DigitalKoans – Page 27 – What Is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading?

The Open Access Tracking Project Is Now 15 Years Old

Peter Suber has announced that the Open Access Tracking Project is now 15 years old. This project has made an invaluable contribution to the Open Access and Open Science movements. Readers are encouraged to considering joining it and posting new works of interest to it. Even occasional contributions are meaningful.

Here is a description of the project from its home page:

OATP is a crowd-sourced social-tagging project running on free software to capture news and comment on open access to research.

Its mission is (1) to create real-time alerts for OA-related news and comment, and (2) to organize knowledge of the field, by tag or subtopic, for easy searching and sharing.

OATP publishes a comprehensive primary feed of new OA developments, and hundreds of smaller secondary feeds on subtopics or subsets, for example, one feed for each project tag, one for each search, and one for each user-created boolean combination of its other feeds.

OATP runs on TagTeam, open-source software developed specifically for OATP and now available for open, tag-based research projects on any topic. See the OATP hub within TagTeam. TagTeam stores all OATP tag records for deduping, export, preservation, modification, and search. OATP started on Connotea and moved to TagTeam in September 2012.

Peter Suber launched OATP in April 2009, and wrote a full-length description of it in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter for May 2009. In mid-2011 OATP became part of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP).

https://tinyurl.com/m5ku5mxh

Licensing Librarian at University of California, Berkeley

Review and negotiate all UC Berkeley campus ("Tier 3") Library license agreements with publishers / vendors to reach favorable licensing terms, including on key issues like accessibility, fair use, text and data mining, artificial intelligence, privacy, and more.

Review and negotiate select UC multi-campus ("Tier 2") license agreements, and coordinate with other UC campuses as appropriate.

Assist the AUL for Scholarly Resources and the California Digital Library licensing team with UC systemwide ("Tier 1") licenses and licensing strategy.

https://tinyurl.com/ypt53pnk

"Benefits of Open Access to Researchers from Lower-Income Countries: A Global Analysis of Reference Patterns in 1980–2020"

The main objective of the open access (OA) movement is to make scientific literature freely available to everyone. This may be of particular importance to researchers in lower-income countries, who often face barriers due to high subscription costs. In this article, we address this issue by analysing over time the reference lists of scientific publications around the world. Our study focuses on key issues, including whether researchers from lower-income countries reference fewer publications in their research and how this trend evolves over time. We also investigate whether researchers from lower-income countries rely more on the literature that is openly available through different OA routes compared with other researchers. Our study revealed that the proportion of OA references has increased over time for all publications and country groups. However, publications from lower-income countries have seen a higher growth rate of OA-based references, suggesting that the emergence of OA publishing has been particularly advantageous to researchers in these countries.

https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515241245952

Open Publishing Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington

The Open Publishing Librarian is responsible for the IU Libraries’ Open Access (OA) journal publishing program, which publishes over 50 OA journals, including a number of student journals. This position serves as the primary liaison to editorial teams, conducts training and outreach, and supports the creation of new journals. The Open Publishing Librarian supports new journals with the creation of their journal and instructs them on the use of Open Journal System (OJS) and best practices for journal publishing. This position will work collaboratively with colleagues on other open publishing initiatives in the Libraries Scholarly Communication department and will coordinate and collaborate with Indiana University Press colleagues on journal publishing infrastructure and practices as a part of Indiana Publishing.

https://tinyurl.com/p6366u3h

Digital Scholarship and DigitalKoans Are Now 19 Years Old

Digital Scholarship and DigitalKoans were established on 4/20/2005. Digital Scholarship provides information and commentary about artificial intelligence, digital copyright, digital curation, open access, research data management, scholarly communication, and other digital information issues. Digital Scholarship is an open access noncommercial publisher. All of its publications are currently under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

DigitalKoans has published over 16,200 posts. Since 2008, over 5,600 job ads have been posted, with slightly over 4,000 of them for digital library jobs.

Digital Scholarship has published the following books and book supplements: the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (2005; published with the Association of Research Libraries), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition (2009), Digital Scholarship 2009 (2010), Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (2010), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 (2011), the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 (2011), the Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 (2011), the Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works (2012), the Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works, 2012 Supplement (2013), and the Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography (2021).

It has also published and updated the following bibliographies, webliographies, and weblogs: the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (1996-2011), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (2001-2013), the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography (2005-2021), the Google Books Bibliography (2005-2011), the Institutional Repository Bibliography (2009-2011), the Open Access Journals Bibliography (2010), the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography (2010-2011), the E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography (2011), the Digital Curation Resource Guide (2012), the Research Data Curation Bibliography (2012-2019), the Altmetrics Bibliography (2013), the Transforming Peer Review Bibliography (2014), the Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography (2018-2023), the Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography (2021), the Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography (2022), Digital Curation Certificate and Master’s Degree Programs (2023), the Academic Libraries and Research Data Management Bibliography (2023), and the Artificial Intelligence and Libraries Bibliography (2023).

Systems and Discovery Librarian at Flagler College

Administers all Library services accessed online.

Manages the life cycle of Library electronic resources, including maintaining relationships with vendors, setting up trials, and generating statistical data on Library database usage to drive decisions regarding updates to existing services and the purchase of new ones.

Administers the library services platform (FOLIO) and makes changes to values, parameters, and system preferences, including circulation rules and patron uploads.

Manages and supports the Library’s Discovery layer (EBSCO Discovery Service – EDS), link resolver (EBSCO Full-Text Finder), and single-sign-on authentication system (OpenAthens).

https://tinyurl.com/2f29xnwv

"Preprints, Journals and Openness: Disentangling Goals and Incentives "

I would argue that private funders such as the Gates Foundation or the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) could provide material support through grants and policies for quality peer review, baking peer review into selection of grantees. Such an approach will require careful structures and mechanisms for reviewer selection, and measures of success, or we may run the risk of creating further inequities. Mind you, in many fields it is just hard to find good reviewers prepared to put in the effort required for a considered, thoughtful review. Societies, such as my own, could also consider material ways to support peer review more actively — a philosophical and practical approach to raising the profile of peer review at an early stage in the life of a researcher.

https://tinyurl.com/ymckyb9x

Digital and User Services Coordinator at University of Cambridge

As the Digital and User Services Coordinator, you will bring expertise and experience to help identify service improvements to enhance the staff, student, and reader experience.

You will work across a variety of library systems and services liaising with different staff, teams, and libraries providing support and liaising with key stakeholders on a range of user-facing digital library services (Springshare Suite, Lean Library, ThirdIron products).

You will also create a sustainable support structure for the management of access to licensed online resources, assisting users with authentication issues, training colleagues and maintaining a “white” list for remote access.

https://tinyurl.com/2tmbxw4r

"Author Granted Copyright over Book with AI-Generated Text—with a Twist"

The USCO’s notice granting Shupe copyright registration of her book does not recognize her as author of the whole text as is conventional for written works. Instead she is considered the author of the "selection, coordination, and arrangement of text generated by artificial intelligence." This means no one can copy the book without permission, but the actual sentences and paragraphs themselves are not copyrighted and could theoretically be rearranged and republished as a different book.

https://tinyurl.com/bd97jbw6

Web Designer/User Researcher at University of Chicago

Performs graphic design and user research for UChicagoNODE, a web portal that unifies access to collections and archives at the University of Chicago.

https://tinyurl.com/4fmsz8xx

"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

Data Science Facilitator at University of Wisconsin–Madison

More specifically, the Facilitator will consult with researchers on campus to recommend appropriate solutions to data science problems impeding their research, where solution pathways for the researcher will consider resources on campus and beyond, including existing learning resources, data management services, computing resources, consultations and collaboration with data science and computational methods experts, identification and pursuit of funding opportunities, and/or pathways for leveraging effort from campus data science teams and associated faculty. The Facilitator will also design workshops and teach existing trainings to help researchers learn data analysis tools and automation that will make their research more scalable and reproducible.

https://tinyurl.com/3ahthzfr

Predatory Publishing: "The Publication Facts Label: A Public and Professional Guide for Research Articles"

These two questions—on public concerns over misinformation and academic apprehensions over journal and article quality—reflect a spirit of distrust that we, as former school teachers now involved in scholarly publishing, have felt was too important an instructional opportunity for us to leave to others. As a result, we are prototyping an educational strategy to help readers, both the "common reader, " as Virginia Woolf named them (1925) and researchers, learn a little more about what to make of work in the unfamiliar journals that come to their attention.

We [John Willinsky and Daniel Pimentel] are calling it a publication facts label (PFL). It is intended to appear with each research article. It emulates the look and feel of the Nutrition Facts label on food products in the United States. At this point in its development, the PFL draws data and links from the journal’s publishing platform on eight critical elements for scholarly publishing and presents to readers: (a) the publisher’s identity; (b) the journal’s scholarly editorial oversight; (c) the journal’s article acceptance rate; (d) the indexing of the journal; (e) the article’s number of peer reviewers and reviewer backgrounds; (f) the article authors’ competing interests; (g) the research study’s data availability; and (h) the funders of the research (Fig. 1).

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1599

Software Developer at The University of Texas at Austin

Write, test and debug programming for UTL systems.

Provide operational and customer support for UTL services, including monitoring systems, providing customer service, issue investigation, and documentation.

Participate as an active member of one or more project teams. Tasks may include planning and monitoring of project tasks, communicating project status to stakeholders, and ensuring timely completion of milestones. Work collaboratively with customers and stakeholders to elicit requirements, identify functional and technical solutions, and investigate and resolve issues.

https://tinyurl.com/bdfadj7b

"Launch of UPLOpen.com: Revolutionizing Access to Open Knowledge and Empowering Global Sustainability Goals"

In an ambitious move to democratize access to scholarly knowledge and advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), the De Gruyter eBound Foundation is thrilled to unveil UPLOpen.com, a product of University Press Library Open (UPLO), an innovative website that curates high-quality, open access scholarship from the world’s leading university presses. . . .

At launch, UPLOpen.com proudly hosts more than 350 open access books from over thirty university presses, including two landmark collections: Luminos, from the University of California Press, and TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), a pilot project of the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and Association of University Presses (AUPresses), which concluded in 2022 but continues to release new titles. By mid-2024, the number of titles hosted on UPLOpen.com is expected to exceed 2,500, with further plans for significant growth already in motion for 2025 and beyond.

https://tinyurl.com/5ftcmx2p

Chief, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center

The Chief is a visionary, people-focused leader with broad responsibility for the NAVCC’s overall strategic direction. This includes setting strategic objectives aligning the activities of its curatorial units and business operations to the Library’s strategic plan, as well as guiding outreach initiatives that contribute leadership to audiovisual preservation communities at home and abroad. The Chief leads change by overseeing the strategic evolution of the division’s programs and services, and by partnering to chart its technical direction. . . .

The incumbent is responsible for effective oversight of NAVCC operations through the Assistant Chief, and direct oversight for all aspects of curation and stewardship for its audiovisual materials. The position maintains productive relationships within industry and academic communities to support engaged stewardship of the nation’s audiovisual heritage, including through the work of the two Preservation Boards for Film and Sound Recordings which advise the Librarian of Congress on the National Registries.

https://www.usajobs.gov/job/786561600

"Red States Threaten Librarians with Prison — As Blue States Work to Protect Them"

But the majority of the bills work the same way. They eliminate long-established exemptions from prosecution for librarians — sometimes teachers and museum employees, too — over obscene material. . . .

Removing the exemption means librarians, teachers and museum staffers could face years of imprisonment or tens of thousands in fines for giving out books deemed sexually explicit, obscene or "harmful" to minors. For example, an Arkansas measure passed last year says school and public librarians can be imprisoned for up to six years or fined $10,000 if they hand out obscene or harmful titles.

Seventeen states are weighing some version of this measure, The Post found. That comes after at least eight states enacted such laws between 2021 and last year, although two were later vetoed and one was blocked by the courts.

Includes detailed chart of bills proposed in 2024 that restrict or protect libraries.

https://tinyurl.com/4uyfxjp8

Instructional Services and Scholarly Communications Librarian at University of Alabama in Huntsville

This position works with teaching faculty to develop library instruction materials for assignment-focused, course-specific needs, as well as identify opportunities for outreach in assigned academic departments.. . . This position will also support future scholarly communications endeavors, such as Open Access Initiatives, Open Educational Resources, and scholarly publishing trends, including providing support for faculty and student scholarly communication endeavors, such as promoting the use of open educational resources and awareness of the university’s institutional repository.

https://tinyurl.com/5bsdmezz

"Researchers Need ‘Open’ Bibliographic Databases, New Declaration Says"

Some of the best known databases, such as the Web of Science and Scopus, are proprietary and offer pay-to-access data and services supporting these and other metrics, including university rankings and journal impact factors. But in a declaration posted today, more than 30 research and funding organizations call for the community to commit to platforms that instead are free for all, more transparent about their methods, and without restrictions about how the data can be used.

https://tinyurl.com/2nvzf9dh

Scholarly Communications and Metadata Librarian at George Washington University

The George Washington University’s Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library seeks a dynamic, collaborative information professional to provide leadership and expertise in scholarly communications, copyright, open access, data management, and research impact. This position also manages Himmelfarb’s cataloging and oversees the organization and management of the library’s catalog and institutional repository.

https://www.gwu.jobs/postings/109746

Open Access Press: "UCL [University College London] Press Downloads Hit 10 Million"

UCL Press’s pioneering Open Access (OA) programme spans many of the major academic disciplines, from history to philosophy and the sciences to anthropology. The Press has published 339 books that have been downloaded more than 8.7 million times, while its 14 journals have attracted more than 2.6 million downloads. . . .

Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost at UCL LCCOS (Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science), commented: "Started in 2015, UCL Press continues to get better and better. 10,000,000 downloads and consultations underline the transformative effect that Open Access can have, particularly in the OA monograph space. UCL is proud to be developing a sustainable model for institutional OA publishing in Europe."

https://tinyurl.com/ym76wmbh

Computer Vision Specialist (AI) at University of Florida

The George A. Smathers Libraries seek a creative, collaborative, and service-oriented candidate to enhance computer vision research services to strategically increase support of the university’s AI initiative (https://ai.ufl.edu/) and to further the Libraries’ commitment to "AI for everyone." In conjunction and close collaboration with the Natural Language Processing Specialist and other personnel from across the libraries, this position provides leadership to the Libraries’ efforts to build foundational AI services for all UF students, faculty, and staff interested in incorporating AI technology and techniques in their discipline-specific teaching and research. The Computer Vision Specialist is a year-round (12 month) tenure-track faculty position with primary responsibilities in instruction, consultation, and project work in computer vision and other areas relevant to artificial intelligence and data science.

https://tinyurl.com/3t42hjam

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

Project Manager (NORF) at Digital Repository of Ireland (Term)

This is a fixed term contract working as a project manager to support the implementation of Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research(link is external). This plan sets out objectives and actions for the next chapter in Ireland’s transition towards Open Research. The successful candidate will contribute to the implementation of this plan by ensuring efficient administration of funded activities, facilitating cross-project coordination and alignment, liaising with all stakeholders, and assisting with communications and outreach. The successful candidate will be based at the DRI at the Royal Irish Academy and will work closely with the National Open Research Coordinator and the National Open Research Forum.

https://tinyurl.com/2a48c5uf

"Is ChatGPT Transforming Academics’ Writing Style?"

Based on one million arXiv papers submitted from May 2018 to January 2024, we assess the textual density of ChatGPT’s writing style in their abstracts by means of a statistical analysis of word frequency changes. Our model is calibrated and validated on a mixture of real abstracts and ChatGPT-modified abstracts (simulated data) after a careful noise analysis. We find that ChatGPT is having an increasing impact on arXiv abstracts, especially in the field of computer science, where the fraction of ChatGPT-revised abstracts is estimated to be approximately 35%, if we take the output of one of the simplest prompts, "revise the following sentences", as a baseline. We conclude with an analysis of both positive and negative aspects of the penetration of ChatGPT into academics’ writing style.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.08627v1