have observed a doubling of downloads across their two learned-society journals participating in SCOAP3: European Physical Journal C and the Journal of High Energy Physics.

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Vice Provost & University Librarian at Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis is recruiting a Vice Provost & University Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Vice Provost and University Librarian oversees 142 staff members and is responsible for an annual budget of $23 million. The libraries' organization includes 6 Associate University Librarians, 28 subject librarians, and 8 curators/archivists.

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"What Kind of World Is STM Living In?

The League of European Research Universities has released What Kind of World Is STM Living In.

Here's an excerpt:

4 September saw the International Association of STM publishers (STM) issue a response to the EC's proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which flies in the face of LERU's views contained in its own Press Release. Amongst other things, STM is calling for the extension of ancillary copyright to cover academic publishing, implying that they will take legal action if this does not happen. . . . Ancillary copyright in this case would extend copyright protection, not allowing academics and universities freely to link to/use the world of information on the Internet, placing publishers in control of the information environment. LERU rejects this as counter to academic freedom and to the EC's vison for Open Science.

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"Collaborative Academic Library Digital Collections Post-Cambridge University Press, HathiTrust and Google Decisions on Fair Use"

Michelle M. Wu has published "Collaborative Academic Library Digital Collections Post-Cambridge University Press, HathiTrust and Google Decisions on Fair Use" in the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic libraries face numerous stressors as they seek to meet the needs of their users through technological advances while adhering to copyright laws. This paper seeks to explore one specific proposal to balance these interests, the impact of recent decisions on its viability, and the copyright challenges that remain after these decisions

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"More than a House of Cards: Developing a Firm Foundation for Streaming Media and Consumer-Licensed Content in the Library"

William Cross has published "More than a House of Cards: Developing a Firm Foundation for Streaming Media and Consumer-Licensed Content in the Library" in the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship..

Here's an excerpt:

This article will introduce traditional library practice for licensing multimedia content and discuss the way that consumer-licensing and streaming services disrupt that practice. Sections II and III describe the statutory copyright regime designed by Congress to facilitate the socially-valuable work done by libraries and the impact of the move from ownership to licensed content. Collecting multimedia materials has always presented special legal challenges for libraries, particularly as licensed content has replaced the traditional practice of purchasing and circulation based on the first sale doctrine. These issues have grown even more complex as streaming services like Netflix and Amazon and video game downloads through services like Steam have come to dominate the landscape. Section IV will describe the way that consumer-licensed materials, which not only remove the ownership that undergirds library practice, but also the ability to negotiate for library use, imperil the congressionally-designed balance. Section V will present a path forward for libraries to develop robust, cutting-edge collections that reflect a sophisticated understanding of the contractual and copyright issues at play.

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"Publishers Appeal GSU Copyright Case"

Andrew Albanese has published "Publishers Appeal GSU Copyright Case" in Publishers Weekly.

Here's an excerpt:

Following their second district court loss in eight years of litigation, the publisher plaintiffs in Cambridge University Press vs. Patton (known commonly as the GSU e-reserves case) have again appealed the case.

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"Write up! A Study of Copyright Information on Library-Published Journals"

Melanie Schlosser has published "Write up! A Study of Copyright Information on Library-Published Journals" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Libraries have a mission to educate users about copyright, and library publishing staff are often involved in that work. This article investigates a concrete point of intersection between the two areas—copyright statements on library-published journals. METHODS Journals published by members of the Library Publishing Coalition were examined for open access status, type and placement of copyright information, copyright ownership, and open licensing. RESULTS Journals in the sample were overwhelmingly (93%) open access. 80% presented copyright information of some kind, but only 30% of those included it at both the journal and the article level. Open licensing was present in 38% of the journals, and the most common ownership scenario was the author retaining copyright while granting a nonexclusive license to the journal or publisher. 9% of the sample journals included two or more conflicting rights statements. DISCUSSION 76% of the journals did not consistently provide accurate, easily-accessible rights information, and numerous problems were found with the use of open licensing, including conflicting licenses, incomplete licenses, and licenses not appearing at the article level. CONCLUSION Recommendations include presenting full copyright and licensing information at both the journal and the article level, careful use of open licenses, and publicly-available author agreements. External Data or Supplements:

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"Dr. Carla Hayden to Serve as the Next Librarian of Congress"

ALA has released "Dr. Carla Hayden to Serve as the Next Librarian of Congress."

Here's an excerpt:

Today the Senate approved the nomination of Dr. Carla Hayden to serve as the nation's 14th Librarian of Congress. Dr. Hayden, American Library Association (ALA) past president and director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, is the first female and the first African American to lead the Library of Congress. She also is the first professional librarian to be confirmed in more than 60 years.

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"ACRL Issues Policy Statement on Open Access to Scholarship by Academic Librarians"

Kara Malenfant has published "ACRL Issues Policy Statement on Open Access to Scholarship by Academic Librarians" in ACRL Insider.

Here's an excerpt:

In support of broad and timely dissemination of library and information science scholarship, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) encourages academic librarians to publish in open access journals. When academic librarians choose to publish in subscription-based journals, ACRL recommends a standard practice of depositing the final accepted manuscript in a repository to make that version openly accessible.

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"Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries"

Shea-Tinn Yeh et al. have published "Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

The Library Technology Department at the University of Denver was tasked with implementing an Islandora open-source framework for its Special Collections Department because the current host was being retired. Although Islandora's front-end is tailored for librarians, its back-end is complex, and built upon many subsystems. A failure in any of the subsystems guarantees a domino effect and a chain reaction which can obfuscate the root cause of the issue. Though product documentation and support communication channels exist, many of the problems we faced were unique to our specific hardware and software configuration. The development team had to learn fast, and be innovative, agile, and systematic in order to work with such a complicated system. This article describes the tactics used in this repository development effort, as well as the library's stakeholder relationship management.

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"Assessing the User Experience of E-Books in Academic Libraries"

College & Research Libraries has released an e-print of "Assessing the User Experience of E-Books in Academic Libraries" by Tao Zhang, Xi Niu and Marlen Proman.

Here's an excerpt:

We report findings from an assessment of e-book user experience (search and information seeking) from usage data and user tests. The usage data showed that most reading sessions were brief and focused on certain pages, suggesting that users mainly use e-books to find specific information. The user tests found that participants tended to use default keyword search and browse the search results. Experience levels with e-books and features of e-book platforms influenced users' information seeking in e-books. The assessment results have significant implications for designing e-book features to support users' reading strategies and help libraries create a consistent user experience.

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Emory University Receives Grant for Digital Publishing Services for Humanities Faculty

Emory University has been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its Digital Publishing Services for Humanities Faculty project.

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"Rewarding Open Access Scholarship in Promotion And Tenure: Driving Institutional Change"

Jere Odell, Heather Coates, and Kristi Palmer have published "Rewarding Open Access Scholarship in Promotion And Tenure: Driving Institutional Change" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Here we describe the efforts of one institution, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), to reward OA scholarship in the P&T process. With librarians as advocates, participants, and change agents, IUPUI has become one of the first to include OA as a value in its P&T guidelines.

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"Measuring the Impact of Digitized Theses: A Case Study from the London School of Economics"

Linda Bennett and Dimity Flanagan have published "Measuring the Impact of Digitized Theses: A Case Study from the London School of Economics" in Insights: the UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This study tests the assertion that the online dissemination of theses has a positive impact on the research profile of the institution and sets out to gain a greater understanding of how digital theses fit into the scholarly resources landscape. The year-long study combined primary and secondary research and was undertaken with the London School of Economics, based on its programme of theses digitization. The paper outlines the types of metrics an institution may use to measure the impact of its corpus of digitized dissertations and examines how these metrics may be generated. Findings included: a higher volume of theses attracts more traffic; Google's strong indexing capabilities make it the most frequently used tool for discovery of digital theses; primary conclusions are that there is little correlation between downloads and citations of digitized theses; having a digital thesis collection enhances the reputation of the institution; although they recognize that digital theses are a valuable research tool, postgraduates and academics widely believe that making them available affects future publication opportunities; building and maintaining a digital thesis collection makes considerable 'hidden' work for librarians in terms of training about copyright and permissions. Some conclusions: better statistics are needed, especially of citations; institutions need to promote digital thesis collections better; more work needs to be done on whether digitizing theses impairs authors' chances of traditional publication and on how digital theses affect and are affected by the open access movement.

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"Gathering the Needles: Evaluating the Impact of Gold Open Access Content with Traditional Subscription Journals"

Alison Bobal and Jill Emery have published "Gathering the Needles: Evaluating the Impact of Gold Open Access Content with Traditional Subscription Journals" in Insights: the UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Utilizing the Project COUNTER Release 4 JR1-GOA report, two librarians explore these data in comparison to journal package subscriptions represented via the JR1 reports. This paper outlines the methodology and study undertaken at the Portland State University Library and the University of Nebraska Medical Center Library using these reports for the first time. The initial outcomes of the study are provided in various Tables for 2014 and 2015. The intent of the study was to provide both institutions with a baseline from which to do further study. In addition, some ideas are given for how these reports can be used in vendor negotiations going forward.

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"Rethinking Authentication, Revamping the Business"

Roger C. Schonfeld has published "Rethinking Authentication, Revamping the Business" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

While I have heard these arguments on and off this year, the meeting hosted by CCC [Copyright Clearance Center] made abundantly clear that there is great dissatisfaction with IP-based authentication across the community. Publishers want to move away from it due to their piracy concerns, their desire to improve seamlessness for researchers, and their expectations about the value they can offer through greater personalization. . . . And at least some academic librarians want to move away from it because of the poor user experience, especially with off-site access. Taking aim at IP authentication and proxy servers has become all the rage. But what might supplant them?

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"The Academic Data Librarian Profession in Canada: History and Future Directions"

S. Vincent Gray and Elizabeth Hill have self-archived "The Academic Data Librarian Profession in Canada: History and Future Directions."

Here's an excerpt:

From the 1970s onward, Canadians have been active in developing services and establishing structures to support the dissemination of data. In recent years the academic data profession in Canada has largely developed around access to data from the national statistics agency, Statistics Canada, and around the services which have been developed to permit access to these data. This chapter will provide a historical background for these activities and explain how current and emerging trends continue to affect the profession.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 6. Over 560 works. Over 200 works added. Live links. Selected abstracts. OA. CC-BY License. Covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, repositories, provenance, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

Libraries as Publishers in the Early 1990s

In recent years, there has been an upsurge in interest in academic and other types libraries acting as publishers and considerable discussion about how this will transform them.

What is sometimes lost in the excitement over the library publishing movement is historical context: this trend started over a quarter century ago at the dawn of the Internet age. While most e-journals published in the early 1990s were produced by scholars acting as digital publishers, at least two academic libraries established formal digital publishing programs in this period: the University of Houston Libraries and the Virginia Tech Libraries.

In August 1989, the Director of the University of Houston Libraries, Robin N. Downes, authorized the establishment and announcement of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review (PACS Review), the first open access journal in the field of library and information science. The journal began publication in January 1990, became refereed in November 1991, and ceased publication in August 2000. Authors retained the copyright to PACS Review articles. Unrestricted copying of PACS Review articles was permitted for educational, noncommercial use by academic computer centers, individual scholars, and libraries.

Only partial use statistics are available for the journal. It was initially distributed using the LISTSERV software, and LISTSERV use statistics were not tallied. From 1994 through 1996, the journal received over 81,000 Gopher requests. From March 1995 through 2005, the journal received over 3.5 file requests via the Web.

In October 1996, Robin N. Downes authorized the establishment of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, an open access, updated electronic book that provided references to new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Between October 1996 and October 2006, 64 versions of the e-book were published by the University of Houston Libraries. There were over six million file requests for it during this period.

In the fall of 1989, Virginia Tech's Vice President for Information Systems, Dr. Robert Heterick, established the Scholarly Communications Project. The project was subsequently moved to the University Libraries, and it was directed by Lon Savage until December 1993, when Gail McMillan took over.

Since 1990, the Virginia Tech Libraries have published a number of e-journals, some of which were previously published by other entities prior to being migrated to the Libraries. Notably, the Scholarly Communications Project published the first issue of The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research in November 1990. The journal was published in cooperation with Virginia Tech's Department of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management. It ceased publication in 1998. It is described in "The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research."

The Virginia Tech Libraries' Scholarly Communication department currently publishes e-journals, conference proceedings, and open educational resources.

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"Open Access, Innovation, and Research Infrastructure"

Benedikt Fecher and Gert G. Wagner have published "Open Access, Innovation, and Research Infrastructure" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

In this article we argue that the current endeavors to achieve open access in scientific literature require a discussion about innovation in scholarly publishing and research infrastructure. Drawing on path dependence theory and addressing different open access (OA) models and recent political endeavors, we argue that academia is once again running the risk of outsourcing the organization of its content.

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