Member News & Announcements, April IO 2021

Research Efforts

Elsevier and LexisNexis collaborate to increase access to patent information in pharma and chemical R&D workflows
Elsevier, Voting Member, Press Release, March 10, 2021

Elsevier, a global leader in research publishing and information analytics, today announced a new collaboration with LexisNexis Legal & Professional to strengthen the existing patent coverage in Reaxys®, its information solution for chemistry R&D. This integration gives companies and researchers access to the LexisNexis Intellectual Property patent content that powers LexisNexis PatentSight (Patent Analytics) and LexisNexis TotalPatent One (Patent Search) in their existing workflow. Relevant patents for pharma and chemical R&D will be retrieved from 105 patent offices, 141m patent documents, and 56 full-text authorities. In addition, English language translations of foreign-language patents will also be available. The content expansion in Reaxys further cements its position as a comprehensive cheminformatics solution by ensuring companies and researchers do not miss key competitive intelligence insights.

Companies and researchers today are under immense pressure to innovate quickly and competitively. They need to answer a host of key questions: How is a given technology landscape evolving? Who else is working in the space? Where is the white space? Bringing together patent and biological/chemical R&D information in one interface makes it easier to review and researchers gain greater confidence in their decisions to accelerate R&D in pharma and chemicals

IOP Publishing’s new state-of-the-art elearning hub to boost peer review knowledge and competency for a future generation of reviewers
IOP Publishing, Voting Member, News Announcement, March 10, 2021

Researchers around the world can now build their peer review competency online through IOP Publishing’s (IOPP) new state-of-the-art peer review elearning hub.

The hub extends access to ‘Peer review excellence: IOP training and certification’, the world’s first peer review programme dedicated to the physical sciences. Harnessing the most up-to-date learning technology to deliver an ‘always-on’ and fully interactive learning experience, module-by-module courses are streamed seamlessly online.  Early career researchers (ECRs) can boost their peer review knowledge and expertise at their own pace, with the possibility of standing out as an ‘IOP Trusted Reviewer’ once the full course has been completed and verified.

Peer review is a critical component of scholarly publishing. When carried out properly, it helps to safeguard the quality, validity, and importance of academic work.  For quality scientific outcomes to continue to grow, the system needs dedicated and competent reviewers. ECRs are key to this but, as less-experienced peer reviewers, it can be a daunting task.  ‘Peer review excellence: IOP training and certification’ was launched in September 2020 to give ECRs the ability to review with confidence, increasing trust and standardising the quality of the process.

Taylor & Francis signs up to principles outlined in DORA supporting balanced and fair research assessment
Taylor & Francis Group, Voting Member, News Announcement, March 3, 2021

Taylor & Francis Group has signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which aims to improve the ways in which researchers and the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated.

Signatories to DORA recognize that the Journal Impact Factor should not be used as an all-encompassing tool for evaluating research. They advocate for a sea change where all research articles are assessed on their own merits and impact, and not assessed on the basis of their publication venue. By signing DORA, Taylor & Francis aligns with these concepts.

Taylor & Francis Managing Director, Researcher Services, Leon Heward-Mills, says: “We firmly believe that researchers should be assessed on the quality and broad impact of their work. While journal metrics can help support this process, they should not be used as a quick substitute for proper review. The quality of an individual research article should always be assessed on its own merits rather than on the metrics of the journal in which it was published.”

Libraries and Archives

Johns Hopkins University helps launch digital trove of opioid industry documents
Johns Hopkins University, Voting Member / L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, March 24, 2021

The University of California, San Francisco and Johns Hopkins University today announced the launch of the Opioid Industry Documents Archive, a digital repository of publicly disclosed documents from recent judgments, settlements, and ongoing lawsuits concerning the opioid crisis. The documents come from government litigation against pharmaceutical companies, including opioid manufacturers and distributors related to their contributions to the deadly epidemic, as well as litigation taking place in federal court on behalf of thousands of cities and counties in the United States. The documents in the archive include emails, memos, presentations, sales reports, budgets, audit reports, Drug Enforcement Administration briefings, meeting agendas and minutes, expert witness reports, and depositions of drug company executives.

The Opioid Industry Documents Archive leverages extraordinary expertise within UCSF and Johns Hopkins University in library science, information technology, and digital archiving. It also relies on scholarship focused on many dimensions of the opioid epidemic, ranging from the history of medicine to pharmaceutical policy to clinical care. Key organizations at UCSF involved include the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies; Department of Clinical Pharmacy; Department of Humanities and Social Sciences; Department of Family and Community Medicine; and Library. From Johns Hopkins University, the project involves the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness; Welch Medical Library; Institute of the History of Medicine; and Sheridan Libraries' Digital Research and Curation Center.

Library of Congress Accepts OU Libraries’ Proposal to Change Subject Heading to ‘Tulsa Race Massacre’
Library of Congress, Voting Member, News Announcement, March 22, 2021

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are an integral part of the world’s most widely used library indexing tool. Subject terms facilitate searching and many times are used to find important resources on a topic when researching in online library catalogs. Prior to this change, searching a library catalog for “Tulsa Race Massacre” might miss important resources that were only associated with the term “riot.”

The LCSH Change Proposal Task Force, a group of University Libraries information professionals concerned with historically accurate and culturally appropriate naming processes, submitted a proposal to the Library of Congress last year to change the official subject heading of the 1921 attack on Tulsa’s Greenwood District.

“The vision of the task force was to work across University Libraries toward a unified goal, one rooted in social justice, and to employ language in such a way as to create a more accurate description of a horrendous event,” said Todd Fuller, a task force member and curator of University Libraries’ Western History Collections. “The updated subject heading will be used in library catalogs in the U.S. and internationally.”

New OCLC Research Report proposes a Total Cost of Stewardship Framework
OCLC, Voting Member, News Announcement, March 16, 2021

Developed by the OCLC Research Library Partnership’s (RLP) Collection Building and Operational Impacts Working Group, the Total Cost of Stewardship framework is a holistic approach to understanding the resources needed to responsibly acquire and steward archives and special collections. The Total Cost of Stewardship Framework responds to the ongoing challenge of descriptive backlogs in archives and special collections by connecting collection development decisions with stewardship responsibilities. 

The collection of materials published includes:

1. An OCLC Research report: Total Cost of Stewardship: Responsible Collection Building in Archives and Special Collections
2. An annotated bibliography of related resources
3. The Total Cost of Stewardship Tool Suite, comprising of a set of Communication Tools, Cost Estimation Tools, and a Manual to guide end users in implementing the Tool Suite.

Search Scholarly Materials Preserved in the Internet Archive
Internet Archive, LSA Member, Blog Posting, March 9, 2021

Looking for a research paper but can’t find a copy in your library’s catalog or popular search engines? Give Internet Archive Scholar a try! We might have a PDF from a “vanished” Open Access publisher in our web archive, an author’s pre-publication manuscript from their archived faculty webpage, or a digitized microfilm version of an older publication.

We hope Internet Archive Scholar will aid researchers and librarians looking for specific open access papers that may not be otherwise available to them. Judith van Stegeren (@jd7g on Twitter), a PhD candidate in the Netherlands, encountered just such a situation recently when sharing a workshop paper on procedural generation in computer games: “Towards Qualitative Procedural Generation” by Mark R. Johnson, originally presented at the Computational Creativity & Games Workshop in 2016. The papers for this particular year of the workshop are not indexed in the usual bibliographic catalogs, and the original workshop website hosting the Open Access papers is no longer accessible. Fortunately, copies of all the 2016 workshop papers were captured in the Wayback Machine, and can be found today by searching IA Scholar by title or conference name.

Partnerships and Collaborations

Springer Nature and UC-Berkeley Sign New OA Book Partnership
Springer Nature, Voting Member, Press Release, March 23, 2021

Springer Nature has signed its first ever institutional open access (OA) book agreement with the University of California, Berkeley Library. The agreement will cover a broad range of book titles across all disciplines — from humanities and social sciences to sciences, technology, medicine and mathematics and, starting in 2021 and running for at least three years, will provide open access funding to UC Berkeley affiliated authors. The open access book titles will publish under the Springer, Palgrave, and Apress imprints, with initial titles set to publish later this year.   The books will be published under a CC BY licence and readers around the world will have free access to the books via Springer Nature’s content platform SpringerLink. With research showing that open access books are downloaded ten times more often and cited 2.4 times more, this important agreement will significantly enhance the visibility, dissemination and impact of important academic research.

Ex Libris Esploro Integrates with the DataCite Service
Ex Libris, Inc., Voting Member, Press Release, March 10, 2021

Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce its partnership with DataCite, a leading global organization that provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) for research outputs and data. The integration between the Ex Libris Esploro™ research information management solution and the DataCite service enables researchers and librarians to seamlessly publish institutional research work and facilitates the discovery, citation, and tracking of the publications and underlying datasets via unique identifiers.

Esploro enhances the discoverability of research outputs and data by including the complete set of metadata for each research asset, along with its identifier. When any change is made to research outputs in the Esploro system, the metadata in the DataCite platform is automatically updated.

Liz Krznarich, Adoption Manager at DataCite, commented, “We are pleased to welcome Ex Libris as a DataCite service provider. Achieving service provider certification signifies not only that Esploro’s integration with DataCite exemplifies best practices, but also that Ex Libris is an active participant in the community of all those striving to make research outputs discoverable, citable, and connected through interoperable standards and technologies.”

UD Press Partners with Rutgers
University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press, L.S.A. Member, News Article, March 9, 2021

University of Delaware Press and Rutgers University Press have announced a partnership in which Rutgers University Press will provide production, marketing and distribution services for books published by the University of Delaware Press.

“The University of Delaware Press is thrilled to enter into a partnership with Rutgers University Press, another nonprofit publisher committed to publishing high-quality, innovative scholarship,” said Julia Oestreich, director of the University of Delaware Press. “Rutgers has a proven record of cultivating partnerships that allow presses and organizations to improve the quality and extend the impact of their publications.”

The University of Delaware Press is the preeminent publisher of scholarly works in the state of Delaware. Founded in 1922, the University of Delaware Press supports the mission of the University through the worldwide dissemination of high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of fields in the humanities. It is a leading publisher in the fields of literary studies, art history, early modern and 18th-century studies, and material culture. It also publishes works on the history, culture and environment of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of interest to the general public, enhancing the University’s community outreach.

eLife and Stencila announce roadmap for bringing reproducible publishing to more authors
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd, Voting Member, Press Release, March 1, 2021

eLife, in collaboration with Stencila, is pleased to announce today the next phase of development for the Executable Research Article (ERA), bringing computationally reproducible research papers to more authors and publishers.

The organisations have partnered on the open-source ERA project since 2017, taking it from the idea stage through to demonstration and, within the last six months, into production at eLife. The project, which allows authors to enrich their work with interactive code and data, has received substantial interest from researchers, publishers and the broader scientific community. To date, six ERAs have been published in eLife, with more in the pipeline. eLife and Stencila have now extended their partnership to bring about the next phase of ERA’s development in 2021.

Their work will involve six individual streams of feature development, all focused on reducing barriers to the authoring and publication of ERAs based on user feedback and lessons learned from the project over the last three years. The aim is to further enhance the ERA technology stack to serve a wider variety of author and publisher use cases, including increasing the speed and scalability of ERA publication.

Standards in Practice

EBSCO Information Services Continues to Ensure Data Security and Customer Data Protections for End Users
EBSCO Information Services, Voting Member, Press Release, March 11, 2021

In keeping with the company’s ongoing focus on information security and customer data protections, EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) announces ISO (International Standards Organization) 27001 compliancy and certification is now associated with the majority of EBSCO proprietary products and services. ISO 27001 is a standard that represents best practices for information security controls. Continued efforts in this area demonstrates EBSCO’s commitment in ensuring the security and privacy of customer and end-user data.

While privacy regulations and vendor obligations differ fundamentally from security needs and goals, EBSCO takes a holistic approach to safeguarding security and customer data protections. By continuing to examine security risks, evaluate processes and implement security controls, the company ensures information security on an ongoing basis. These efforts ensure customers can enjoy peace of mind and have complete trust when leveraging EBSCO’s products and services for a better research experience.

Open Access, Open Science

IET announces coverage of the newly launched AIP Publishing physics journals 
Institution for Engineering & Technology (IET), and AIP Publishing, Voting Members, Press Release, March 4, 2021

The Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) research database, Inspec, is among the first to index content from two new AIP Publishing journals in the fields of biophysics and chemical physics.

The addition of these new journals not only expands the biophysics and chemical physics content that is indexed in Inspec but also highlights Inspec’s aptitude to intake the latest research from new sources. By indexing the most up-to-date research literature, Inspec remains an essential discovery tool for subject-specific and interdisciplinary research in the fields of engineering, physics and computer science.

The Inspec research database now includes coverage of the newly published journals Biophysics Reviews (BPR) and Chemical Physics Reviews (CPR). Both journals published inaugural issues in December 2020 and feature original research articles and authoritative reviews in their respective areas of focus.

PUL launches open access publishing program for scholarly publications
Princeton University Library, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, March 3, 2021

In support of greater global access to the work of Princeton researchers, Princeton University Library (PUL) has launched the PUL Open Access Publishing Program (POAPP). The new program offers Princeton faculty, researchers, students, and staff the opportunity to make their research available and searchable through open access online journals.

"The publishing program provides open terms and fewer financial barriers than traditional publishing models,” says Librarian for Scholarly Communications Yuan Li, who runs the program. “This program supports the mission of the University and the Library to democratize research and facilitate the spread of knowledge.”

The MIT Press launches Direct to Open
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries, L.S.A. Member, Blog Posting, March 2, 2021

The MIT Press has announced the launch of Direct to Open (D2O). A first-of-its-kind sustainable framework for open access monographs, D2O moves professional and scholarly books from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. 

D2O gives institutions the opportunity to harness collective action to support access to knowledge. Beginning in 2022, all new MIT Press scholarly monographs and edited collections will be openly available on the MIT Press Direct eBook platform. Instead of purchasing a title once for a single collection, libraries now have the opportunity to fund them one time for the world through participant fees.  

Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press, sees the model as a way to increase the impact and accessibility of high-quality scholarship. “Direct to Open brings libraries and the Press together collaboratively, stepping outside market models, to open up our high quality professional and scholarly works. Comprehensive access to OA scholarship will increase the impact of research and contribute to the knowledge-sharing mission of the academy.”

Online Literacy and Learning

Wolters Kluwer announces suite of digital learning tools to facilitate medical schools’ transition to blended learning
Wolters Kluwer, Voting Member, News Announcement, March 2, 2021

Today, Wolters Kluwer, Health introduced Lippincott® Clinical Context, a suite of digital learning tools intended to help medical schools as they incorporate digital and remote instruction into their curriculum. The Lippincott Clinical Context program provides access to a comprehensive set of solutions that faculty can use to deliver high quality instruction and assess student progress in every discipline, from anatomy to basic sciences to clerkship topics, whether students are on campus or remote.

“Nearly a year into the COVID-19 crisis, it’s clear that medical schools appreciate the enduring value of digital tools as an accelerator for today’s students and that faculty will continue to rely on these resources as part of a blended curriculum going forward,” said Vikram Savkar, Vice President and General Manager, Medicine Markets of Health Learning, Research & Practice, Wolters Kluwer. “To support faculty, we’ve brought together our existing digital tools with new resources built specifically to meet the digital learning style of the next generation of practitioners.” 

Statements and Reports

ARL Releases 2020 Annual Report
Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Voting Member, White Paper, March 2021

The Association of Research Libraries fosters the open exchange of ideas and expertise; advances diversity, equity, and inclusion; and pursues advocacy and public policy efforts that reflect the values of the library, scholarly, and higher education communities. ARL forges partnerships and catalyzes the collective efforts of research libraries to enable knowledge creation and to achieve enduring and barrier-free access to information.

2020 was a year like no other in recent history. Three conditions converged to shape the work of the Association: the COVID-19 pandemic; the continued systemic racism resulting in the killing of Black and Brown people in the United States; and the economic uncertainty, particularly given COVID-19, that challenges the very nature of higher education and research.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) works in partnership to convene, inform, shape, and influence the research and learning ecosystem. Our focus is at the intersection of public policy, institutional policy and practice, and the changing conditions of research and learning. Given the context of 2020, the ARL Board of Directors approved a 2021–2022 Action Plan that represents a strategic direction based on member priorities reflecting the known present with an eye on the future. The Action Plan sets our strategic direction for the next two years and is based on our members’ priorities. Thank you for your participation in developing the plan! As you read this Annual Report, I hope that you also recognize the strength and value of research libraries now and as we build the future together, founded on the Association’s mission, vision, and guiding principles.

DEI Initiatives

Salary Requirement for Jobs Blog
NASIG - North American Serials Interest Group, Voting Member, Blog Posting, March 19, 2021

Like many of our peer organizations, NASIG has made the decision to only feature job postings that include a salary range with the intent to promote equity in libraries. Lack of transparency regarding salaries and earnings expectations is a significant concern for professionals at all stages of their career. Without transparent salary ranges, potential applicants do not know if a job is worth applying for or know what type of position they are in to negotiate a fair salary. Furthermore, job postings that do not disclose salary disproportionately penalize women and BIPOC. Libraries that do not post salary ranges or pay grades perpetuate the wage gap and inequality in the hiring process.

This change does mean that some open postings will not be shared by NASIG through our website or listservs. As a result of our advocacy for salary transparency, we will no longer post professional opportunities for any job (part-time, full-time, temporary, permanent, internship, etc.) that does not publicly include salary information.