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Weekly News Digest
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June 18, 2019 — 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.
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Wiley and OhioLINK Enter Into a Wiley Open Access Account Agreement
Wiley signed an OA agreement with OhioLINK, a library consortium of 118 libraries and 89 colleges and universities in Ohio. This provides OhioLINK with a Wiley Open Access Account, which “will enable OhioLINK-affiliated researchers to use a central fund for Article Publication Charges (APC). The partnership reflects both parties’ growing commitment to open research and advancing scholarly communications. OhioLINK is the first North American library consortium to centrally fund the creation and dissemination of open access research.”For more information, read the press release.
The Berkman Klein Center Rolls Out Website Accessibility Checker
The Internet Monitor project at the Berkman Klein Center launched AccessCheck, a tool for testing the accessibility of websites in real time in more than 50 countries. It is powered by the center’s data as well as open data from its partners. A limited release of the tool is now available for registered users—you can sign up to try it and provide feedback.For more information, read the news.
EFF Studies Platforms’ Content Moderation Policies
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a report, “Who Has Your Back: Censorship Edition 2019.” EFF notes, “While social media platforms are increasingly giving users the opportunity to appeal decisions to censor their posts, very few platforms comprehensively commit to notifying users that their content has been removed in the first place, raising questions about their accountability and transparency. … The paper comes amid a wave of new government regulations and actions around the world meant to rid platforms of extremist content. But in response to calls to remove objectionable content, social media companies and platforms have all too often censored valuable speech.”The report looks at the content moderation policies of 16 platforms and app stores, such as Facebook, Twitter, the Apple App Store, and Instagram. For more information, read the press release.
Ex Libris Presents Results of Academic Research Study
Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, published a study, “Supporting Academic Research: Understanding the Challenges,” which “examines the challenges that researchers confront at institutions of higher education and the level of support provided by research offices and libraries.” Independent research agency Alterline conducted the study of 300 researchers and did interviews with nine senior members of research offices in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.For more information and a list of key findings, read the press release.
W3C Will Hold a Workshop on the Future of Transportation
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is planning an event hosted by Uber: the Workshop on Data Models for Transportation. It will be held Sept. 12–13, 2019, in Palo Alto, Calif. According to the press release, “The primary goal of the workshop is to bring together data architects, product owners/managers, business development, corporate strategy and innovation from the various industries and sectors that will be the future of transportation.”For more information and a list of discussion topics, read the press release.
Dimensions and NSD Enhance Social Science and Humanities Research
Dimensions partnered with NSD (Norwegian Centre for Research Data) “to increase visibility, searchability, and availability of research in the areas of Social Science and Arts & Humanities,” according to the press release. “As a starting point in their collaboration, Dimensions has integrated [NSD’s] ERIH PLUS [European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences] list as [a] journal list filter in Dimensions, enabling users to more easily identify research outputs that are related to journals listed in ERIH PLUS. Moreover, a new database ‘ERIH PLUS by Dimensions’ has been launched, which combines the functionality and extensive data sources of Dimensions with ERIH PLUS, enabling users to drill deeper into the research outputs within the journals of ERIH PLUS.”For more information, read the press release.
SSRN Plans Debut of CiteRight Citations and Reference Service
SSRN will launch a new service, CiteRight, in early July. This citations and reference service “shows where a paper on SSRN has been cited by other researchers, both in papers on SSRN and across the Web.” CiteRight replaces the current CiteReader service: “As SSRN has grown, we have recognized the need to adapt our citations management so that we can more quickly and accurately meet the increasing rate of submissions to our site.”CiteRight has the following noteworthy elements: - The first element is a fast and accurate reference extraction algorithm that can extract citations of your papers on SSRN when it is uploaded or revised. The service will be updating citation counts of papers on our site every day.
- The second element is a connection to the CrossRef look up service, which means that once your paper has a DOI and starts to become cited beyond SSRN, we’ll be able to display a second set of CrossRef citations for your paper to provide a more complete picture of how your paper is being shared across the Web.
For more information, read the blog post.
The EveryLibrary Institute Unveils a New Library Crowdfunding Platform
The EveryLibrary Institute introduced fundlibraries.org, “the first and only crowdfunding website dedicated solely to innovative library and literacy projects in school, public, and academic communities.” This fundraising platform will help libraries and library support organizations share their ideas with potential donors across the country.“Crowdfunding campaigns need more than just a good idea to succeed,” says John Chrastka, executive director of the EveryLibrary Institute. “What FundLibraries.org does is bring together a huge network of people who believe in the transformational work of librarians with great ideas that those librarians need to get funded. From new programs that need funding to collections that support the school library to moving a capital campaign forward, FundLibraries is ready to help your [idea] get the funding it needs to succeed.” For more information, read the press release.
eLife Starts an Awards Program for Underrepresented Scientists
eLife announced that it “is piloting a new funding scheme to help authors from underrepresented groups showcase their research.“The Ben Barres Spotlight Awards will support scientists in their efforts to strengthen their work with opportunities for exposure and collaboration. It is named in honour of transgender neurobiologist and former eLife Reviewing Editor Ben Barres, from Stanford University, US, who lost the fight with pancreatic cancer in December 2017. “In line with Barres’ advocacy work for greater equality in the scientific workforce, and eLife’s own goals of encouraging and recognising responsible behaviours in science, the organisation has created the funding scheme to help promote greater diversity.” The awards are available to authors who publish in eLife and identify with one or more of the unrepresented groups that the program addresses—scientists from resource-scarce countries, those disadvantaged because of their gender or disability, and others. For more information, read the press release.
Mellon Foundation Provides Grants to Help Currently and Formerly Incarcerated Students
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation introduced “a series of grants totaling $3.3 million to support four prison education and re-entry programs across the country. The grants acknowledge the human costs and large-scale social and historical impact of criminal justice policies on individuals and society and seek to strengthen and expand degree-granting programs in the liberal arts for currently and formerly incarcerated students.”For more information, read the press release.
NAMLE to Hold Conference on Media Literacy
The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) is hosting its biennial conference at various venues in Washington, D.C., from June 26 to 28, 2019. More than 170 presenters will share information pertaining to the theme, A Path Forward, Elevating Voices, Unifying Conversations. Sessions will include individual presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and classroom demos.Other events include the following: - “Media Literacy and the Implications for Peace Around the Globe” Conference Kick-Off Event at PeaceTech Lab featuring Sheldon Himelfarb, President and CEO of PeaceTech Lab and Stephen J. Adler, President and Editor-in-Chief at Reuters.
- “What We Don’t Talk About: Race, Politics, Religion, and Sexuality”Conference plenary session moderated by Tracye A. Matthews, Executive Director, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, University of Chicago.
- Student Voice Showcase featuring PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs.
For more information, read the article.
HarperCollins Highlights Digital-First Publishing With Its New Division
Heloise Wood writes for The Bookseller, “HarperCollins will launch ‘a dynamic’ digital-first division entitled One More Chapter, to combine the HarperImpulse, Killer Reads and Avon digital-first divisions, with editorial director Charlotte Ledger at the helm.” Starting July 1, “the new brand will be installed to sit alongside the other fiction, non-fiction and Avon divisions with one dedicated team to champion digital publishing.” HarperCollins said it will “close the gap between author, publisher and reader; reacting speedily to reading trends and publishing the best in commercial fiction.”For more information, read the news.
Accessible Archives Completes Content Update for Major Discovery Services
Accessible Archives, Inc. has finished updating all of its content in EBSCO Discovery Service, OCLC’s WorldCat, and Ex Libris’ Primo and Summon. According to the blog post, “While Accessible Archives has long been partnered with all services, in fact was one of the first participators, keeping everything current is quite the challenge for all parties involved—this effort is a continuation of Accessible Archives Year of Technology.”For more information, read the blog post.
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Brandi Scardilli
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