The Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Join The Open Access Coalition

Press Release, The Wellcome Foundation, November 5, 2018

To ensure that research findings are shared widely and are made freely available at the time of publication, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation -- both major funding bodies -- have, as of November 5, 2018, joined the Open Access Coalition and publicly endorsed the principles of Plan S.  

Wellcome is Updating its Open Access Policy

Press Release, The Wellcome Foundation, November 5, 2018

The Wellcome Trust is concerned that knowledge and discoveries resulting from their funding are made freely available and used in a way that maximizes the benefit to health. Specifically, they want their open access (OA) policy to

• support a transition to a fully OA world, where no research is behind a paywall
• be as clear and as straightforward as possible with which to comply
• make sure that the costs of complying with it are fair and proportionate.

As a result, they have updated their policy, bringing it fully in line with Plan S, the OA policy framework developed by the European Commission and Science Europe. Plan S is endorsed by major funders, including UK Research and Innovation, the European Research Council, and the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. The updated OA policy [PDF 150KB] will apply to all research articles submitted for publication from 1 January 2020. Until then, researchers must continue to use the Wellcome Trust's current policy.

Better Research Evaluation in Seven Hashtags

Elizabeth Gadd, LSE Impact Blog, September 27, 2018

Elizabeth Gadd, Research Policy Manager (Publications), Loughborough University provided a talk at a half-day workshop at the Imperial College London. This article, based on that talk, offers seven high level principles that she believes "would make research evaluation better, fairer, and more meaningful."  She notes that increasingly research is done in teams and that therefore applying metrics to individual productivity is less meaningful.

She also questions the value of the streetlight effect, noting "all too often we value what we can easily measure, rather than measuring what we actually value. This is called the streetlight effect. We look for answers amongst bibliometric data because this is often the only 'streetlight' we have, rather than articulating what we value and e-valu-ating accordingly."  Gadd's insights on research evaluation are useful beyond the British Research Excellence Framework. 

Europe Drawing Fresh Battle Lines Around Ethics of Big Data

Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch, October 3, 2018

This lengthy article builds its case with commentary from key authorities as to "how European regulation needs to keep evolving to respond to platform power and its impacts on people." Included are comments from interviews with Giovanni Buttarell, European Union Data Protection Supervisor, Margrethe Vestager, European Commission's AntiTrust Chief, and Max Schrems, European data protection campaigner and lawyer.

From the article, "Next May, on the anniversary of GDPR coming into force, Buttarelli says he will publish a manifesto for a next-generation framework that envisages active collaboration between Europe's privacy overseers and antitrust regulators."

"Buttarelli does not sound convinced that GDPR alone (even combined with the ePrivacy Regulation which is intended to update rules governing digital communications but whose progress has been blocked by dispute and lobbying) will be remedy enough to fix all privacy hostile business models that EU regulators are seeing."

One Small Step for the Web

Tim Berners-Lee, Inrupt Blog, September 28, 2018,

Berners Lee announced a reduction in his time-commitment to the World Wide Web consortium and an intentional sabbatical from MIT in order to form his new company, Inrupt. Inrupt is intended to be the infrastructure supporting his new Solid platform. Solid, an open-source platform built on the existing Web, is intended to allow individuals greater control over their data; in the words of Berners-Lee, "it becomes a read-write web where users can interact and innovate, collaborate and share...The Inrupt company will provide commercial energy and an ecosystem to help protect the integrity and quality of the new web build on Solid."

Exclusive: Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to upend the World Wide Web

Katrina Brookers, Fast Company, September 29, 2018

This reporter characterizes Inrupt's mission as "to turbocharge a broader movement afoot, among developers around the world, to decentralize the web and take back power from the forces that have profited from centralizing it." She describes Solid's decentralized approach as "a mash-up of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook Slack, Spotify and WhatsApp" with the user remaining in full control of his or her own data. Overtime, the plan is to introduce an independent digital assistant that would allow users to safely store "health records, children's school events, or financial records" without fear of exploitation or manipulation by third parties.

The STM Report, 1968-2018

Rob Johnson, Anthony Watkinson, and Michael Mabe, International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers, October 2018

Of particular interest to the NISO audience, the technology section of this lengthy overview of scholarly communication and STM publishing, includes some interesting points regarding how technology is impacting research communities:

1. With virtually all STM research journals now available online, the trend of “the number of established research journals dropping their print component has accelerated”.

2. “The rapid general adoption of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) has yet to change significantly the way most researchers interact with journal content -- accesses from mobile devices still accounted for less than 10% of most STM platforms’ traffic as of 2014, but this is changing...Uptake for professional purposes has been fastest among physicians and other healthcare professionals, typically to access synoptic secondary services, reference works or educational materials.”

3. “The explosion of data-intensive research is challenging publishers to create new solutions to link publications to research data (and vice versa), to facilitate data mining and to manage the dataset as a potential unit of publication.”

4. “The growing importance to funders and institutions of research assessment and metrics has been reflected in the growth of information services such as research analytics built around the analysis of metadata (usage, citations, etc.) and the growth of new software services such as CRIS tools (current research information systems).”

5. “Perhaps the biggest change in scholarly infrastructure has been the development of preprint servers and the growing use of preprints in areas such as biology and chemistry.” However, there is uneasiness over the potential for preprints to undermine existing publisher business models.  

Request for Information on Proposed Provisions for a Draft Data Management and Sharing Policy for NIH Funded or Supported Research

National Institutes of Health, October 10, 2018

NIH is specifically requesting public comment before December 10, 2018 on the proposed policy provisions and required elements for data management and sharing plans, linked here:  https://osp.od.nih.gov/provisions-data-managment-sharing/. From the document, "In NIH's view, data should be made as widely and freely available as possible while safeguarding the privacy of participants and protecting confidential and proprietary data.  Increasing access to scientific data resulting from NIH funding or support offers many benefits and reflects NIH's responsibility to maintain stewardship over taxpayer funds. Specifically, sharing of scientific data and results enables researchers to more vigorously test the validity of research findings, strengthen analyses by combining data sets, access hard-to-generate data, and explore new frontiers.  Data sharing also informs future research pathways, increases the return on investment of scientific research funding, and accelerates the translation of research results into knowledge, products, and procedures to improve health and prevent disease...Stakeholder feedback is essential to inform the development of a new NIH policy on the management and sharing of scientific data. This Notice aims to solicit public comment on proposed key policy provisions."

The State of Open Data 2018

Contributors: Mark Hahnel, Briony Fane, Jon Treadway, Grace Baynes, Ross Wilkinson, Barend Mons, Erik Schultes, Luiz Olavo, Bonino da Silva Santos, Pavel ArefievIgor Osipov. Digital Science, October 2018

In the third issuance of Figshare's report, The State of Open Data, the noteworthy finding is that 64% of respondents revealed they made data openly available in 2018. The report notes that this an increase of 7% since their initial report in 2016. Most data is published as an appendix to the published research finding.  Another finding worth mentioning particularly to the NISO audience is that "Researchers felt they need most help with copyright and licencing, ahead of data curation."

GitHub Launches Action, its workflow automation tool

Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch, October 16, 2018

Action offers developers who have hitherto used Github as a storage host for code, to use Github as a mechanism to "build, package, release, update and deploy their code without having to run the code themselves." Currently in a limited public beta, the system may be likened to shortcut or a more flexible form of the IFTTT (IF This Then That) mechanism. From the article, "Lambert also noted that this could be a way for open source developers who don't want to build an enterprise version of their tools (and the sales force that goes with that) to monetize their efforts." Github is currently in the process of being acquired by Microsoft.  

University Futures; Library Futures: Aligning Library Strategies with Institutional Directions

Malpas, Constance, Roger Schonfeld, Rona Stein, Lorcan Dempsey, and Deanna Marcum. University Futures, Library Futures: Aligning Library Strategies with Institutional Directions. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/WS5K-DD86

In this joint research project from OCLC and ITHAKA, the team surveyed 580 individuals  working in main campus libraries (as opposed to those working in specialized libraries, such as law or music libraries) in order to develop a typology of institutions in a shifting marketplace of  higher education providers. Subsequently, the team then investigated "the ways in which the libraries in those groups were re-aligning their activities".  The report notes "a shift in focus from collections management to engagement-oriented services."

The institutions of higher education are perceived as consisting of five groupings. One key finding is that all of those five groups "would like to increase the share of resources devoted to Convene Campus Community, Showcase Scholarly Expertise, and Transform Scholarly Publishing. Granted, they allocate resources from somewhat different starting points and the rate of increase varies, but it is striking that these three key services areas will optimally capture a growing share of resources from members of all five groups. By contrast, there are three areas that would see optimally greater investment from Research and Liberal Arts institutions but at least modest optimal declines among Career institutions-Foster Scholarship and Creation and Preserve and Promote Unique Collections. Altogether, this analysis provides some clear evidence of where differing pressures of trends might be anticipated by typology-based institutions, even if it does not follow exactly the pattern that some observers might anticipate." The report also notes in passing the continuing importance of collaborative, consortial partnerships. At the same time, consortium directors acknowledge that "in an increasingly engagement- and service-oriented library environment, consortia must specialize their offer, forcing a difficult choice between leveraging economies of scope and scale" as the educational landscape morphs as institutions adapt their services to the needs and expectations of new populations.

Zotero Comes to Google Docs

Dan Stillman, Zotero Blog, October 19, 2018

Zotero, an open-source reference management software application produced by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, has now been integrated with Google Docs. The integration is accomplished via the Zotero Connector for Chrome and Firefox browsers, an extension downloadable from the Zotero site. Zotero may be perceived as competitive with such systems as Mendeley and Refworks.  

Why Jupyter is Data Scientists' Computational Notebook of Choice

Jeffrey M. Perkel, Nature, 30 October 2018

From the article: "Jupyter is a free, open-source, interactive web tool known as a computational notebook, which researchers can use to combine software code, computational output, explanatory text and multimedia resources in a single document. Computational notebooks have been around for decades, but Jupyter in particular has exploded in popularity over the past couple of years. This rapid uptake has been aided by an enthusiastic community of user-developers and a redesigned architecture that allows the notebook to speak dozens of programming languages...One analysis of the code-sharing site GitHub counted more than 2.5 million public Jupyter notebooks in September 2018, up from 200,000 or so in 2015. In part, says Pérez, that growth is due to improvements in the web software that drives applications such as Gmail and Google Docs; the maturation of scientific Python and data science; and, especially, the ease with which notebooks facilitate access to remote data that might otherwise be impractical to download..."

Information Legacy of Eugene Garfield: From the Chicken Coop to the World Wide Web

Wendy Warr, Wendy Warr & Associates, October 2018

Gene Garfield left a legacy far beyond the concept of citation indexing and bibliometrics, and the ideas that he developed during the latter half of the last century continue to fuel advances in cheminformatics and information science. Wendy Warr reports on the symposium in his honor held earlier in 2018 at the 255th ACS National Meeting and Exposition in New Orleans, LA, on March 19, 2018.

Todd Carpenter, Executive Director at NISO presented at this event; his presentation was entitled "Beyond Citations: What Are New Ways to Assess Content That Will Extend the Assessment Toolbox". Warr's report thoroughly covers Todd's contribution as well as that of the other five speakers.

ISO 28560-2:2018 A Information and documentation -- RFID in libraries -- Part 2: Encoding of RFID data elements based on rules from ISO/IEC 15962

"This document specifies a data model and encoding rules for the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for items appropriate for the needs of all types of libraries (including national, academic, public, corporate, special, and school libraries). The rules for encoding a subset of data elements taken from the total set of data elements defined in ISO 28560-1 are based on ISO/IEC 15962, which uses an object identifier structure to identify data elements."

ISO/IEC 29500-2:201x Office Open XML File Formats - Open Packaging Conventions

ISO/IEC 29500 specifies a family of XML schemas, collectively called Office Open XML, which define the XML vocabularies for word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents, as well as the packaging of documents that conform to these schemas.

The goal is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML formats by the widest set of tools and platforms, fostering interoperability across office productivity applications and line-of-business systems, as well as to support and strengthen document archival and preservation, all in a way that is fully compatible with the existing corpus of Microsoft Office document.

This document defines a set of conventions for packaging one or more interrelated byte streams (parts) as a single resource (package).  These conventions are applicable not only to Office Open XML specifications as described in Parts 1 and 4 of ISO/IEC 29500, but also to other markup specifications.

A working draft for the revision of Open Packaging Conventions (ISO/IEC 29500-2) is available for a public review that runs from 2018-10-02 through 2019-02-01. 

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Call for U.S. Participants ISO Strategic Advisory Group – Accessibility

The ISO Technical Management Board (ISO/TMB) has agreed to create a new ISO Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) on Accessibility for an initial period of 2 years with the following mandate:

Align work on accessibility issues within IEC, ITU, and ISO in line with the recommendations from 2010, to address, decide, and monitor key issues related to accessibility; Map existing ISO standards related to accessibility; Map ongoing standardization work in ISO, IEC, and ITU relating to accessibility;Take into account other relevant international initiatives; Develop recommendations on tools to assist the TC community in developing standards that take accessibility into consideration; Liaise with CEN and CLC to exchange best practices and study results from CEN Strategic advisory group on accessibility; and Give recommendations to ISO on the development of new standards on accessibility.

ANSI is seeking two (2) U.S. experts to serve on the SAG as well as an additional U.S expert to populate a U.S. Virtual Technical Advisory Group (VTAG). It is anticipated that this project will start in December 2018 or January 2019. Experts interested in participating should contact ANSI’s Arpana Patel by email at apatel@ansi.org by November 9.

The W3C Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) Working Group

The W3C Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) Working Group has published two working drafts, for which comments are requested by November 20:

• Personalization Tools 1.0 is a document listing examples of the tools’ defined values, as an extension of Personalization Semantics Explainer 1.0.  

• Personalization Help and Support 1.0 is a document listing examples of the personalized help and support properties.

The mission of the Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG) is to ensure W3C specifications provide support for accessibility to people with disabilities.