Member News & Announcements, June IO 2021

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg Philanthropies Announce $150M to fuel diversity in STM fields
Project Muse/Johns Hopkins, Voting Member, News Announcement, May 11, 2021

Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg Philanthropies today announced the launch of a $150 million effort to directly address historic underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, and to prepare a new, more diverse generation of researchers and scholars to assume leading roles in tackling some of the world's greatest challenges.

The Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative at Johns Hopkins—named for one of the institution's most celebrated figures, a Black surgical laboratory supervisor best known for his work to develop a lifesaving cardiac surgical technique—will create new pathways for students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions to pursue and earn PhDs in STEM fields.

"STEM fields play an increasingly important role in developing innovative solutions to a wide range of pressing challenges, yet STEM PhD programs don't reflect the broad diversity of our country," said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies, 108th mayor of New York City, and a Johns Hopkins alumnus. "So creating more equitable opportunities for more students is critical to our country's future in so many ways.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Clarivate to Acquire Proquest
Clarivate, NISO Voting Member, May 17, 2021

Clarivate plc (NYSE: CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire ProQuest,  a leading global software, data and analytics provider to academic, research and national institutions, from Cambridge Information Group, a family-owned investment firm, and other partners including Atairos, for $5.3 billion, including refinancing of ProQuest debt. The consideration for the acquisition is approximately $4.0 billion in cash and $1.3 billion of equity. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, is expected to close during the third quarter of 2021.

Open Access, Open Science

eLife extends support for Coko’s work on open-source publishing solutions
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd, Voting Member, Press Release, May 17, 2021

eLife is pleased to announce today its ongoing support for Coko to develop open-source software solutions for publishing, including Kotahi – a new journal platform that can also help facilitate the publication and review of preprints.

Preprints have seen a significant rise in popularity over recent years. In light of this, eLife is working towards a new system in which research is first published as a preprint and the outputs of peer review, provided by different communities, are the primary way research is assessed, rather than journal title. Meanwhile, with a similar mission to eLife, Coko is working to transform how knowledge is created, produced and reported. The organisations first partnered in 2017 to develop a system for the submission and peer review of manuscripts, which was built on the Coko PubSweet framework.

Now, eLife is continuing its support of the PubSweet community’s work in creating new publishing tools. These include Kotahi, an open-source platform for managing the submission, review and publication of journal articles, micropublications and preprints.

Product Innovation

Introducing the Journal Citation Indicator: A new, field-normalized measurement of journal citation impact
Clarivate Analytics, Voting Member, Blog Post, May 20, 2021

In a recent blog post we discussed refinements in this year’s forthcoming release of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)™, describing the addition of new content and hinting at a new metric for measuring the citation impact of a journal’s recent publications.

I’m now pleased to fully introduce the Journal Citation Indicator. By normalizing for different fields of research and their widely varying rates of publication and citation, the Journal Citation Indicator provides a single journal-level metric that can be easily interpreted and compared across disciplines.

The Journal Citation Indicator will be calculated for all journals in the Web of Science Core Collection™ – including those that do not have a Journal Impact Factor (JIF)™ – and published in the 2021 JCR in June.

Springer Nature advances its machine-generated tools and offers a new book format with AI-based literature overviews
Springer Nature, Voting Member, Press Release, May 4, 2021

Following the publication of its first machine-generated book in 2019, Springer Nature has now deployed its AI expertise to create a new publication format which focuses on literature reviews. While the first book on lithium-ion batteries was entirely AI-based, this new format takes an innovative hybrid approach of blending human-machine interaction. The new product is a mixture of human-written text and machine-generated literature overviews, which sees an author putting these machine-generated reviews, created from a large set of previously published articles in Springer Nature journals, into book chapters and providing a scientific perspective.

Climate, Planetary and Evolutionary Sciences: A Machine-Generated Literature Overview, edited by Guido Visconti, is the first publication of this kind. Professor Guido Visconti devised a series of questions and keywords related to different aspects of climate studies, examining their most recent developments and their most practical applications. These were queried, discovered, collated and structured by the machine using AI clustering with the results presented in a series of book chapters for Prof Visconti to put into scientific context. This combined approach of human-machine interaction was able to reveal the complex and interdisciplinary nature of the climate, planetary and evolution sciences. Springer Nature is planning a further development of this new format and making human-machine collaboration part of its publishing experience.

Ex Libris Cloud Apps Reach Two Thousand Activations
Ex Libris, Inc., Voting Member, Press Release, May 4, 2021

Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce that users of Ex Libris cloud-based products have reached a major milestone: original applications developed by and for members of the Ex Libris community have been activated two thousand times. With the new Ex Libris Cloud Apps open framework, over a thousand users have extended the capabilities of their Ex Libris cloud-based solutions—including the Ex Libris Alma® library services platform, Primo® discovery and delivery tool, Esploro™ research information management solution, Leganto® course resource list solution, and Rapido™ resource sharing solution—to meet their library’s specific needs.

The apps that have been developed include time-saving workflow shortcuts and automations, extensions to suit unique institutional requirements, and integrations with external systems or data sources. To activate an app, one need only click the Cloud Apps icon within an Ex Libris higher-ed cloud product.

The full list of apps is always available and searchable. However, the Cloud Apps framework also responds to the context of a user’s session, suggesting apps that might be helpful for the specific feature in the workflow that the user is currently interacting with.

 

Partnerships and Collaborations

The Modern Language Association Selects Silverchair
Modern Language Association (MLA), and Siverchair, Voting Members, News Announcement, May 24, 2021

The MLA Handbook has been in print for half a century, with a ninth edition released in April 2021. The Handbook is a mainstay for college writers, providing guidelines for writing and documentation of research in the humanities. On the Silverchair Platform, the MLA Handbook will now enjoy robust search and browse functionality as well as a modern interface, making it easier for students to find and reference key information. Future plans include an expansion of resources, simplifying access and optimizing the user experience for scholars, teachers, students, and libraries.

“The MLA produces many cornerstone publications, and we are thrilled to help them meet the demands of remote instruction and to evolve their content through the ongoing addition of new features,” said Thane Kerner, Silverchair CEO. “As part of the Silverchair community, MLA publications will enjoy the same continuous upgrades as the many other society publishers on the platform, ensuring they stay at the forefront of industry trends and user needs.”

ACS signs ‘read and publish’ transformative agreement with IReL consortium
American Chemical Society (ACS), Voting Member, Press Release, May 18, 2021

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) is proud to announce a new transformative “read and publish” agreement with the IReL consortium in Ireland. With this agreement, ACS expands its read and publish program to over 390 institutions across 23 countries.  

"IReL is excited to begin this new chapter in our long-standing relationship with ACS," says Jack Hyland, IReL manager. “The read and publish model means that overnight, open access becomes the default option offered to hundreds of Irish researchers publishing with ACS, and its author workflows will make this as easy and frictionless as possible for them.”

The agreement, which lasts through 2025, brings the possibility for all articles published at IReL’s nine participating institutions to be made open access. Additionally, researchers and students will continue to enjoy full access to ACS’ suite of more than 75 premier journals.

Elsevier joins NSF partnership established to tackle major engineering challenges
Elsevier, Voting Member, Press Release, May 14, 2021

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Engineering, the University Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), and the EPSCoR/IDeA Foundation (EIF) announced the launch of a new initiative – titled Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) – which will serve as a force multiplier for high-impact research on society’s grand challenges. Managed by UIDP and funded with a five-year, $8 million award from NSF, ERVA will convene engineering voices to prioritize topics for innovative research that both benefits society and leads to a more secure and sustainable world.

UIDP and ERVA will leverage a sophisticated operational model for ideation activities. Elsevier will serve as the initiative’s primary research intelligence partner, employing its data analytics tools to help illuminate the leading edge of engineering research.

“The challenges we face as a nation require interdisciplinary approaches and engineering R&D to develop effective solutions. Identifying and accelerating opportunities requires synthesizing input from multiple stakeholders and data sources. UIDP has brought together a network of trusted partners, including Elsevier, to catalyze and inform ERVA priorities in service of these grand challenges,” said Anthony Boccanfuso, President and CEO of UIDP and ERVA Co-Principal Investigator

New book publishing concept combines Taylor & Francis Books Heritage with F1000’s Open Research model
Taylor & Francis Group, Voting Member, News Announcement, May 13, 2021

Taylor & Francis Group has launched the pilot of a new book publishing concept, Open Plus Books, that fuses the traditional print and Open Access books model with F1000’s Open Research publishing model.

United by their shared goals of amplifying and democratizing research, this first joint initiative following the acquisition of F1000 by Taylor & Francis Group in 2020 is an important further step in strengthening and broadening Taylor & Francis’ capabilities in open research and open access book publishing, as well as enabling F1000 to extend its trailblazing open research publishing offering into books.

Open Plus Books will enable authors or book editors to publish a book open access first on the open research platform within just a few days of submission. Each chapter is a standalone piece, enabling chapters to be published as soon as they are accepted, and additional chapters to be added at any time. Chapters can be updated, revised, and amended individually by the author to reflect changes in research, knowledge, policy, legislation, or standards.

GOBI® Library Solutions from EBSCO Now Offers Evidence-Based Acquisitions from IGI Global
EBSCO, Voting Member, Press Release, May 13, 2021

GOBI® Library Solutions from EBSCO (GOBI Library Solutions) now offers Evidence-Based Acquisitions (EBA) through IGI Global’s InfoSci® platform. EBA programs on the IGI Global InfoSci platform enable libraries to provide users with access for a set period of time to a collection of e-books and leverage usage statistics to help library staff with collection development. Library users will benefit from having access to high-quality e-book content and libraries will benefit by being able to review actual usage data to help determine which titles to purchase with perpetual access.

By running their EBA program through GOBI®, libraries can blend their patrons’ usage data with enhanced GOBI metadata to make the most informed selection decisions possible, while benefitting from duplication control, high-quality cataloging records and integration with local systems. Library staff receive a usage report at the end of the EBA period and can leverage the data to select titles with perpetual access and make more informed collection development decisions.

Libraries that choose IGI Global EBA also benefit from unlimited use and DRM-free access with a PDF download option. Libraries can also access more than 6,600 titles across a wide range of subjects, including Business & Management, Education, Computer Science & IT, Science & Engineering, Social Sciences & Humanities and more. The addition of IGI Global EBA will offer GOBI customers time-saving, flexible solutions for their unique library acquisition needs.

Grant Initiatives

ITHAKA Receives $500,000 Grant to Bring Unheard Voices to the Public: America’s Incarcerated
ITHAKA/JStor/Portico, Voting Member, News Announcement, May 27, 2021

The past year has shed light on the inequities that exist in America and the need to address these through not only policy changes, but through educational and cultural experiences that deepen our collective consciousness. Given our mission to expand access to knowledge and education for everyone, we are seeking out opportunities to promote learning and dialogue by bringing previously unheard voices into college and high school classrooms, into our libraries, and into public discourse. We are excited to be engaged in this work with others, and are thrilled today to announce that we have received a $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help us raise the voices of a population that is largely invisible in America and disproportionately people of color: incarcerated individuals.

With The Mellon Foundation’s support, we will accelerate and increase the impact of a project we have been developing for some time called American Prison Newspapers: 1800-2020.

Statements and Reports

First ever Clarivate Top 100 Best Protected Global Brands report reveals those that demonstrate robust brand strength and protection
Clarivate Analytics, Voting Member, News Announcement, May 26, 2021

Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, announced today the first ever listing of Top 100 Best Protected Global Brands. The 2021 report identifies the most impactful and best protected brands in the world, measuring brand strength through the analysis of advanced and unified IP data including trademark information, global case law and digital domain name protection. Almost half (49) of the world’s Best Protected Global Brands are headquartered in Europe and consumer brands (51) make up a majority of the list, according to the report.

Jeff Roy, President, IP Group, Clarivate, said, “Our very first Best Protected Global Brands report honors businesses that have created powerful identities. Their brand stewards recognize the pivotal role IP plays in supporting business strategies and delivering long-term value. We congratulate the Top 100 Best Protected Global Brands for their commitment to elevating and protecting their commercial identity, at a time when the rate of change and complexity of competition is greater than ever before.”