|
|
Weekly News Digest
 |
October 28, 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.
|
Gale Presents: Imago Provides Students Lessons on Social and Emotional Learning
In partnership with IMAGO, Gale rolled out a social and emotional learning (SEL), career readiness, and soft skills platform for 5th- to 12th-grade students. Gale Presents: Imago offers short videos and study guides to help students improve their emotional intelligence so they can thrive in their careers after graduation. Gale notes, “A CareerBuilder survey found that 71% of employers value emotional intelligence over IQ. Gale Presents: Imago will help schools shift to help students develop these critical skills and explore new paths that align with their interests and abilities to achieve their professional goals.”Gale Presents: Imago’s key features include the following: - Self-study or teacher/student-led lessons. Both can be delivered in-person or [by] distance learning.
- Turn-key lessons. Each SEL lesson [comes] complete with facilitator guides with activities, think ahead questions and additional content to facilitate a lesson.
- More than 225 [research]-based digital lessons covering career exploration, life skills (eye contact, body language, etc.), work skills and SEL.
- Family Wellness lessons that are free to the public on topics such as anger, loneliness and navigating grief.
For more information, read the press release.
Zendy Introduces Search Engine for OA Research
Zendy announced the following:A new, free scholarly search engine for easy browsing of Open Access academic content has been launched [globally on Oct. 26] to coincide with International Open Access Week. Zendy Open features over 30 million Open Access publications from reputable sources and journals on hundreds of subjects, from Sociology and Political Science to Atomic and Molecular Physics, in more than 75 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, German, Indonesian, Russian, and Swedish. It also offers comprehensive faceting allowing the user to search for academic resources according to the date issued, material type, publisher, language, and subject. … By automatically filtering out any Open Access content with a non-commercial licence, the search engine provides an easy way to browse free Open Access literature and research and brings the prospect of professional and personal development closer to everyone, especially those who are unable to afford the traditionally costly subscription to publications. Kamran Kardan, founder and CEO of Zendy’s parent company, Knowledge E, says, “We are incredibly thrilled to be launching Zendy Open globally because it reflects our ethos as an organisation. Since the inception of Zendy in 2018, the team has been working tirelessly to uncover ways that could facilitate access to credible research. We view today’s launch as an invaluable milestone on the journey towards liberating high quality scientific research and literature.” For more information, visit Zendy and its press release archive.
Clarivate Shares Its Annual G20 Scorecard for Research Performance
Clarivate released “The Annual G20 Scorecard—Research Performance 2021” (registration required), a report that “examines the research performance of each of the member countries of the G20 with a visual comparative snapshot for each nation. It also includes a special analysis of the G20 members’ COVID-19 research as indexed in the Web of Science research publication and citation index.” Created by Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information, the report comes ahead of the G20 Summit, which will held virtually by Rome from Oct. 30 to 31.Key findings include the following: - In Australia output has doubled in a decade and continues to rise, driven by exceptional international collaboration.
- Brazil’s output is rising both domestically and for international collaboration. Open access output is very strong across most disciplines—especially for international papers.
- Research investment in Mexico is low and continues to fall … but rising output is boosted by high and rising productivity. Citation impact is now slowing including international collaboration.
- Productivity in South Africa is high and output has been rising. There are consistently high levels of publication via open access across disciplines and the country has the second highest proportion of female researchers (45%).
- In the United States, although investment is rising, output has plateaued, and output/researcher has fallen below the G20 average.
For more information, read the press release.
Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative Gains New Publisher Partners
The Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative, from Kudos and Impact Science, now features content from Elsevier, Springer Nature, Cambridge University Press, and CCC (Copyright Clearance Center). This brings the total number of partners to 17. They are “working together to make it easy for the general public to find key climate research, and understand its implications and recommendations.” The cooperative will go live during COP26 (United Nations Climate Change Conference).“As we approach COP26, there has never been such a vital time to help as many people as possible learn and benefit from the climate research we’ve published,” says Thea Sherer, director of sustainability and climate action officer at Springer Nature. “We know that research informs action, and the time to act on climate is now. We’re glad to be part of this joint initiative to encourage engagement with the research of today, for the climate solutions of tomorrow.” Peter Harrison, SVP of physical sciences journals and chairperson of the Climate Advisory Board at Elsevier, says, “Ensuring that science is communicated effectively and is heard and acted upon by the right people, is one of the greatest challenges facing those working in climate research today. Projects such as this help strengthen the trust between science and society that is needed to successfully take urgent action on climate.” For more information, read the blog post.
OECD iLibrary Now Features Podcasts
OECD iLibrary has added podcasts to its collection. James Kitchen, OECD’s sales and marketing manager, says, “As the one-stop research repository for all OECD publications in a range of formats, the platform now contains interviews with experts and personalities from both within and outside the [organization], as they discuss the key policy issues of the day.” Podcast guests include current and former prime ministers such as Jacinda Ardern and Gordon Brown, OECD directors Laurence Boone and Andreas Schleicher, and comedian Ruby Wax.The 70-plus podcasts can be streamed online, and subscribers can download them as MP3s. All episodes have complete transcripts in PDF, and all will be fully indexed by the major discovery services—including EBSCO Discovery Service, Primo, Summon, and WorldCat Discovery. For more information, visit the podcasts page.
CCC Commits to Helping Meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
CCC (Copyright Clearance Center) joined the SDG Publishers Compact initiative, which comprises “stakeholders from across the publishing industry [that are pledging] a commitment to the future and dedication to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs), to be achieved by 2030. CCC is going to focus on specific goal areas: Quality Education; Industries, Innovation and Infrastructure; and Reduced Inequalities.“CCC’s values align with the [United Nations’] vision for a more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive future,” says Tracey Armstrong, CCC’s president and CEO. “Joining the SDG Publishers Compact and, more importantly, meeting our commitments to the compact, is just one part of our efforts to improve society through our business practices.” For more information, read the press release.
W3C and Yubico Are Hosting a Free Online Web Authentication Course
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Yubico are offering the first online web authentication course, Introduction to Web Authentication. The course begins on Nov. 30, 2021—registration is now open—and runs for 3 weeks. It is designed to teach “developers how to build and incorporate modern authentication techniques into their web-based applications using W3C’s Web Authentication (WebAuthn).” In addition, it “introduces developers to the principles of Web Authentication, from the development of the Application Programming Interface (API), to the terminology and the technical know-how. The heart of the course teaches students how to build and deploy their own Web Authentication server.”The course is free, with an opt-in to a paid course that provides a certificate of completion. For more information, read the press release.
Kudos Announces Next Round of Publishers to Join Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative
The American Society of Civil Engineers, Annual Reviews, BioOne, and the Geological Society have joined Kudos and Impact Science’s Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative, which offers “a substantial and wide-ranging collection of plain language summaries of key climate research. The research has been specially selected and professionally summarized to ensure the broadest possible audience can find it, understand it, and act on its recommendations.”Dana Compton, managing director and publisher at the American Society of Civil Engineers, says, “We’re excited about participating in the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative because it’s a powerful and practical way to make research work harder for the public good.” For more information, read the blog post.
Europeana Resources Are Now Discoverable via WorldCat
OCLC announced the following:A partnership between OCLC and Europeana has now made millions of open cultural heritage resources easily accessible through WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive database of information about library collections. Europeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries, museums and audio-visual collections to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research, and to foster creativity and innovation. The contribution of over 25 million openly licensed records from the Europeana website to WorldCat adds to the rapidly growing number of open content resources that are accessible through OCLC services. … Users of WorldCat.org and WorldCat Discovery can use the Open Access filter to quickly and easily surface resources from Europeana and other open content providers. For more information, read the press release.
PLOS Publishes First Papers for PLOS Global Public Health
PLOS Global Public Health published its initial cohort of papers on Oct. 13, 2021. PLOS notes that it “announced the launch of five new journals earlier this year and PLOS Global Public Health is the first of these journals with papers ready for publication. The journal’s mission is to address deeply entrenched global inequities in public health by broadening the range of perspectives from which we learn. The journal has so far received more than 700 submissions from researchers around the world.”“In full alignment with the proposed UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, our journal will ensure diversity and equity of representation at all levels—editors, editorial boards, reviewers, authors—and will intentionally seek out research from under-represented communities,” says Julia Robinson, executive editor of PLOS Global Public Health. “We want to amplify expert perspectives from every region of the world to reach across disciplines and continents. We believe diversity makes science stronger.” For more information, read the blog post.
Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor
Brandi Scardilli
|
