Member News & Announcements, March IO 2025

Grants & Awards

OpenAthens Receives Platinum in Modern Library Awards 2025
OpenAthens, Voting Member, News Announcement, February 4, 2025

OpenAthens is proud to again receive a platinum award at the eleventh LibraryWorks’ annual Modern Library Awards (MLAs).

The MLAs were created to recognize the top products and services in the library industry. Only customers with experience of these products and services were permitted to judge, resulting in a truly unbiased score. Each judge scored the product from 1-10 on a series of questions regarding quality, functionality, value, and customer satisfaction.

Emerging Trends in AI

Defining and Implementing AI Literacy
ITHAKA/JStor/Portico, Voting Member, Blog Post, February 10, 2025

In response to the spread of generative AI, colleges and universities are recognizing the necessity of ensuring that students learn how to responsibly use AI and think critically about its role in society. However, defining and implementing AI literacy is complicated by rapidly evolving technologies and the difficulty of foreseeing the magnitude and variety of AI’s effects on teaching and learning, career readiness, and civic life. Creating institutionally specific frameworks for AI literacy and building the programming and resources necessary to integrate it into undergraduate education will require contributions from across the university.

Libraries are well positioned to be campus and even national leaders in these efforts. They employ experts in the information sciences, and at many institutions have long histories as key providers of instruction about other essential modern information literacies such as data literacy or digital literacy. Ithaka S+R is excited to announce a new cohort project, sponsored in part by JSTOR, focused on helping libraries meet the challenge of AI literacy.

Survey Highlights an Emerging Divide Over Artificial Intelligence in the U.S.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, L.S.A. Consortia Member (PALCI), News Announcement, February 10, 2025

Results from a new Rutgers University–New Brunswick survey tracking public trust in artificial intelligence (AI) suggest a growing divide in how Americans engage with the technology.

The survey, part of the National AI Opinion Monitor (NAIOM), was conducted between Oct. 25 and Nov. 8 and gathered insights from nearly 4,800 respondents across demographic groups, socioeconomic status and geographic location. It examined public attitudes toward AI, including trust in AI systems, the companies using them and AI-generated news content.

Preprints & Peer Review

Introducing Peer Community In
Project Muse/Johns Hopkins, Voting/L.S.A. Member, Blog Post, February 6, 2025

Peer Community In (PCI) is a non-profit organization of researchers offering peer review, recommendation, and publication of scientific articles in open access for free.

Following submission by authors, the thematic PCIs evaluate preprints in their scientific fields based on rigorous peer review. After evaluation, the PCIs may recommend those preprints, to make them complete, reliable and citable articles, without the need for publication in ‘traditional’ journals. Authors who need to publish their article in a journal can publish it for free in Peer Community Journal or submit it to a PCI-friendly or other journals.

AI & Machine Learning

IOP Publishing and Fudan University convene experts to explore AI and Machine Learning’s impact on the Physical sciences
IOP Publishing, Voting Member, News Announcement, February 11, 2025

IOP Publishing and Fudan University are organising a one-day international workshop, AI-driven discoveries: Machine Learning for the Physical Sciences. The event brings together leading researchers from around the world to explore how machine learning and AI are transforming the physical sciences.  

The international workshop provides an opportunity for leading and early-career researchers to share their work and spark ideas.

Open Access, Open Research

AUPresses Supports Anti-Censorship Declaration
Association of University Presses, Voting Member, News Announcement, February 19, 2025

As a global organization of mission-driven publishers dedicated to the cultivation of knowledge, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) has signed the Declaration To Defend Research Against US Government Censorship.

AUPresses joins with individual and institutional members of the scholarly communications community to assert that researchers must be freely able to conduct, collaborate on, share, review, and discuss their research.

ORCID endorses the Barcelona Declaration
ORCID, Inc., Voting Member, News Announcement, February 11, 2025

After thorough review and discussion with the ORCID Board late last year, ORCID is happy to announce our endorsement of the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information as an institutional supporter. We are pleased to see how the declaration, a community-driven initiative with over 100 signatories and 40 supporters, highlights growing support for sustainable infrastructure for research information. As a community-governed non-profit research infrastructure provider, ORCID considers all opportunities for community commitments, including endorsements, through a framework established by our Board of Directors, by which we assess the call for commitment against several criteria, including whether or not the commitment conflicts with our founding principles, our values, or would jeopardize our non-profit status. 

A fundamental goal of ORCID is to connect researchers with their research in an open, equitable way that enables transparent generation of insights about not only researchers, but their institutions.

Partnerships & Collaborations

California Universities and Oxford University Press Sign Landmark Open Access Agreement
Oxford University Press (OUP), and The SCELC Consortium, Voting Members, Press Release, February 11, 2025

This post is a press release issued by the University of California, California State University, the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium, and Oxford University Press.

The 10-campus University of California system (UC), 20 of 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and 30 private academic and research institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) have reached a comprehensive four-year transformative open access agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP). The agreement begins this month and will provide affiliated researchers with access to OUP’s world-leading journals and support for publishing their work open access.