Category: Scholarly Communication

Want to Support Open Access? Volunteer for the Open Access Tracking Project

The Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) provides a constant stream of up-to-date information about open access issues in a primary feed and in a number of secondary feeds that focus on specialized OA subtopics. It offers the primary feed in a variety of distribution options, including email, Google+, HTML, RSS, Twitter, and others. It is an invaluable source of information for open access advocates, research data specialists, and scholarly communication specialists, and it provides important support for the open access movement as a whole.

Based at the Harvard Open Access Project, the OATP was launched by Peter Suber. Suber's SPARC Open Access Newsletter and his Free Online Scholarship Newsletter played an important part in getting the open access movement off the ground. The OATP continues the mission of those groundbreaking publications using the open source TagTeam software, which was developed for the OATP.

Launched with the help of grant funding, the OATP will enter a new an all-volunteer phase at the end of August 2018. To continue this crowd-sourced project, new volunteers are needed. You can help move the OA agenda forward by being one of them. This wiki page explains how you can join the team and start tagging.

By volunteering just a bit of time to the OATP, you can make a significant difference.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Mary-Jo Romaniuk Named Vice-Provost for Libraries and Cultural Resources at University of Calgary

Mary-Jo Romaniuk has been named Vice-Provost for Libraries and Cultural Resources at University of Calgary.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Dr. Romaniuk joins UCalgary from the University of Manitoba, where she has been university librarian since 2014. . . . In her role at University of Manitoba, she initiated master planning to reinvest in their facilities, and worked collaboratively with faculties to reimagine more diverse library spaces. With a focus on user needs, she added technology and new services to create memorable experiences for new and returning students.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Implications of the Reversal of Net Neutrality Rules and Next Steps to Protect the Open Internet"

Krista L. Cox has published "Implications of the Reversal of Net Neutrality Rules and Next Steps to Protect the Open Internet" in Research Library Issues.

Here's an excerpt:

Ultimately, the best outcome for strong net neutrality protections would be for the DC Circuit—and the Supreme Court, should it agree to review whatever decision comes out of the lower court—to overturn the FCC’s repeal of its Open Internet Order. Even if Congress acts under the Congressional Review Act, President Trump would certainly not sign the resolution, making repeal of the FCC’s new order through that mechanism highly unlikely. Any legislative solution in Congress, while it may provide stronger protections than the FCC's new approach, is unlikely to reach the full extent of protections from the 2015 order. Additionally, although states and municipalities can blunt the effect of the FCC's repudiation of net neutrality regulations, this approach offers a mere piecemeal solution that will result in, at best, a patchwork of net neutrality rules that protects users in some states, but not in others.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Big Deal Cancellation Tracking

SPARC has released Big Deal Cancellation Tracking.

Here's an excerpt:

The "big deal" has often been compared to a cable or satellite TV package, an apt analogy insofar as the customer cannot choose to pass on content that is of no interest, with initial price breaks quickly giving way to locked-in increases. Much like the millions of consumers who have chosen to "cut the cord", a growing number of libraries are electing to critically appraise these big deals by assessing their collections, the value for money they are receiving from these packages, and how they might more strategically spend their finite collections resources. . . .

Among the institutions that have cancelled big deals are the following. This list is by no means comprehensive.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Digital Publishing Lead at George Mason University

George Mason University is recruiting a Digital Publishing Lead.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

George Mason University Libraries is seeking a dynamic, innovative, and service-oriented individual to lead efforts in management of digital publishing platforms and tools for Mason Publishing and the George Mason University Press. Reporting to the director of Mason Publishing/GMU Press, the digital publishing lead will interact with faculty, students, and library staff in supporting digital publishing platforms, software, and other publishing tools.

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Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing

Ithaka S+R has released Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing.

Here's an excerpt:

There is widespread frustration within the academic library community with the seemingly uncontrollable price increases of e-resources, especially of licensed bundles of scholarly journals. The scholarly communications movement has vastly expanded academic and indeed public access to scholarly content. Yet prices for certain scholarly resources continue to outpace budget increases, and librarians do not feel in control of budgets and pricing. What if libraries found ways to bring together the whole library behind the objective of stabilizing or reducing what they pay?

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"De-Centering and Recentering Digital Scholarship: A Manifesto"

Carolyn Moritz et al. have self-archived "De-Centering and Recentering Digital Scholarship: A Manifesto."

Here's an excerpt:

Digital scholarship is an evolving area of librarianship. In this piece we propose 10 theses, statements about what this kind of work DOES, rather than trying to define with it IS. We believe that digitally-inflected research and learning, and the characteristics they employ, are essential to the recentering of our profession's position in/across the academy. We also believe that the "digital scholarship center" has served its time, and that the activities and models for digital scholarship work are core to librarianship. This manifesto is meant to serve as a starting point for a necessary discussion, not an end-all, be-all. We hope others will write and share counter-manifestos, passionate responses, or affirming statements.

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Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Agriculture Scholars

Ithaka S+R has released Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Agriculture Scholars.

Here's an excerpt:

Agriculture scholars report relatively low challenges with digital discovery and access, particularly in contrast to information management, in which a lack of services and support, coupled with gaps in responsibility, lead scholars to utilize idiosyncratic approaches to the detriment of long-term preservation. While they have a wealth of options for disseminating their scholarship, agriculture scholars struggle with conveying the underlying findings and importance of their research to wider audiences.

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Global Digital Humanities Librarian at Ohio State University

Ohio State University is recruiting a Global Digital Humanities Librarian (two-year residency).

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

As a member of the Research Services and Area Studies teams, the Resident will connect faculty and students in international and area studies departments with the Libraries’ growing digital humanities services through the Research Commons. The Resident will work collaboratively with colleagues across the Libraries to support this academic community throughout the research lifecycle from content generation/acquisition to data curation.

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"A Century of Science: Globalization of Scientific Collaborations, Citations, and Innovations"

Yuxiao Dong, Hao Ma, Zhihong Shen, and Kuansan Wang have self-archived "A Century of Science: Globalization of Scientific Collaborations, Citations, and Innovations."

Here's an excerpt:

In this work, we study the evolution of scientific development over the past century by presenting an anatomy of 89 million digitalized papers published between 1900 and 2015. We find that science has benefited from the shift from individual work to collaborative effort, with over 90% of the world-leading innovations generated by collaborations in this century, nearly four times higher than they were in the 1900s. We discover that rather than the frequent myopic- and self-referencing that was common in the early 20th century, modern scientists instead tend to look for literature further back and farther around. Finally, we also observe the globalization of scientific development from 1900 to 2015, including 25-fold and 7-fold increases in international collaborations and citations, respectively, as well as a dramatic decline in the dominant accumulation of citations by the US, the UK, and Germany, from 95% to 50% over the same period.

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"Updating the Agenda for Academic Libraries and Scholarly Communications"

Clifford Lynch has published "Updating the Agenda for Academic Libraries and Scholarly Communications" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This issue of C&RL is focused on scholarly communication, and it seems appropriate, in this invited guest editorial, to step back and examine the broader agenda that academic and research libraries need to consider today in engaging with scholarly communications as a way of framing the issue. My view is that this agenda is ripe for re-thinking. The overall environment has changed significantly in the last few years, underscoring the growing irrelevance of some long-held ideas, and at the same time, clearly identifying new and urgent priorities. What I hope to do here is to summarize very succinctly my thoughts on the most pressing issues and the areas most needing reconsideration. Articles in this issue touch upon aspects of many of these topics; I hope that future authors may also find topical inspirations here.

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"Supporting Scholarly Communication: Considerations for Library Leadership"

Irene M. H. Herold has published "Supporting Scholarly Communication: Considerations for Library Leadership" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Starting from the question of what library leaders can do, I approach the topic of supporting scholarly communication from three perspectives: mentorship, effective partnerships, and the leadership role. I reviewed past columns from a leadership perspective. I also asked some of my "thought leader" colleagues what they saw as important trends and considerations.

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"Scholarly Use of Social Media and Altmetrics: A Review of the Literature"

Cassidy R. Sugimoto et al. have self-archived "Scholarly Use of Social Media and Altmetrics: A Review of the Literature."

Here's an excerpt:

This review provides an extensive account of the state-of-the art in both scholarly use of social media and altmetrics. The review consists of two main parts: the first examines the use of social media in academia, examining the various functions these platforms have in the scholarly communication process and the factors that affect this use. The second part reviews empirical studies of altmetrics, discussing the various interpretations of altmetrics, data collection and methodological limitations, and differences according to platform. The review ends with a critical discussion of the implications of this transformation in the scholarly communication system.

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"What Motivates Authors of Scholarly Articles? The Importance of Journal Attributes and Potential Audience on Publication Choice"

Carol Tenopir et al. have published "What Motivates Authors of Scholarly Articles? The Importance of Journal Attributes and Potential Audience on Publication Choice" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

In this article we examine what motivations influence academic authors in selecting a journal in which to publish. A survey was sent to approximately 15,000 faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers at four large North American research universities with a response rate of 14.4% (n = 2021). Respondents were asked to rate how eight different journal attributes and five different audiences influence their choice of publication output. Within the sample, the most highly rated attributes are quality and reputation of journal and fit with the scope of the journal; open access is the least important attribute. Researchers at other research-intensive institutions are considered the most important audience, while the general public is the least important. There are significant differences across subject disciplines and position types. Our findings have implications for understanding the adoption of open access publishing models.

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"A Two-Sided Academic Landscape: Portrait of Highly-Cited Documents in Google Scholar (1950-2013)"

Alberto Martin-Martin et al. have self-archived "A Two-Sided Academic Landscape: Portrait of Highly-Cited Documents in Google Scholar (1950-2013)."

Here's an excerpt:

Since the existence of a full-text link does not guarantee the disposal of the full-text (some links actually refer to publisher's abstracts), the results (40% of the documents had a free full-text link) might be somewhat overestimated. In any case, these values are consistent with those published by Archambault et al. (2013), who found that over 40% of the articles from their sample were freely accessible; higher than those by Khabsa and Giles (2014) and Björk et al. (2010), who found only a 24% and 20.4% of open access documents respectively; and much lower than Jamali and Nabavi (2015) and Pitol and De Groote (2014), who found 61.1% and 70% respectively.

The different nature of the samples makes it difficult to draw comparisons among these studies. Nonetheless, the sample used in this study (64,000 documents) is the largest ever used to date.

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All PLoS Journals Added to Directory of Open Access Journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals now includes all PLoS Journals.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Finally, after saying: "It's coming" for almost a year, DOAJ has added the entire PLoS catalogue to DOAJ. A total of 182,500 articles were added and the harvester is set to go out and collect new articles at 5.30am every morning. The harvester collects the metadata from Europe PMC.

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UK Survey of Academics 2015

Ithaka S+R has released UK Survey of Academics 2015.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is the second Ithaka S+R / Jisc / RLUK survey of UK academics. It asks of the UK research community their views on resource discovery, their use of these resources (online and digital), attitudes to research data management, and much more. It provides a powerful insight into how researchers view their own behaviour and the research environment within the UK today.

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National Digital Stewardship Residents (Five)

The Library of Congress and the Institute of Museum and Library Services are recruiting five National Digital Stewardship Residents.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) is a collaborative field experience program developed by The Library of Congress and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). This will be the third cohort of residents based in Washington, D.C. The program aims to develop a community of professionals in the dynamic field of digital stewardship.

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"Science and Technology Librarians: User Engagement and Outreach Activities in the Area of Scholarly Communication"

Lutishoor Salisbury and Julie Speer have published "Science and Technology Librarians: User Engagement and Outreach Activities in the Area of Scholarly Communication" in Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper highlights the findings of a survey completed by ACRL/STS members on scholarly communication issues. In particular it identifies the percentage of their daily activities that are spent in support of scholarly communication activities; extent of change of job responsibilities in the last five years; roles engaged in relating to scholarly communication including those that are formal responsibilities, those they are informally engaged in, or those with which they have no engagement. It highlights areas in the area of scholarly communication that STS members need to know more about or want to know more about. It presents the status of open access policies at members' institutions and the needs expressed by members about activities that STS or ACRL could undertake to help advance their work in the areas of scholarly communication.

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