Partnerships & Collaborations
ACS inks ‘read and publish’ agreements with German consortia
American Chemical Society, Voting Member, Press Release, January 19, 2023
The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) proudly announces two new “read and publish” agreements with the Helmholtz and Niedersachsen consortia in Germany, effective January 2023. The agreements — ACS Publications’ first transformative agreements with German consortia in almost three years — offer researchers at 24 German institutions the opportunity to publish open research with one of the world’s most trusted publishers at no cost to the researcher, while also meeting funder requirements for open access. ACS invites researchers in this community to take full advantage of this agreement by submitting their next paper to the ACS journal of their choice.
“We are keen to ease the process of open access publishing for researchers at our member institutions and look forward to working with ACS to raise the profile of German science,” says Bernhard Mittermaier, library director at Forschungszentrum Jülich (Research Center Jülich), on behalf of the Helmholtz consortium.
PLOS Announces New Publishing Agreement with German Consortium
Public Library of Science (PLOS), Voting Member, Press Release, January 12, 2023
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is pleased to announce a consortium agreement with Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) that allows member institutions to participate in PLOS’ three innovative publishing models. This two-year agreement provides researchers affiliated with consortium members with unlimited publishing privileges in PLOS journals without them having to cover fees themselves. The TIB-led consortium has more than 40 members[1].
“This is the first time that TIB has negotiated a consortial contract with a Gold OA publisher that is open to institutions across Germany. There was a clear need for an agreement that allows universities, universities of applied sciences and research institutions to centrally cover publication fees in PLOS journals for their researchers, and as consortial leader it is our mission to meet those needs. This partnership will play a key role in alleviating barriers for researchers when publishing their work Open Access, such as eliminating author-facing article processing charges (APCs) and including the entire PLOS portfolio under the deal,” said Dr. Irina Sens, deputy director of TIB.
Project MUSE Hosts New Interactive, Open-Access, Born-Digital Chapter
Project MUSE/Johns Hopkins, Voting/L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, January 3, 2023
Project MUSE is pleased to host a new interactive, open-access, born-digital chapter, “The Web of History” from A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures by Shahzad Bashir published by the MIT Press. The chapter of the publication hosted on MUSE mirrors the content from the born-digital product’s primary site, and is intended to provide an additional pathway to discovery, as well as spotlight the MUSE platform’s suitability for hosting robust and innovative digital humanities works.
A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures brings together the MIT Press’s global publishing experience and the Brown University Library’s digital publication expertise. The groundbreaking scholarship decenters Islam from a geographical identification with the Middle East, an articulation through men’s authority alone, and the assumption that premodern expressions are more authentically Islamic than modern ones. Aimed at a wide international audience, the publication consists of engaging stories and audiovisual materials that will enable readers at all levels to appreciate Islam as an aspect of global history for centuries. The book URL is islamic-pasts-futures.org.
OhioLINK and IOP Publishing sign uncapped transformative agreement
IOP Publishing, Voting Member, News Announcement, January 5, 2023
OhioLINK, Ohio’s academic library consortium, has entered into a three-year unlimited transformative agreement with society publisher IOP Publishing (IOPP).
Beginning January 1, 2023, the agreement enables authors affiliated with participating OhioLINK member institutions to publish their work open access (OA) at no cost to them. It also provides reading access to all 72 IOPP journals across the fields of physics, materials science, biosciences, astronomy and astrophysics, environmental sciences, and mathematics.
Libraries, Collections & Archives
How library resource sharing is fulfilling its promise
Ex Libris, Inc. Voting Member, Blog Post, January 18, 2023
New technologies are simplifying the workflows of interlibrary loan and document sharing services, expanding access for users to larger collections and minimizing the workload on librarians
Nothing speaks more to the uniquely collaborative nature of libraries than resource sharing. The idea of banding together to share collections has always held the promise of strengthening individual libraries and empowering them with larger collections. However, reality hasn’t always lived up to promise. Frustrations abound with traditional interlibrary loan (ILL) management systems and document delivery services (DDS). Librarians lament complicated set-ups, incompatibility with other library systems, and even manual workflows are rife with dead-ends and wasted steps. In a world where budget dollars and staff time are at a premium, traditional ILL systems are simply too expensive.
New England Quaker Records to be Digitized
University of Massachusetts, Amherst Libraries, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, January 17, 2023
The New England Yearly Meeting of Friends Records—rich and voluminous materials of Quakers going back to their mid-17th-century beginnings—will be the focus of a new digitization project by the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center (SCUA), in the UMass Amherst Libraries. When the project is completed, the vital records and meeting minutes heavily consulted by historians and genealogists will be available in SCUA’s digital repository, Credo, on the web, and through the collaborative Massachusetts digital portal, Digital Commonwealth, of which SCUA is a member.
Thanks to the efforts of Rob Cox, head of SCUA at the time, the records arrived at UMass Amherst in 2016, after having been on deposit at the Rhode Island Historical Society. Almost immediately, SCUA staff began to receive requests for research help in the collection, many from patrons unable to visit in person. Demand for access to the records, along with the age and fragility of many of the materials, have made digitization imperative.
University of California to research expanded access to digitized books
University of California, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, January 10, 2023
The University of California libraries — which comprise the largest university research library in the world — are launching a landmark research project to investigate the potential for expanded lawful use of digitized books held by academic and research libraries.
The Mellon Foundation is providing $1.1 million support for Project LEND (Library Expansion of Networked Delivery), a two-year project that the UC Davis Library will lead on behalf of the 10-campus UC system.
Libraries Begins Construction of Digital Scholars Lab
University of Texas, Austin, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, January 6, 2023
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin will soon have a new space for scholarly collaboration and innovation on the Forty Acres.
Construction is underway in the creation of a new Scholars Lab on the entry level of the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) that aligns with a growing focus on digital scholarship at the university. It will provide a technology-forward community hub for interdisciplinary scholarship for students, faculty and researchers.
“The Scholars Lab is envisioned as supporting and enhancing digital humanities scholarship with the expertise and support of Libraries’ staff, resources and services,” says Assistant Director of Research Support and Digital Initiatives Jenifer Flaxbart. “The project will result in a campus-wide resource that provides infrastructure, access to Libraries’ subject librarian and other research life cycle-situated experts and opportunities for learning, consultation, collaboration and research presentation to enhance multidisciplinary research and digital scholarship.”
Open Access, Open Science
Nature announces support for authors from over 70 countries to publish open access
Springer Nature, Voting Member, Press Release, January 18, 2023
From today, primary research from authors from over 70 countries classified by the World Bank as low-income (LIC) or lower-middle-income economies (LMICs) accepted for publication in either Nature or one of the Nature research journals (e.g. Nature Chemistry, Nature Sustainability) can now be published Gold open access at no cost*. This move recognises that local funding is rarely available for publishing OA in specialist journals like Nature, whose characteristics such as in-house editorial teams and low acceptance rates make it difficult for authors from these countries who are less well-funded.
A key part of this initiative is that authors will not need to ask to benefit from the support. Corresponding authors from qualifying countries whose primary research papers are accepted in principle (AIP) for publication in these titles will be informed as part of the publishing process that their paper will be published gold OA, with the APC covered by Springer Nature. Authors can opt out if they do not wish their papers to be published OA.
Wiley’s First Open Access Agreement in Hong Kong Promotes Research Accessibility
Wiley, Voting Member, Press Release, January 16, 2023
This agreement, which represents Wiley’s first in Hong Kong, allows eligible users of the three participating JULAC libraries (Chinese University of Hong Kong Library, Hong Kong Baptist University Library, and the University of Hong Kong Libraries) with access to Wiley’s journal portfolio and enables participating researchers to publish research open access in nearly 2,000 hybrid and gold open access journals, including those published by Hindawi.
“Widespread access to peer-reviewed research is critical, and our agreement with JULAC promotes research accessibility while also showcasing the excellent work done by scholars in Hong Kong,” said Kathryn Sharples, Vice President, Open Research, Wiley.
UBC Library research project explores Indigenous perspectives in open education resource development
University of British Columbia, L.S.A. Consortium Member (CRKN), News Announcement, January 16, 2023
UBC librarians are embarking on a new collaborative research project that aims to address a fundamental problem in how open educational practices approach Indigenous Knowledges, and instead replicate colonial concepts of ownership and knowledge transfer.
The research project, titled Foregrounding Indigenous Perspectives: Community and Collaborator Affinities and Conflicts in Open Education, was recently awarded a grant by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL). The Practicing Librarian Grant, awarded by CARL’s Strengthening Capacity Committee, supports Canadian research in the field of academic librarianship for projects that use structured, evidence-based research to tackle real-world issues.
ITHAKA and JSTOR in 2023: A letter from Kevin Guthrie
ITHAKA/JStor/Portico, Voting Member, News Announcement, January 5, 2023
Ideas that felt new in the 2000s are common practice now. We license technology services from the cloud, we search the world’s information in a nanosecond, and we buy goods on the internet and have them delivered to our doors. At ITHAKA, we have facilitated this digital transformation for the research and education community through the provision of services like JSTOR, Artstor, Portico, and Ithaka S+R. These services have enabled our community to preserve and provide access to knowledge in ways that are more economical and impactful, and helped our leaders make informed, evidence-based strategic decisions.
With the onset of the COVID pandemic, educational institutions around the world adjusted remarkably well. As a result of the investments of colleges and universities and their libraries in digital collections, online tools, and community infrastructure – bolstered by the truly heroic contributions of you and your colleagues – it was possible to support remote learning and research in ways that would not have been possible even just a few years ago. Of course, we also learned how far we are from being able to fully realize the future we strive to create: many collections are still not accessible, representative, or sufficiently secure; digital infrastructure and services still make collaboration among researchers and learners harder than it should be; and some of our existing structures and practices are impeding progress towards expanded access to knowledge.
Industry Leadership
Columbia University Names Minouche Shafik 20th President
Columbia University Library, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, January 18, 2023
Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, a leading economist whose career has focused on public policy and academia, will become the 20th president of Columbia University on July 1, 2023. Her election concludes a wide-ranging and intensive search launched after Lee C. Bollinger announced that he would step down as Columbia’s president at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year.
In a letter to the community, Jonathan Lavine, chair of the Columbia Board of Trustees, called Shafik “the perfect candidate: a brilliant and able global leader, a community builder, and a preeminent economist who understands the academy and the world beyond it.”
Lisa Carter named university librarian, dean of libraries
University of Michigan Library, L.S.A. Member, Featured Article, January 5, 2023
Lisa R. Carter has been appointed the University of Michigan’s university librarian and dean of libraries, effective May 1.
Carter currently is vice provost for libraries and university librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As an accomplished and nationally recognized library leader, Carter has experience in building collaborative partnerships, strategic alignment and distinctive collections, as well as facilities planning.
Brent Reidy Named The New York Public Library’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries
New York Public Library, L.S.A. Member, Press Release, December 29, 2022
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is pleased to announce that it has named Brent Reidy its Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries. Reidy served as the Library’s interim director since April of this year, following the retirement of William Kelly, the former Mellon Director. Reidy’s tenure will begin immediately.
Reidy will be responsible for NYPL’s world-renowned public research centers, which includes the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, and the Yoseloff Business Center. The research centers encompass 460 staff members, 47 million collection items and 4 million annual visitors. His purview includes collection strategy, acquisition, preservation, and access, while also serving as a national voice on the direction of humanities research.