CHORUS is the publisher-built platform for tagging and delivering access to publicly funded research. The CHORUS organization has created a centralized index of member publishers’ policies on author/researcher data availability with links to the policies on the publisher’s site. When and how research data becomes available determines when a study can be verified or replicated.
Month: May 2020
CSU Academic Senate resolves to adopt ORCID
UMass Amherst Libraries has been an institutional supporter of ORCID for nearly two years, and its systems of interoperable data continue to grow (now including biographical information, education & qualifications, employment, memberships & service, invited positions & distinctions, funding, works, peer review activity and research resources.) Campus partners in Information Technology and Research and Engagement are showing increasing interest in integrating ORCID into our campus systems and workflows. Therefore, the announcement last week that the Academic Senate of California State University passed a resolution was notable. It:
“strongly encourage[s] CSU faculty, students, and administrators—whether past, present, or future—to sign up for an ORCID iD and maintain a well-curated and well-integrated ORCID record” and which “strongly encourage[s] the Office of the Chancellor and campus Presidents to provide financial support for a CSU-wide and campus ORCID institutional memberships, make robust ORCID integration a procurement standard for software service providers whenever reasonable, commission a system-wide ORCID implementation task force, and commit significant staff development time to build customized ORCID integrations within and across the CSU system”.
The rationale in the resolution is worth reading because it provides a thorough account of the benefits of institutional adoption of the ORCID. Again, other institutions’ actions provide us with models for next steps to take here at UMass Amherst.
The future of scholarly communication and publishing in the 21st century
The scholarly record has become more and more restricted over the past 40 years and as a result, its future viability is imperiled. To change this course, Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A call to action notes: “Diversity in services and platforms, funding mechanisms, and evaluation measures will allow the scholarly communication system to accommodate the different workflows, languages, publication outputs, and research topics that support the needs and epistemic pluralism of different research communities. In addition, diversity reduces the risk of vendor lock-in, which inevitably leads to monopoly, monoculture, and high prices.” This call to action describes the problems and outlines actions to take by researchers; funders and institutions; infrastructure providers; libraries, consortia and library associations; and policy makers. One of these recommended actions, among several others, is for funders and institutions to endorse the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Stay tuned for more discussions about DORA in the coming months.
Fostering Bibliodiversity is a good companion publication to the Future of Scholarly Communication and Publishing in the 21st Century (recording) webinar. Heather Joseph of SPARC, Kathleen Fitzpatrick of Michigan State/Humanities Commons and John Willbanks of SAGE Biomedical Division discussed the strong imperative for scholar-owned, principle-based, shared open scholarship demonstrated by the COVID-19 crisis. They described characteristics of a global ecosystem with examples that enable equitable access for contributors and users: real-time and open exchange of processes/methodologies, data, analysis, review prior to and through publication; open infrastructure with shared governance; and partnerships and collaborations that are in service of a common good, rather than a sales business model.
Use Think.Check.Submit to evaluate a publisher
For those who are in the process of selecting a publisher, or want to review the publisher of other research, Think.Check.Submit for books and journals offer process guides for evaluation to determine whether or not a publisher is engaging in predatory practices. They provide a more nuanced and transparent approach than relying on a “whitelist” or “blacklist” by guiding you through a checklist of various factors which may take on different importance, depending on individual circumstances.
The SPARC Big Deal cancellation tracker
We’ve all heard of academic libraries cancelling subscriptions to “big deal” journal packages, and in the face of tightening acquisitions budgets, these cancellations are likely to accelerate. You can monitor which institutions have taken action with the SPARC Big Deal Cancellation Tracker. It provides institution/consortia, date, region, publisher, strategic considerations, outcomes and estimated cost savings. Strategic considerations generally include advancing open access and financial sustainability/flexibility. Other institutions’ actions provide useful guideposts to us as we develop our Framework for Publisher Agreements and renegotiate our big deal agreements.
The Radical Open Access Collective and bibliodiversity
To see bibliodiversity in action, the Radical Open Access Virtual Book Stand is a directory of non-profit, open access, scholar-led publishers in the social sciences and humanities, with links to their books, journals, issues, articles, projects, catalogues and repositories. With over 50 members, the Radical Open Access Collective supports and showcases academic scholarship published with progressive, critical and experimental models.