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Weekly News Digest
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July 20, 2021 — 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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Digital Science Leverages OntoChem Tech to Support Life Sciences Customers
Digital Science teamed up with OntoChem GmbH, a German data technology company, to support mutual clients’ analytical needs through OntoChem’s semantic indexing capabilities and extensive ontologies, which will especially help life sciences customers. The press release notes that OntoChem “develops cognitive computing solutions, indexing intranet and internet data and applying semantic search solutions for pharmaceutical, material science and technology-driven businesses.”“At OntoChem, our mission is to provide added value to our customers by helping them to navigate today’s complex information world,” says Lutz Weber, OntoChem’s CEO. “With OntoChem now being part of the Digital Science family, we are excited to see the prospect of our advanced semantic search functionality being used more widely to help clients better discover relevant documents and gain deeper insights that were not possible to imagine before.” For more information, read the press release.
SAGE Throws Its Weight Behind Universal Write Publications to Promote Black Scholarship
SAGE has entered into a 3-year partnership with Universal Write Publications (UWP) to sponsor nine UWP titles. UWP, founded by political scientist and linguist Ayo Sekai, is a Black-owned social science publisher of academic books and articles; its research uses interdisciplinary theories that emphasize African and Black scholarship. As part of the agreement, SAGE will get a spot on UWP’s board of directors so it can offer advice and support. UWP will use SAGE’s support to recruit new authors and books, and it is currently seeking proposals.For more information, read the press release.
Simba Information Studies Trends in Scientific and Technical Publishing
Simba Information released “Global Scientific & Technical Publishing 2021-2025,” a report showing that the scientific and technical publishing market has posted underlying growth. The press release states, “[T]otal sales increased 0.4% to $10.5 billion in 2020. However, currency exchange fluctuations deflated growth. Simba Information estimates growth without the currency impact at 2.8%.” In addition, “The number of articles published with funding from 33 key research organizations tracked by Simba Information grew 10.7% to 525,042 articles in 2020, according to information in the Crossref database.”“The findings stand in stark contrast to forecasts of doom and gloom related to COVID-19’s impact and the move to open access,” says Dan Strempel, senior analyst of professional publishing at Simba Information. “Print books continue to fall, but that spending is migrating to e-books and other types of online content, databases and tools. Research spending and output, in terms of journal articles, both continued to grow.” For more information about the report’s findings, read the press release.
WT Cox Makes Digital Magazines and Newspapers Available to Libraries
WT Cox is now offering thousands of domestic and international digital magazines and newspapers to its library customers in the U.S. via the Magzter and Edzter platforms. Both platforms are available as apps or via a web browser, and they provide “unlimited simultaneous users and usage details collected by title and user, which assists in the ability to quantify digital collection purchases for the library.” Magzter is geared to public library patrons, while Edzter is for academic institutions, K–12 schools, and school districts. Collections can be curated for an institution’s relevant level of study.“From the inception of digitally formatted magazines and newspapers, libraries have searched for the best way to provide digital titles to their patrons while also controlling costs and levels of access. Our goal is to share with the library community the simplicity and ease of a digital reading experience while offering an attractive collection and a cost-effective solution,” says Mike Perrine, VP of sales and marketing at WT Cox. For more information, read the press release.
DPLA Works Toward Combating Health Misinformation With the U.S. Surgeon General
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) announced the following:As the nation continues to reckon with the Covid-19 pandemic, we recognize that the spread of health misinformation is a national crisis. In response, we are proud to join with the U.S. Surgeon General in working to combat health misinformation in America’s communities. As part of his advisory on misinformation as a public health threat issued today, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy spotlighted three private sector initiatives that have committed to taking on this issue, a list that includes DPLA. As Dr. Murthy announced, we have committed to convening a set of librarians, scholars, journalists, and civic leaders to talk about the role libraries can play in combating misinformation. The event, tentatively planned for the fall, will build off of previous DPLA convenings. … If you or your library is working to combat misinformation in your community, or if you have ideas to share or would like to become more involved with this work, please get in touch. For more information, read the announcement.
NISO and STM Convene Working Group to Standardize a Peer Review Taxonomy
NISO (National Information Standards Organization) and STM (International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers) are creating a new NISO Working Group to formalize the current peer review taxonomy as an ANSI/NISO standard. This new group will merge with the existing STM Working Group, and new volunteers are welcome. Its aim is to “support the industry in ensuring greater transparency and openness in peer review, which is an essential element of Open Science,” according to the press release. The output of the new working group “will be made available for public comment and then published as a formal ANSI/NISO standard once it has been reviewed and approved by NISO Voting Members.”For more information, read the press release.
Copyrighters, Assemble: The Copyright Claims Board Gets Its Officers
The U.S. Copyright Office has chosen the officers of the Copyright Claims Board. Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter announced that Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden appointed David Carson (head of the copyright policy team in the Office of Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office), Monica P. McCabe (chairperson of the intellectual property department at Phillips Nizer LLP), and Brad Newberg (leader of the copyright and trademark litigation practice at McGuire Woods) for the newly established entity, which will “provide an efficient and user-friendly option to resolve copyright disputes of a small monetary value” as part of the CASE Act.“We are pleased to welcome these three experts with such substantial experience in copyright law and alternative dispute resolution,” says Perlmutter. “Their combined deep knowledge and skills will help ensure the successful launch and operation of this important new tribunal.” For more information, read the news item.
Ithaka S+R: 'Making Streaming Media Sustainable for Academic Libraries'
Danielle Cooper, manager of collaborations and research at Ithaka S+R, writes the following in a blog post:There has been an explosion of interest in streaming media marketed for educational purposes in recent years, and the shift to remote instruction during the pandemic has further accelerated that interest. … However, pricing models make it difficult to fully meet patron demands, and the collections remain relatively limited in their content. … In order to more fully realize streaming media’s academic potential, it is essential for libraries to come together, assess the broader streaming landscape, and create new strategies for licensing and managing streaming use. This intervention will be most effective if libraries can connect on this issue across institutional silos. To this end, Ithaka S+R is launching a new project this fall in collaboration with a cohort of libraries to share evidence about and strategies around streaming media licensing terms. The project will also examine patron practices and needs when working with streaming content. … The project will pair the most comprehensive US-wide environmental scan-to-date on the landscape of streaming media licensing and library approaches to assessing and managing its use with a targeted assessment of streaming media. We are partnering with a cohort of academic libraries to conduct a deep dive into the streaming context at their institutions and to identify new opportunities for collective strategic interventions in this space. In parallel, Ithaka S+R will also conduct a US-wide survey and a series of targeted follow-up interviews with collections associate university librarians, to evaluate the competitive landscape of streaming media licensing more broadly. For more information and how to get involved, read the blog post.
CyberRisk Alliance and InfraGard National Members Alliance Join Forces for Better Cybersecurity
CyberRisk Alliance entered into a strategic partnership with InfraGard National Members Alliance, “an FBI-affiliated nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening national security, community resilience and the foundation of American life,” according to its About Us page. The partnership allows CyberRisk Alliance to leverage its business intelligence platforms to deliver cybersecurity resources and membership activities to InfraGard’s more than 78,000 members, which include local, state, and federal law enforcement entities; government agencies; and academic institutions. In addition, CyberRisk Alliance will provide “custom research capabilities to field a Critical Infrastructure Resilience benchmarking study that will include [a CyberRisk Alliance] custom report distributed to [InfraGard]’s members, followed by an ongoing digital newsletter.”“Over 90% of the nation’s critical infrastructure is managed/maintained by the private sector, so [this] strategic partnership … comes at a pivotal moment as the threatscape continues to increase,” says John Whelan, CyberRisk Alliance’s president. “Our mission to serve the information needs of the cybersecurity community through innovative information solutions relies upon establishing key partnerships across the public and private sector, so we are really delighted to be working with [InfraGard] to develop information services that will benefit the community.” For more information, read the press release.
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries Rolls Out a Virtual Robotics Exhibit
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Libraries and the School of Computer Science launched an interactive, virtual exhibit that looks at the beginnings of and contributions to the robotics field. Building the Robot Archive is part of an ongoing initiative, The Robotics Project, which is “the world’s first attempt to preserve and promote the legacy of the field and the go-to repository for the past, present and future of robotics,” CMU Libraries notes. “The exhibit documents the legacy of robotics at CMU and provides an informative and behind-the-scenes look at the collaborative effort between roboticists and archivists to document the field’s history. It provides insight into the questions the team wrestled with, the methods they used and the lengths they went to capture the legacy of this research and its innovators.”For more information, read the article.
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Brandi Scardilli
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