DigitalKoans – Page 46 – What Is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading?

"Exploring Faculty Perspectives on Open Access at a Medium-Sized, American Doctoral University"

Faculty hold widely varying perspectives on the benefits and challenges afforded by open access (OA) publishing. In the United States, conversations on OA models and strategy have been dominated by scholars affiliated with Carnegie R1 institutions. This article reports findings from interviews conducted with faculty at a Carnegie R2 institution, highlighting disciplinary and individual perspectives on the high costs and rich rewards afforded by OA. The results reiterate the persistence of a high degree of skepticism regarding the quality of peer review and business models associated with OA publishing. By exploring scholars’ perceptions of and experiences with OA publishing and their comfort using or sharing unpublished, publicly available content, the authors highlight the degree to which OA approaches must remain flexible, iterative and multifaceted — no single solution can begin to accommodate the rich and varying needs of individual stakeholders.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.620

Data and Visualization Librarian at North Carolina A&T State University

Reporting to the Head of Digital Scholarship and Research Data Services, this individual will develop and provide services that support students, faculty and researchers in the discovery, use, preservation, and visualization of data. The individual will coordinate and teach instruction sessions and programming related to research data management and data visualization and will provide consultations for researchers in collaboration with subject librarians.

https://jobs.ncat.edu/postings/28977

"What Those Responsible for Open Infrastructure in Scholarly Communication Can Do about Possibly Predatory Practices"

This chapter presents a three-phase analysis of the 521 journals that use the open source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS) while appearing on Beall’s list of predatory publishers and journals and/or in Cabells Predatory Reports, both of which purport to identify journals that charge authors article processing fees (APC) to publish in the pretense of a peer-reviewed journal. . . . The first phase involved the researchers reaching out to publishers and editors on Beall’s list using OJS; the second phase involves determining the extent to which journals using OJS appeared on the two predatory lists, and the third reports on a new system, involving trade organizations, such ORCID and Crossref, for authenticating journal practices.

https://tinyurl.com/2xwb94ue

OER, Graphic Design, and Digital Publishing Specialist at Virginia Tech

Reporting to the Assistant Director of Open Education, the OER, Graphic Design, and Digital Publishing Specialist supports the work of the Open Education Initiative which is committed to collaborative work resulting in adoption, adaptation, creation and public sharing of peer-reviewed faculty-authored course materials that are publicly released under open licenses. The specialist works with the Assistant Director of Open Education, Virginia Tech authors, and other team members to ideate, design, develop, adapt, and publish open educational resources and related ancillary learning resources in a variety of formats

https://tinyurl.com/3yjexpt5

"Concordia Welcomes Amy Buckland as University Librarian"

Since August 2021, Buckland has held the position of assistant deputy minister for collections at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). In this role, she leads a team of 500 staff and manages an annual budget of $50 million. . . . Prior to joining LAC, Buckland was head of research and scholarship at the University of Guelph Library, where she oversaw the collaborative development of a digital infrastructure to support the needs of research teams and new forms of scholarly communication progressively and sustainably.

https://tinyurl.com/mk85rxf9

Head of Digital Scholarship and Research Data Services at North Carolina A&T State University

Reporting to the Assistant Dean of Library Services, this position will bring a deep understanding of the major strategies, opportunities, challenges and trends facing academic research libraries today in the areas of open publishing, data and digital scholarship, the preservation and curation of digital assets, and the enhancement of research, teaching and learning through digital services and throughout the research lifecycle.

https://jobs.ncat.edu/postings/28976

"Why Does the U.S. Copyright Office Require Libraries to Lie to Users about Their Fair Use Rights? They Won’t Say."

The problem is that although Section 108 makes clear that the [library] copyright warning notice it requires is not intended to restrict artificially the fair use rights of document users, the code itself doesn’t provide the language for the notice. It specifies that the "warning of copyright" shall be written "in accordance with requirements that the Register of Copyrights shall prescribe by regulation." And the language prescribed by the Register of Copyrights in that regulation is, unfortunately, false and misleading. And worse, libraries are required to include the prescribed language "verbatim."

https://tinyurl.com/y94dy9fn

Project Manager – American Congress Digital Archives Portal at West Virginia University (Term and Remote)

Engage partner institutions on project digitization and metadata standards and perform quality control on harvested materials and metadata.

In coordination with developers, assist partner institutions with harvest configurations.

Work with developers to test and provide feedback on deliverables.

https://tinyurl.com/45xvc9pw

Paywall: The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals: A Business History of a Dynamic Marketplace, 2000–2020

This book analyzes the various economic and marketing strategies utilized by the five major STM commercial scholarly journal publishers since 2000. This period has witnessed tremendous economic, marketing, and technological growth including the migration from a print only to a hybrid publishing format. With this growth, the industry has also seen the rise of open access publishing, copyright challenges by websites such as Sci-Hub, the emergence of sharing platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, as well as the impact of Plan S on publishers, universities, and authors.. . . Scrutinizing the different managerial, marketing, technology, and economic-financial strategies crafted by scholarly journal publishers between 2000-2020, this book offers a comprehensive assessment of the industry’s attempts to identify, understand, cope with, and minimize or defeat the herculean threats to its business model.

https://tinyurl.com/5n6rd8xy

Digital Humanities Specialist at Washington University in St Louis

The Digital Humanities Specialist works with faculty, staff, and students to develop and/or deploy software, data management, and training solutions in support of faculty research projects in the humanities and in support of the long-term goals of the Humanities Digital Workshop (HDW) in Arts & Sciences Computing. . . . 1) The Digital Humanities Specialist should have a solid foundation in the humanities, the better to translate faculty research goals into technology solutions; 2) The Digital Humanities Specialist should be able to learn and deploy new software, programming languages, and data management practices since often new solutions are required by the faculty lead’s evolving research goals.

https://tinyurl.com/2e76tx98

"The Status of Open Access Repositories in the Field of Technology: Insights from OpenDOAR"

The study found that 125 nations contributed a total of 4,045 repositories in the field of research, with the USA leading the list with the most repositories. Maximum repositories were operated by institutions having multidisciplinary approaches. The DSpace and Eprints were the preferred software types for repositories. The preferred upload content by contributors was "research articles" and "electronic thesis and dissertations."

https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-11-2022-0119

Immersive Technologies Librarian at University of Notre Dame

Through the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship (NFCDS), the Hesburgh Libraries are transforming scholarship at Notre Dame by empowering the ND community to critically engage with and utilize emerging digital technologies. To advance the Center’s mission to provide access to digital scholarship expertise and resources across all Notre Dame disciplines and audiences, the Immersive Technologies Librarian is responsible for coordinating activities for, and managing a broad range of, immersive extended reality (XR) devices, applications, and practices in the Libraries (such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality).

https://apply.interfolio.com/127445

"Wikipedia Moves to CC 4.0 Licenses&quot

This change was made through a revision to the project’s Terms of Use, where all new edits to Wikipedia will be under version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license. Older edits will remain under BY-SA 3.0, which allows adaptations to be made with 4.0-licensed material. This presents a small amount of complexity for reusers, but over time, as more and more of the project is revised, this will become less of a practical concern.

Version 4.0 of the CC licenses, first published in 2013, introduced several important updates and improvements. Some of the key benefits of this upgrade include greater internationalization, more practical attribution requirements, a grace period for correcting reuse errors, improved clarity and simplicity, and better handling of rights outside copyright, such as database rights. These changes make it an ideal fit for Wikimedia’s mission of simple, globally accessible reuse in a wide variety of contexts.

https://tinyurl.com/yzrs4sew

Electronic Resources Librarian at Webster University

Responsible for the library’s electronic resources (including databases, e-books, and the products used to manage electronic resources) throughout the life cycle, including evaluation, setup, renewals, and troubleshooting.

https://tinyurl.com/4kcrs98a

"Mapping the German Diamond Open Access Journal Landscape"

In the current scientific and political discourse surrounding the transformation of the scientific publication system, significant attention is focused on Diamond Open Access (OA). This article explores the potential and challenges of Diamond OA journals, using Germany as a case study. Two questions are addressed: first, the current role of such journals in the scientific publication system is determined through bibliometric analysis across various disciplines. Second, an investigation is conducted to assess the sustainability of Diamond OA journals and identify associated structural problems or potential breaking points. This investigation includes an in-depth expert interview study involving 20 editors of Diamond OA journals. The empirical results are presented using a landscape map that considers two dimensions: ‘monetized and gift-based completion of tasks’ and ‘journal team size.’ The bibliometric analysis reveals a substantial number of Diamond OA journals in the social sciences and humanities, but limited adoption in other fields. The model proves effective for small to mid-sized journals, but not for larger ones. Additionally, it was found that 23 Diamond OA journals have recently discontinued their operations. The expert interviews demonstrate the usefulness of the two dimensions in understanding key differences. Journals in two of the four quadrants of the map exemplify sustainable conditions, while the other two quadrants raise concerns about long-term stability. These concerns include limited funding leading to a lack of division of labor and an excessive burden on highly committed members. These findings underscore the need for the development of more sustainable funding models to ensure the success of Diamond OA journals.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.13080

eResources/Discovery Librarian at University of St. Thomas

Reporting to the Associate Director, Collection Management & Services, and working collaboratively with colleagues, the Electronic Resources & Discovery Librarian is responsible for managing, maintaining, and optimizing access to the libraries’ electronic resources collections and the discovery service to ensure seamless online access to resources that support teaching, learning, and research.

https://tinyurl.com/2bd8xsfr

Opening Knowledge: Retaining Rights and Open Licensing in Europe

This report investigates the current landscape of non-legislative policy practices affecting researchers and authors in the authors’ rights and licensing domain. It is an outcome of research conducted by Project Retain led by SPARC Europe, as part of the Knowledge Rights 21 programme. The report concludes with a set of recommendations for institutional policymakers, funders and legislators, and publishers. It is accompanied by the study dataset.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8084050

Digitization Services Specialist at University of California, Davis

Under the general direction of the Head of Access and Delivery Services, the Digitization Services Specialist will guide the development of both high-quality and high-production digitization workflows to meet the needs of both internal and external customers, ranging from Library Archives and Special Collections to approved, on-request digitization projects to support the instructional, research, and clinical care mission of the campus. The position will work on a variety of digitization activities assisting scholarly research, online discovery, exhibits, and preservation.

https://tinyurl.com/47r5uwjy

Michigan State: "Neil Romanosky Recommended as Dean of MSU Libraries"

Romanosky currently serves as dean of university libraries at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a position he has held since 2019. His accomplishments in this role include developing a strategic plan for the libraries with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion; overseeing the alignment of the Ohio University Press and five regional campus libraries into the university libraries portfolio; working with campus partners to launch libraries-led, university-wide task forces on research data management and improving student study spaces; and spearheading Ohio University’s joining the HathiTrust, allowing for expanded university access to digital collections and other collaborative academic and research tools and services.

https://tinyurl.com/fuy6xtfy

Diamond OA 2023: The World of No-Fee OA Publishing

Diamond OA 2023: The World of No-Fee OA Publishing is now available as an $8 trade paperback or a free PDF ebook.

This new study is based on the no-fee portion of the dataset for Gold Open Access 2017-2022 [GOA8]. A little tentative original added research looks at apparent funding/sponsorship sources for no-fee journals that are not published by universities, societies or government. (Spoiler alert: in about 98% of the cases, that is, those published by traditional and open access publishers, funding appears to be from either universities and academia or from societies and government.)

This book offers overviews and tables by subject and size of journals, but most of the book is "the world"—regional profiles with notes on countries with one to nine diamond journals, and 75 profiles of countries with ten or more such journals.

https://tinyurl.com/3zasrd65

Systems Engineer at Johns Hopkins University

The Systems Engineer will be responsible for building and supporting deployment and operations infrastructure for software applications and data as part of the Digital Research & Curation Center. They will create and administer the systems necessary to effectively and efficiently build, test, release, and deploy software into scalable, reliable, and secure application environments. They will work closely with software engineers, following DevOps practices, to create tools and automation to simplify the transition of software from development environments into production deployment architectures.

https://tinyurl.com/ycrks2pj

"ResearchGate and Wiley Expand Partnership to Encompass Majority of Publisher’s Open Access Portfolio"

Under the agreement, 519 journal titles, including the entire open access portfolios of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and all Hindawi titles, will now benefit from an enhanced presence on ResearchGate through its new Journal Home offering.

With Journal Home, all version-of-record content from these titles, including newly published articles, will be syndicated to ResearchGate. Additionally, dedicated journal profiles are activated and made accessible throughout the ResearchGate platform with each journal prominently represented on all its associated article pages and at all other relevant touch points with members.

https://tinyurl.com/54ftv8am

Librarian – Open Educational Resources at University of Texas at Arlington

The OER Librarian supports the growth of open educational resource (OER) adoption and creation initiatives at the UTA Libraries by developing targeted outreach strategies and providing training for faculty, staff, and students on topics including copyright and open licensing, open pedagogy, and accessibility. This position provides leadership for OER publishing activities on behalf of Mavs Open Press and administration of the UTA CARES Grant Program. Reporting to the Director of OER, the OER Librarian contributes to departmental strategic planning and assessment and serves as a subject liaison to an academic department.

https://uta.peopleadmin.com/postings/23810

"Springer Nature Group Annual Progress Report 2021 Released"

Data from global research publisher Springer Nature details the visibility and value it’s providing to researchers, authors and editors around the world. Its latest annual progress report, covering 2022, shows:

Springer Nature has now published more than 1.25 million open access articles, and is on track for half of its research article output to be open access by the end of 2024.

Open access research published in its hybrid portfolio within a transformative agreement grew three times faster than that published outside of one.

Product and technology investments grew 13% year-on-year, and reached €370 million over the past three years. Springer Nature’s platforms now support 7.9 million downloads every day — that’s 92 every second.

Average downloads per article are up 80% from 2018 to 2021, and average citations growing more than 40% over the same period, delivering increased impact and value for money.

https://tinyurl.com/2253fpev

Full Report

Dean of University Libraries at University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Reporting directly to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer, the Dean of Libraries is a key member of the Executive Vice Chancellor’s leadership team, serving on the Deans’ Council. . . .

The Dean is supported by a seasoned administrative team of six direct reports and oversees 40 faculty librarians, 72 support staff, and 130 student employees and an annual budget of $16 million, including a collections budget of $8 million. This team is in the final stages of implementing a restructuring of the organization to better fulfill the strategic planning vision.

https://tinyurl.com/bb9at9vs