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Weekly News Digest
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February 13, 2018 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Clarivate Analytics Brings Back the Institute for Scientific Information
Clarivate Analytics announced that the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)—founded in 1960 by Eugene Garfield to produce the Science Citation Index (which became part of the Web of Science)—will be re-established in its Scientific and Academic Research group. This incarnation of the ISI will develop bibliometric and analytical approaches by leveraging Web of Science data and patent data from the Derwent World Patent Index. It will also set up collaborations with partners and customers in the academic community.“The newly energized ISI will be a place where we house our expertise, experience and deep thinking that drives our editorial rigor, our policy and partnerships, rankings and analytics,” says Annette Thomas, CEO of the Scientific and Academic Research group. “The institute will be both the heart and soul of our group and the brains behind our most complex thinking to solve the problems of our community.” For more information, read the press release.
ARL Condemns ADA Amendment That Would Impede Timely Information Access
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is criticizing the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Education and Reform Act of 2017 (HR 620), which Congress plans to vote on today, Feb. 15. “This bill, if passed, would roll back the civil rights of 57 million Americans with disabilities,” says ARL. “The legislation would require a person who encounters an access barrier to send a written notice to the business owner and allow 60 days for an acknowledgement plus another 120 days for the business to make progress on rectifying the access barrier.” This requirement “would severely hamper equitable and timely access, which are core values of the library profession.”For more information, read the press release.
FOLIO Preps for a Prosperous Year
Open source library services project FOLIO announced that it has reached “a variety of notable development milestones.” The FOLIO Community of libraries, vendors, and developers is expanding—there are seven development teams comprising 60-plus developers, as well as about 150 subject matter experts from 15-plus libraries and consortia. More than 10 organizations from four continents have agreed to offer services. A beta release of FOLIO is planned for July 2018.“At the beginning of 2017, we were developing the very first app on the FOLIO platform. A year later, we have multiple teams comprised of participants from even more organizations, all working towards a common goal. It is inspiring,” says Sebastian Hammer, co-founder and president of Index Data, which is leading the project’s technical development. For more information, read the blog post.
The Library of Congress Promotes Free-to-Use Content Sets
The Library of Congress (LC) rolled out Free to Use and Reuse Sets to help improve the visibility and availability of public domain and rights-clear content. This collection features themed sets of materials, such as travel posters, presidential portraits, and Civil War drawings, that are all free to use and reuse in any way the public sees fit. Sets will continue to be highlighted on the LC’s homepage. This content is intended to serve as a springboard for using LC collections in blog posts, on Pinterest boards, in documentary films, and more.For more information, read the blog post.
SAGE Studies Educational Video Usage
SAGE published a white paper, “Assessing the Impact of Educational Video on Student Engagement, Critical Thinking and Learning: The Current State of Play,” which explores the following questions:- [W]hat impact is video having on student engagement and learning?
- How is video making a tangible difference in the higher education space?
- And what are the measures of successful video use both for students and researchers?
The authors “conducted a critical overview on the current debates around the use of video in higher education (HE), and extend the body of research through a piece of original research addressing the impact of the use of graphics in video,” according to the press release. For more information and a summary of the white paper’s findings, read the press release.
National Geographic Learning and TED Help Students Learn English
National Geographic Learning, a Cengage company, launched Learn English with TED Talks, an app developed with TED to help students who are studying English as a foreign language. Designed to be used with any English course, it comes with a classroom presentation tool and lesson plans so that instructors can integrate students’ independent work on the app with their classroom experiences. Students will be able to understand popular TED Talks and learn to express themselves confidently in English.“TED is dedicated to spreading ideas, and creating a global community of people who want to engage with those ideas and share their own,” says Colin Helms, TED’s head of media. “Our partnership with National Geographic Learning expands that community and helps students acquire skills that can change their lives for the better.” For more information, read the press release.
OASPA Endorses the Declaration on Research Assessment
The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) has formally endorsed the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), “a cross-disciplinary global initiative seeking to improve the ways in which scholarly research outputs are evaluated.” It has more than 11,000 individual and 445 organizational signatories so far, such as the Wellcome Trust, PLOS (Public Library of Science), eLife, and F1000. DORA acknowledges the limitations of the Journal Impact Factor and encourages scholarly outputs to be accurately measured.For more information and to review DORA’s goals, read the press release.
eLife Becomes a Member of NPRC (Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium)
eLife, which receives a substantial number of neuroscience-related submissions, joined NPRC (Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium), an alliance of journal publishers that is working to reduce the time and effort involved in the peer review process of publishing neuroscience research. The organizations have similar strategies: During this process, eLife shares referee reports and identities (when given permission) with another journal that the corresponding author chooses; NPRC allows authors whose papers haven’t been accepted by a journal in the alliance to forward peer reviews to a second journal in the alliance. Additionally, the organizations don’t discriminate on which research to publish based on length—eLife has an online journal that doesn’t have a word count limit; NPRC was founded by editors who saw that articles were being rejected because of space limitations. For more information, read the press release.
Presidential Budget Request for FY2019 Still Gives IMLS Short Shrift
Kathryn K. Matthew, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), released a statement on the president’s proposed FY2019 budget. He released a budget request to Congress on Feb. 12 that calls for the “orderly closure” of IMLS. “This is the first step for the FY 2019 federal budget, and we will provide information to the Office of Management and Budget and Congress throughout the process as requested,” says Matthew. “We are disappointed that for a second year, the President’s budget request did not provide funding for the continuation of IMLS activities for the next fiscal year. In the meantime, the agency will continue normal grantmaking operations with allocated FY 2018 funds.”To read the rest of the statement, view the press release. To read ALA president Jim Neal’s statement, click here. To read EveryLibrary’s statement, click here.
Kudos to Offer Preview of Dissemination Management Toolkit
Kudos is working on a new dissemination management toolkit to help research groups, university departments, and REF Units of Assessment plan, implement, and report on outreach activities as a way to build an audience for their works.According to its blog, “Kudos is offering a limited number of early adopter seats on a six-month preview program, giving early access to features that can be used by research groups to optimize usage, citations and engagement with policy makers, the media and public, industry and educators. The resulting activities and impact evidence will be exportable for university systems and other outcome reporting tools.” This preview will begin in March and run through summer 2018. For more information, read the blog post.
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Brandi Scardilli
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