Scholarly Communication in the News
Trump Hesitates on Plan for Open Access Mandate
As reported by Paul Basken, the Trump administration is backing away from its stance to bypass publisher paywalls, and has instead chosen to study the matter further. Early this year, it was reported that the Trump Administration was close to an executive order that would require free and immediate access to articles describing federally funded research. This news has been supported by some publishers and societies, including the Public Library of Science (PLoS), which delivered a letter to the Trump Administration supporting the proposed change in policy. These initiatives are still ongoing, and have been recently directed to a Request for Information (RFI) via the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which can be read in further detail below.
Free Coloring Page Content from #ColorOurCollections 2020
February 3-7, 2020 was the annual #ColorOurCollections event on social media. Started in 2016 by The New York Academy of Medicine Library, #ColorOurCollections is a week-long event organized by libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions to release and share free coloring content based on materials from their collections. With items from over 509 institutions, users can find free pages to share and color using the hashtag #ColorOurCollectios on social media. More information about the event, and links to coloring pages can be found on the event's main page.
Every Pop Melody Possible is Now in the Public Domain
If musical notes are data, can you copyright them? In a recent Scholarly Kitchen article, David Crotty describes the research of Damian Riehl and Noah Rubin, which have developed an algorithm which has generated every possible melody, which has now been released under a Creative Commons Zero License. The code and melodies are available for download from the researchers website, http://allthemusic.info/. Riehl also described the work of their project in a recent TEDx talk.
FORCE11 Blog Series Focuses on Infrastructure
Over the course of 2020, the Future of Research Communication and e-Scholarship (FORCE11) will be publishing a series of blog posts, which will focus on infrastructure. As FORCE11 describes in their recent announcement, 'In fact, there really is no it to infrastructure--no single organization, technology or approach keeps things running. And sometimes it's difficult to know what those things are. What is infrastructure and what's just...technology? What does it enable?' This past month was the first blog post in the series, and focused on Digital Preservation. The post was an interview with CLOCKSS Executive Director Craig Van Dyck, and can be found here.
Smithsonian Puts 2.8 Million Images in the Public Domain
The Smithsonian Institution recently released 2.8 digital pictures and 3-D models from its collections into the Public Domain under the Smithsonian's new Open Access program via Amazon's AWS public data set program. These items have been released under the Creative Commons Zero 'No Rights Reserved' License. Beyond releasing the items, the Smithsonian has also launched a complimentary public API and has put the collection's data in a public GitHub repository. Users can search through the images and 3D Models via the Smithsonian's Open Access Platform.
ALLEA report on 'Sustainable and FAIR Data Sharing in the Humanities'
Earlier this month, Keith shared the details to a recently released report by the All Europeans Academies (ALLEA). The Report on Sustainable and FAIR Data Sharing in the Humanities provides several key recommendations to ensure that digital data in the humanities can be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). The report is designed as a practical guide to help scholars, research funders, professionals and policymakers navigate the shift towards a sustainable data sharing culture.
Scholarly Communication at CMU
ORCID Read/Write for Elements Profiles
In the latest update of our Symplectic Elements platform, users can now ‘write' content from their Elements profile to their ORCID record. Previously, users could only use ORCID to suggest publications to their Elements profile. This new functionality provides users with the option of sending publications from Elements to their ORCID record. This lowers the barrier to data reuse for researchers and contributes to ORCID's mission to enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers and their research contributions.This new functionality also enables ORCID the second identifier that can be used for automatic claiming of content, the other being ScopusIDs. A new user guide has been created on our CMU Elements support portal to inform users how to create an ORCID/register their pre-existing ORCID with the CMU Identity Management System, and how to enable the read/write functionality with their ORCID record. Users who have questions or need help with their ORCID integration are encouraged to contact the CMU Elements Support Team, elements@andrew.cmu.edu.
CMU Response to Request for Information: Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications, Data and Code Resulting From Federally Funded Research
On February 19, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a 'Request for Information on Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications, Data and Code Resulting From Federally Funded Research.' The RFI aims to provide all interested individuals and organizations with the opportunity to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring broad public access to the peer-reviewed scholarly publications, data, and code that result from federally funded scientific research. CMU is gathering information to provide a university response to the RFI. Hannah and the Research Data Services Team are organizing the initial comments that will be drafted into the response. This will then be passed to the research office and Deans for additional input and commentary. Those interested in adding thoughts and comments can do so via the Libraries Data Services email address, UL-DataServices@andrew.cmu.edu. Please provide any thoughts or comments by EOB on Wednesday, March 04.
Recording to 'Introducing datasets as a new content type to Dimensions'
On February 18, Christian Bode (Head of Product) and Ben McLeish (Director of Engagement & Advocacy) from Dimensions led a webinar on the introduction of datasets as a new content type in Dimensions. The Webinar discussed: What are datasets and which datasets are integrated in the Dimensions information ecosystem, Why datasets are important, and How researchers can use the datasets integrated in Dimensions to their advantage. The webinar was recorded, and the recording can be found here.
Open Access Updates
February CMU APC Funded Articles
The following articles were approved for funding in February 2020:
- Stefanie Sydik, Faculty, Chemistry, 'Polyester Functional Graphenic Materials as a Mechanically Enhanced Scaffold for Bone Regeneration,' RSC Advances.
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Vishwanath Saragadam, Graduate Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering, 'On space-spectrum uncertainty analysis for spectrally-programmable cameras,' Optics Express.
Summary of FY '19-'20
A Summary of all articles funded in FY '19-'20 can be found here.