Member News & Announcements, August IO 2020

Open Access, Open Science

ACS Publications announces new open science resource center
American Chemical Society (ACS), Voting Member, Press Release, July 16, 2020

Researchers, librarians and administrators who visit this resource will find information on open science and open access publishing, will learn how to comply with funder requirements and will be able to search ACS’ open access agreements to find out if they are eligible to have article publishing charges (known as APCs) waived. These new tools will speed the transition to an open science future by effectively communicating how open access publishing works for ACS’ extensive community of authors.

“Scholarly publishing is changing rapidly, as new policies and funder mandates impact more researchers,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “We are committed to leading the open science movement, and these new tools will help our world-class author community advance their own research while adapting to this fast-changing environment.”

ALA COVID-19 resources guide path toward reopening and recovery
American Library Association (ALA), Voting Member, Press Release, July 15, 2020

The ALA COVID-19 Recovery website includes everything from the latest information on safely reopening libraries to funding opportunities available on the local, state and federal level. It will be updated often and replace the existing COVID-19 Response page that has served the community through the pandemic thus far.

The online resource center is arranged into four sections: Advocacy & Policy; Education; Data & Research; and Guidance Content & Protocol.

ALA Executive Director Tracie D. Hall said, “We are launching the beginning of what we hope will be a growing resource for the field because we know that library workers and users have questions about what comes next and how libraries can help shape the answers. This collection of actionable guidance is designed to help our members and the sector as a whole access and share timely information, models, and strategies no matter where they are in their recovery plans. Libraries have a vital role to play in national recovery and resilience, and ALA remains committed to helping support them.”

Ex Libris Introduces Cloud Apps Open Framework
Ex Libris, Inc. Voting Member, Press Release, July 7, 2020

Since the launch of the Ex Libris App Center last year, the community has shared more than 60 apps in the App Center marketplace, helping users meet essential and changing institutional needs. The Cloud Apps open framework extends the openness, agility, and adaptability of the Ex Libris higher-ed cloud platform to the next level.

Cloud Apps will improve library productivity by extending the functionality of Alma services and of other Ex Libris cloud solutions. They can be used to integrate Ex Libris cloud solutions with external systems or data sources, enable workflow efficiencies, and enrich Ex Libris solutions with extensions that meet unique institutional needs. Library staff users will be able to easily launch them from the higher-ed platform itself with one click.

Launch of IOP Publishing online bookstore extends access to award-winning ebook collection
IOP Publishing, Voting Member, News Announcement, July 2, 2020

IOP Publishing has extended access to its award-winning ebook programme with the launch of its new online bookstore. For the first time, all the titles in the collection will be available to purchase individually in one place.

The IOP ebooks collection brings together innovative digital publishing with leading authors from across the physical sciences. Available in a comprehensive range of digital formats with multimedia features, the programme now comprises 500 titles in 16 subject areas spanning physics, astronomy, materials science and the biomedical sciences.

While IOP ebooks are already available in university libraries around the world, the new online platform enables those not affiliated with an academic institution to gain direct access. Books can be purchased both in print and digital formats.

Infrastructure and Platforms

Wiley Takes Spectral Identification to the Next Level with Launch of KnowItAll 2020
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Voting Member, Press Release, July 28, 2020

“Coupled with over 2 million high-quality reference spectra, KnowItAll 2020 enhances Wiley Science Solutions – providing an integrated, one-stop solution for spectral identification and data management,” said Jay Flynn, Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Research at Wiley. “We’re always looking for innovative solutions for researchers; and with KnowItAll’s simpler, more intuitive interface, and a new model derived from machine learning for spectral identification, researchers will be able to make faster and more accurate analyses.”

Wiley is quickening the pace of research and discovery through its investment in technology-based solutions like KnowItAll 2020 that provide invaluable interpretation tools for researchers, who are enhancing productivity and making an impact in many application areas such as environmental, forensics, polymer and pharmaceutical laboratories.

Ex Libris Launches Funding Insights Dashboard, Providing Clarify into the Status of Global Research Funding
Ex Libris, Inc., Voting Member, Press Release, July 16, 2020

With the research funding landscape changing rapidly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, Ex Libris is providing this aggregated funding data as a service to the community to better inform research offices, researchers, and other stakeholders as they develop their funding strategies. Data will be updated quarterly, portraying the latest trends and delivering related commentary and analysis.

Powered by curated data from the Ex Libris Pivot® and Research Professional® services, the Funding Insights dashboard will help users gain a better understanding of the number of currently available research funding opportunities and related funding trends. The data can be sorted by country, funder, discipline, award type, and other parameters. Funding trend reports and analyses from Research Professional News are also included.

CLIR and Stanford Libraries Announce Digital Library of the Middle East Platform
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Voting Member, Press Release, July 15, 2020

July 15, 2020 — The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Stanford Libraries today announced the release of a public, open platform for the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which aims to become one of the world’s largest online archives of Middle Eastern and North African artifacts. The DLME aggregates, through an ongoing program, digital records of published materials, documents, maps, artifacts, audiovisual recordings, and more from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

An international collaborative effort under development for four years, the DLME currently brings together 127,443 digital records of materials held in museums, libraries, and archives worldwide. It also provides an array of applications, tools, and descriptions that enrich the content and facilitate browsing, search, and interpretation. The DLME is intended to serve as a resource for teachers, students, and researchers, as well as for the general public.

Libraries and Archives

It’s Back to the Stacks: 100 Library Staff Members Return to Campus as Access to Physical Collection Resumes
Harvard University, L.S.A. Member, Featured Article, July 16, 2020

When Harvard Library Access Services Director Amy Boucher returned to the Yard at the end of June, she entered a different Widener Library than the one she’d left in mid-March. Re-shelving carts filled the Circulation Room; thousands of book returns waiting to be processed topped tables in the Phillips Reading Room. Masked colleagues and social-distancing signage were reminders of the pandemic and the importance of new safety protocols.

At the same time, Boucher said, it’s been nice to be back.

Boucher and more than 100 other staff members returned to library buildings two weeks ago as Harvard began its phased reopening of on-campus services, allowing access to physical materials that have not been circulating for more than three months.

MIT Libraries Staff Honored with 2020 Infinite Mile Awards
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, July 8, 2020

The MIT Libraries honored the outstanding contributions of its employees June 18 with a virtual Infinite Mile Awards ceremony. The circus-themed program, titled “The Greatest Staff on Earth,” featured a staff talent showcase and socially distant performances by the libraries' band, The Dust Jackets. 

University of California Press ebook Collection Now Available
California Digital Library (CDL), L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, July 6, 2020

The UC libraries have acquired a comprehensive collection of ebooks from the University of California Press (http://uclibs.org/PID/432800). The acquisition, which was funded by CDL, gives UC libraries perpetual access to nearly every UC Press title published since 1928, including the 2020 frontlist. In total, UC has gained access to 5,193 titles from UC Press, which was founded in 1893 and is the sixth largest university press publisher in the United States.

The titles are accessible now on the DeGruyter platform, and are currently being cataloged by members of CDL’s Shared Cataloging Program. DeGruyter, an independent, academic publisher which has been in business for 270 years, recently started a University Press Library program, in which it partners with prestigious university presses to offer their titles in digital format with multi-user, unlimited access and no Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Penn State Libraries reducing collections budget for 2020-21 Fiscal Year
Penn State University Libraries, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, July 2, 2020

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Because of budget constraints, Penn State University Libraries will need to reduce spending on library collections by about $2.2 million for the 2020-21 fiscal year. Although order cancellations will be necessary, the University Libraries remains committed to providing access to scholarly resources needed for the Penn State community and to increasing diversity in its collections.

Knowledge Management

JSTOR offers $4 million fee relief for libraries and guarantees revenue for publishers; holds pricing flat through 2023
ITHAKA/JSTOR/Portico, Voting Member, News Announcement, July 15, 2020

As education institutions around the world continue to grapple with the momentous impact of COVID-19, libraries and publishers must cut budgets while continuing to support the needs of students, researchers, and their colleagues. We have talked with many of you about your needs, and we appreciate that JSTOR and Artstor are more important than ever to your communities.

When the pandemic forced institutions to stop residential learning abruptly last spring, we worked with our publishers to execute a plan to support our library participants’ immediate needs in an exclusively online environment. Thousands of institutions signed up for complimentary access to archive and e-book collections they had not previously licensed. We recently extended the expanded access program for the archive collections through December 31, 2020 and the books to August 31, 2020.

Frost & Sullivan Radar Ranks Wolters Kluwer as a top 20 AI innovation leader in healthcare IT
Wolters Kluwer, Voting Member, News Announcement, July 14, 2020

The independent analysis evaluated a field of more than 200 healthcare IT companies and ranked Wolters Kluwer among the top 20 for continuous innovation and growth focusing on areas where AI solutions are most relevant for hospitals, physicians and payers.

“In a market forecasted to reach more than $34 billion globally by 2025, Wolters Kluwer is one of the top growth performers in AI for healthcare IT and poised to move higher on the Radar,” commented Koustav Chatterjee, report author and analyst for Frost & Sullivan’s Global Transformational Health team. “In innovation metrics, Wolters Kluwer delivered remarkable results at scale for both payers and providers.”

Wolters Kluwer is coupling the expansive knowledge of its trusted clinical experts with impactful AI solutions that target complex problems in healthcare. According to the Frost report, the top-right Radar positioning of Wolters Kluwer, adjacent to well-recognized tech giants, highlights its superior deep learning and NLP capabilities, and showcases how Wolters Kluwer is reimagining predictive clinical surveillance.

Research Tool Updates: Atla Annual 2020 Online
Atla, Voting Member, Blog Posting, July 13, 2020

From June 17-19, the Atla team successfully hosted its first entirely virtual conference. Working together, the Business Development and Production teams developed a presentation highlighting recent updates to Atla’s research tools and strategic initiatives. Over 100 attendees from around the world tuned in to the live presentation, making it the largest event ever for Atla’s research tools.

Partnerships

Aries Systems and SciScore Partner to Enable Enhanced Rigor and Reproducibility within Editorial Manager
Aries Systems Corporation, Voting Member, Press Release, July 8, 2020

Aries Systems Corporation, a leading technology workflow solutions supplier to the scholarly publishing community, is pleased to announce its partnership with SciScore™. Aries and SciScore have partnered to integrate Editorial Manager® (EM), a cloud-based manuscript submission and peer review system for scholarly journals, reference works, books and other publications, with SciScore, the leading methods review tool for scientific articles.

A poorly controlled study impacts the quality of scientific research. It is critical for those in the peer review process to adhere to rigor and transparency criteria to ensure their contributions support the reproducibility of scientific research. Focusing on these methods, SciScore detects whether authors  address bias, sample size, sex, blinding, the randomization of subjects, and properly identified key biological resources (i.e., research reagents) within an Author’s manuscript, producing a score that roughly corresponds to the number of criteria filled compared to the number that was expected.

Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) and Court Square Group Announce Partnership to Provide Intelligent Content Solutions to the Life Sciences Market
Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc. (DCL, Inc.), Voting Member, Press Release, July 8, 2020

“Content structure and content management are key areas that significantly improve the speed by which advances in life sciences are communicated,” explains Jeff Wood, Chief Revenue Officer of DCL. “Intelligent content solutions that are applied to the drug development life cycle improve downstream communication and speed up the approval process.”

DCL provides content structure to documents that are critical to support the life sciences industry. For example, DCL’s structured product labeling (SPL) work comprises deconstructing forms-based content and image-based PDFs to create structured markup (XML). DCL applies a layer of metadata to facilitate downstream content discovery and delivers final SPL files to the FDA on behalf of our clients. With the latest advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, DCL’s content enrichment services improve content discovery for R&D applications during the development of new drugs or reclassification of pharma agents.

Together with Court Square Group, DCL’s content structure solutions help pharma and biotech companies ensure regulatory compliance and contribute to bringing products to market faster.

American Physical Society, Max Planck Gesellschaft Pilot Transformative Agreement
American Physical Society (APS), Voting Member, Press Release, July 7, 2020

“This expansion of our valued partnership with the Max Planck Society is aligned with our mission to advance scientific discovery and research dissemination, and it reflects our organizations’ shared commitment to open science,” said APS Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Kate Kirby

The collaboration initiated late last year, as APS and MPDL began working together on the development of new processes and systems required to support the pilot, and the resulting workflows have been fully functional since early 2020. Both organizations are committed to further collaboration on continuously improving this infrastructure to further support sustainable open access publishing. This will also allow APS to offer new open access publishing services more broadly, and thus continue to expand its role in supporting open science and the evolving needs of the broader scientific community.

Emerald Publishing proudly partners with Research4Life to get more research openly accessible to developing countries
Emerald Publishing Group, Voting Member, News Announcement, July 3, 2020

Emerald Publishing and Research4Life announced today, that Emerald has joined the Research4Life partnership which gives the publisher the opportunity to aid the non-profit initiative in its mission to make research available across many of the world’s developing countries.

Research4Life is a collective name for 5 programmes which provide developing countries with free or low-cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content from over 175 publishers online. The goal of Research4Life is to reduce the knowledge gap between high-income countries and low and middle-income countries by providing affordable access to scholarly, professional, and research information.