Changes in Leadership
Lorcan Dempsey to retire as OCLC's Vice President for Research and Membership, and Chief Strategist
OCLC, Voting Member, Press Release, January 21, 2022
Lorcan Dempsey, known globally as a thought leader and strategist for libraries, has announced his plans to retire at the end of April as OCLC's Vice President for Research and Membership, and Chief Strategist.
Dempsey has served OCLC and its member libraries for over 20 years. During his tenure, he has overseen remarkable growth in the scope of OCLC Research activity, as well as the unification of member relations, WebJunction, and research in the OCLC Membership and Research Division.
Infrastructures and Platforms
Libraries launches ROAM, an expanded open educational resources repository
Penn State University, L.S.A. Consortium Member, News Announcement, January 21, 2022
Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing unit recently launched ROAM, a newly expanded online publication service for openly licensed educational materials authored by Penn State faculty. Short for “Repository of Open and Affordable Materials,” the platform builds on a service created and previously hosted by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) that published most of the college’s courseware free of charge for anyone to access. ROAM will extend EMS’ vision to include content from all disciplines and campuses across the University.
“ROAM is built on the strong foundation of University Libraries’ enduring commitment to equitable access to information, student success and openness,” said Rebecca Miller Waltz, interim associate dean for learning and undergraduate services, University Libraries. “Just as ScholarSphere makes Penn State publications, data and presentations openly available, ROAM will make the high-quality open and affordable educational resources created at Penn State available to our community and the world.”
FOLIO Library Services Platform Launches Kiwi Release
EBSCO Information Services, Voting Member, Press Release, January 13, 2022
The FOLIO Open Source Community has issued its latest named release as the platform continues to add features and functionality to the library services platform (LSP). The Kiwi Release includes platform updates and integration improvements in addition to user experience (UX) improvements and features.
The Kiwi Release offers platform enhancements that provide librarians with a more efficient user experience in the FOLIO platform. These enhancements include updates made to cataloging where libraries can now manage MARC holdings in FOLIO. Improvements to acquisitions provide the LSP with even more flexibility when creating new orders via GOBI®. The Kiwi Release also made improvements to circulation by providing improved logging related to patron notice processing as to capture all errors and add them to circulation log. These are just a few of the improvements made in the Kiwi Release, view the full list of improvements here.
Grants, Awards and Honorable Mentions
OCLC's entire suite of Capira library services recognized with 2022 Modern Library Awards
OCLC, Voting Member, Press Release, January 14, 2022
OCLC's entire suite of Capira library services—CapiraMobile, CapiraCurbside, CapiraReady, LendingKey, and MuseumKey—have all been recognized with LibraryWorks 2022 Modern Library Awards, including several platinum awards.
The Modern Library Awards were created to recognize the top products and services in the library industry. Judges are customers with experience with these products and services in their libraries.
CapiraMobile, a platinum Modern Library Award (MLA) winner for the third consecutive year, makes it possible for users to interact with their library through their mobile phones. The customizable app lets users engage with their library and learn about events, services, and resources conveniently through their phones. Libraries can send notifications about new programs and promotions, allow users to search the catalog, and support self-checkout and digital library cards through CapiraMobile.
Rice wins NEH grant to create digital database of Atlantic slave trade
Rice University, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, January 12, 2022
A Rice history professor’s work to create a digital database of the Atlantic slave trade has won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Associate professor of history Daniel Domingues has been awarded $149,995 for his project with Lancaster University to develop the Digital Archive of the Atlantic Slave Trades. He’s one of 208 winners of $24.7 million in NEH grants this year.
This open-access resource will digitize, transcribe, translate and link manuscript materials documenting the South Sea Company and its contribution to the trans-Atlantic and intra-American slave trades. The NEH award will also allow all of this vital data to be linked to SlaveVoyages, the world’s largest repository of data on the slave trade, which is housed at Rice and overseen by Domingues.
Partnerships & Collaborations
ResearchGate and IOP Publishing partner to increase the visibility of academic content
IOP Publishing, Voting Member, News Announcement, January 17, 2022
ResearchGate and IOP Publishing (IOPP) today announce a new collaboration agreement to explore ways to support the scientific community through syndication of IOPP peer reviewed scholarly content on ResearchGate’s platform.
ResearchGate is a scholarly social networking site on which over 20 million scientists and researchers share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.
The agreement – which marks the first time a physics society publisher has made its content available on the platform – will initially run for 12 months. Over 36,000 full text articles will be uploaded from open-access (OA) journals Environmental Research Letters, Materials Research Express and New Journal of Physics and hybrid journals Biomedical Materials, Classical Quantum Gravity, Physica Scripta and J Phys B.
Wiley and Carolina Consortium Partner to Deliver More Open Access Research
John Wiley & Sons, Voting Member, Press Release, January 12, 2022
Global research and education leader Wiley today announced a new three-year agreement with the Carolina Consortium, a consortium of libraries across the U.S. states of North Carolina and South Carolina.
The agreement allows members of 41 participating institutions access to all of Wiley’s hybrid and subscription journals and grants researchers the ability to publish accepted articles open access in all of Wiley's 1,400 hybrid journals.
Open access is a rapidly growing scholarly publishing model that allows peer-reviewed articles to be read, shared and re-used immediately, making important research broadly available. Research published under the agreement will be accessible for free, enabling a wider dissemination of information among both academics and the public alike.
Springer Nature Expands Its Partnership with the CLOCKSS Digital Archive
Springer Nature, Voting Member, Press Release, January 11, 2022
Springer Nature, the world’s largest academic book publisher, will partner with CLOCKSS to ensure the long-term preservation of all books published since 1815. Around 300,000 book titles crucially important for the scholarly record will now be kept safe for posterity. This includes titles in multiple languages, including English and German, and from a range of imprints including the renowned Springer and Palgrave Macmillan imprints. Titles include The Meaning of Relativity, published by Albert Einstein in 1922.
Niels Peter Thomas, Managing Director, Books at Springer Nature, said, “Books have always been and continue to be a driving force for social progress; therefore, we firmly believe in the impact of books. Partnerships such as this one with CLOCKSS strengthen the relevance of books to scholarly communication.”
CSHL and PLOS partner to host papers on medRxiv
Public Library of Science (PLOS), Voting Member, News Announcement, January 6, 2022
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and The Public Library of Science (PLOS) announced an expansion of their partnership to offer researchers more options for rapidly and easily sharing their research before publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Beginning January 2022, three PLOS journals, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and PLOS ONE, will offer authors the option to have their manuscript automatically forwarded to the preprint server medRxiv for posting as a preprint.
Launched in June 2019, medRxiv is a preprint server for medical research, owned and operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and managed in partnership with Yale and the global health knowledge provider BMJ. It currently hosts more than 27,500 manuscripts from 153,000 researchers in 140 countries. PLOS is the first publisher to implement this “journal-to-medRxiv” integration via the Editorial Manager journal submission system.
Product Innovation
Elsevier launches Complete Anatomy female model, the most advanced full female anatomy model available in the world
Elsevier, Voting Member, Press Release, January 10, 2022
Elsevier, a global leader in research publishing and information analytics, is pleased to announce the launch of the most advanced 3D full female model ever available, as part of the latest addition to its 3D platform, Complete Anatomy. This marks the first time that a female model has been built with this level of detail in its entirety, to represent the female — versus replacing specific areas of the male anatomy with female features. The solution allows educators to visualize, edit and teach anatomy entirely from the female perspective for the first time, all in stunningly realistic 3D detail. Complete Anatomy is a revolutionary cloud-based medical education platform from 3D4 Medical by Elsevier and is the No. 1 top-selling medical category app on iPad in the U.S., with over 20 million downloads globally.
The launch signifies a major milestone in equal representation by preparing medical, nursing and allied health students with the most complete understanding of the female anatomy. Historically, the full female anatomy has been underrepresented in the study of the human body. Now, educators can choose the sex with which they’d like to teach their full curriculum, in addition to having the option of switching between male and female anatomies to teach comparative differences in sex-specific regions of the body. The Complete Anatomy female model provides educators with a more comprehensive teaching approach that allows them to switch seamlessly between teaching both female and male anatomy.
Open Access, Open Science
The MIT Press announces the release of a white paper on its open monograph model
MIT Press, L.S.A. Member, Press Release, January 19, 2022
The MIT Press Open Monograph Model: Direct to Open, a new white paper published by Chain Bridge Group and the MIT Press, describes a collective model for supporting the open dissemination of scholarly monographs. The report examines the context for designing the framework and explains the logic behind the model’s design.
The MIT Press, supported by a grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, has developed and implemented a business model capable of disseminating the Press’s scholarly monographs open access. The framework, christened Direct to Open (D2O), is designed to induce support by balancing the dual motivations of academic research libraries: the value of private benefits, exclusive to contributing institutions, and mission-aligned support for open business models.
ScienceDirect pilot aims to improve research discovery and access
Elsevier, Voting Member, News Announcement, January 18, 2022
ScienceDirect is the home of Elsevier’s journals, books, and titles from our society partners. Over 15 million researchers worldwide use the platform to stay on top of research in their field, find answers to their research questions, and gain insights into trending research topics.
When I speak to these researchers, and in the many sessions we hold to get customer feedback, I’m consistently told that literature review is a very time-intensive process; staying up to date in a field of study can be a real challenge, and it is highly important to find trustworthy information. Researchers also tell us that it would help if we partnered with other publishers to include their important journals on ScienceDirect — that it would make it easier to navigate the sea of research out there on a trusted platform with high quality standards.
IOP Publishing and the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries sign unlimited open access publishing agreement
IOP Publishing, Voting Member, News Announcement, January 12, 2022
OP Publishing (IOPP) and the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries have agreed a three year ‘read and publish’ deal, providing access to journal content alongside unlimited open access publishing for academics at member institutions.
Researchers from the 19 participating Swiss institutions will be able to publish unlimited papers in all of IOPP’s research journals as well as many society partner journals. Their article publishing charges will be managed centrally via this agreement.
It is the first such agreement for IOPP with the Swiss Consortium and a positive step in support of open access since the agreement offers unlimited open access publishing.
Research Efforts
PLOS Digital Health publishes first papers
Public Library of Science (PLOS), Voting Member, Blog Post, January 18, 2022
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) today announced that PLOS Digital Health published its initial cohort of papers. PLOS announced the launch of five new journals last year and PLOS Digital Health is the second of these journals with papers ready for publication. The journal’s mission is to drive transformation in the delivery of equitable and unbiased healthcare through ethically conducted, impactful and immediately accessible research. The journal will accept papers from our diverse community of researchers, which will include engineers, social scientists and industry leaders among others. The journal has so far received nearly 150 submissions from researchers around the world.
“More relevant than contributing to the field of digital health, I hope PLOS Digital Health will spearhead a movement among journals to take a more proactive role in diversifying the research community and re-drawing the unequal map of the medical knowledge system,” said Editor-in-Chief, Leo Anthony Celi, PLOS Digital Health. “We cannot address health disparities without tackling knowledge inequalities between rich and poor countries.”
Oxford University Press to publish British Society for Immunology journals
Oxford University Press, Voting Member, Press Release, January 12, 2022
Oxford University Press (OUP) and the British Society for Immunology (BSI) are pleased to announce that OUP will publish the BSI’s journals, Clinical & Experimental Immunology and Discovery Immunology, beginning this month, January 2022. These titles join Immunotherapy Advances which launched in 2020 and is already published by OUP.
Clinical & Experimental Immunology is an authoritative, international, and well-respected journal which has published high-quality and impactful research and review articles in translational immunology since 1966. The journal covers studies that have the potential to transform our understanding of the immunopathology of human disease and/or change clinical practice.
AIP Publishing Expands Its Cooperative Impact in Partnership with SDG Publishers Compact and the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative
AIP Publishing, Voting Member, News Announcement, January 7, 2022
At AIP Publishing, we are continuing to build on our commitment to foster a better future for researchers in the physical sciences by expanding our contributions as a global voice for science and societal good. We are excited to participate in two important initiatives that begin to address the world’s most complex challenges through cooperative engagement.
AIP Publishing (AIPP) has become a signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Publishers Compact and the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative.
The SDG Publishers Compact brings together leading scholarly publishers to raise awareness of and accelerate the achievement of the 17 SDGs by 2030. Becoming a signatory means we have pledged to inform, develop, and inspire action related to these sustainable development goals.