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Weekly News Digest

March 21, 2023 — 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.

Ithaka S+R Spearheads Research Project on AI in Higher Education

Danielle Miriam Cooper, Dylan Ruediger, and Roger C. Schonfeld write the following in “Making AI Generative for Higher Education” for Ithaka S+R:

The ability of computers to create original content is advancing rapidly, spurring an investment arms race within the technology sector. As these advancements touch every area of higher education, universities face decisions about how and when AI can support student learning and faculty research.

This fall, Ithaka S+R is convening a two-year research project in collaboration with a select group of universities committed to making AI generative for their campus community. Together we will assess the immediate and emerging AI applications most likely to impact teaching, learning, and research activities and explore the needs of institutions, instructors, and scholars as they navigate this environment. We will use our findings to create new strategies, policies, and programs to ensure on-campus readiness to harness the technology in the longer term. …

Making AI Generative for Higher Education will launch in Fall 2023. If your institution is interested in participating, please send an immediate expression of interest to Danielle Cooper (danielle.cooper@ithaka.org).

For more information, read the blog post.

Sage Unveils New Company Branding

Sage shares the following in a blog post titled “A Sage Refresh”:

Over the next few months, you may notice some changes to our look—our logo, font, colors, imagery, and more—and the way we talk about our company. Sage’s identity as an independent company has always been a guiding principle for how we run our business and support partners like you, and this refreshed brand more effectively infuses this spirit of independence into everything we touch. …

[W]hile we are very much a publisher, dropping ‘publishing’ [from our name] reflects the additional products and services that make up what we offer today, such as Technology from Sage, the portfolio of digital services that ease the teaching and research workflow. …

Some of our products and resources—our data repository, reference materials, and skill-building resources for students—are also being renamed and rebranded. This will allow for a more seamless experience across our traditional and digital resources and allow us to better convey how they can benefit customers and end-users. 

For more information, read the blog post.

CCC Plans Town Hall on Generative AI Tools

CCC is hosting a live town hall, ChatGPT & Information Integrity, via LinkedIn on March 30, 2023, at 11:00 a.m. EDT. It aims to address the questions, “What is the evolving nature of originality and authenticity?” and “What place do human expertise and empathy have when machines provide information?”

The speakers will be Mary Ellen Bates from Bates Information Services, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz from NewsGuard, Tracey Brown from Sense about Science, and Gina Chua from Semafor.

For more information, read the press release.

Ars Technica Offers Update on Publishers vs. Internet Archive Lawsuit

Ashley Belanger writes the following in “Book Publishers With Surging Profits Struggle to Prove Internet Archive Hurt Sales” for Ars Technica:

[On March 20], the Internet Archive (IA) defended its practice of digitizing books and lending those e-books for free to users of its Open Library. In 2020, four of the wealthiest book publishers sued IA, alleging this kind of digital lending was actually ‘willful digital piracy’ causing them ‘massive harm.’ But IA’s lawyer, Joseph Gratz, argued that the Open Library’s digitization of physical books is fair use, and publishers have yet to show they’ve been harmed by IA’s digital lending. …

It’s up to a federal judge, John Koeltl, to decide if IA’s digital lending constitutes copyright infringement. During oral arguments, Koeltl’s tough questioning of both Gratz and the plaintiff’s attorney, Elizabeth McNamara, suggested that resolving this matter is a less straightforward task than either side has so far indicated.

For more information, read the article.

Denodo Releases Results of The State of Federal Data Strategy Survey

Denodo announced the following:

According to a recent survey, conducted across IT decision-makers and influencers in the federal government, seven out of ten (71%) have heard of the U.S. Federal Data Strategy (FDS) that outlines a broad, ten-year agenda and vision for federal agencies to leverage data as a strategic asset. While confidence in their ability to deliver on the overall aspects of the strategy appears high, when it comes to governing, managing and protecting data, strong confidence only measured 43%, heavily trailing what 67% of respondents regarded as critically important. Underwritten by Denodo, the leader in data management, the GovExec survey found respondents concerned with their ability to make data easily available, provide real-time access, maintain security, and be future-ready.

The survey findings are available for free from Denodo’s website (registration required). For more information, read the press release.

Ars Technica Breaks Down the Latest Copyright Office Guidance on Artificial Intelligence

Ashley Belanger writes the following in “Authors Risk Losing Copyright if AI Content Is Not Disclosed, US Guidance Says” for Ars Technica:

As generative AI technologies like GPT-4 and Midjourney have rapidly gotten more sophisticated and their creative use has exploded in popularity, the US Copyright Office has issued guidance … to clarify when AI-generated material can be copyrighted. …

The guidance offers some specifics on what isn’t copyright eligible when it comes to AI works generated solely by prompts—with no modifications made—which the Copyright Office likens to giving ‘instructions to a commissioned artist.’ These works lack human authorship and, therefore, won’t be registered. …

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the guidance is an author’s ‘duty to disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content in a work submitted for registration.’

For more information, read the article.

OverDrive Academic Unveils New Content Collections

OverDrive Academic introduced “new open access and flexible digital content collections for academic libraries that provide unlimited simultaneous use with more cost certainty. The new Open Access collection for Taylor & Francis provides libraries and schools with a collection of premium academic content at no cost, increasing access to knowledge and promoting collaboration for students and institutions.” OverDrive plans to provide OA ebooks from other publishers in the coming months.

Additionally, OverDrive rolled out a cost-per-circ (CPC) collection for Wiley of 400-plus titles, an “access model [that] makes it possible for an academic library to cost-effectively offer a collection with no upfront cost, paying a small fee for each checkout. This allows the library to offer a large collection at a fraction of the cost of one that is typically purchased. These Wiley titles focus on personal and professional development, including the best-selling Dummies series, personal finance, test prep, economics and more.” This collection is available until April 30, 2023.

For more information, read the press release.

Thomson Reuters Updates Westlaw With UK Supreme Court Dockets

Thomson Reuters added UK Supreme Court Dockets to Westlaw, giving legal researchers “easier access to High Court and Supreme Court proceedings, integrated with Westlaw capabilities that improve their workflow and enable them to operate more efficiently.” They can search for new and ongoing litigation, get daily alerts, track individual dockets, and more.

Thomson Reuters continues, “The UK Supreme Court’s docket system contains information about cases—both decided and current—that have been filed at the court since 2009, when the Supreme Court replaced the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords as the highest UK court. Thomson Reuters added the UK Supreme Court Dockets to Westlaw UK in response to customers’ requests.”

UK Supreme Court Dockets comes at no additional subscription cost.

For more information, read the press release.

Springer Nature Implements Unified Data Policy Across All Journals and Books

Springer Nature announced that it “has taken a further step forwards in its commitment to open science by requiring mandatory data availability statements (DAS) across its journals portfolio, and introducing its first unified data policy across the books portfolio.”

The company is using “DAS as standard for its journal portfolio to promote greater transparency and reproducibility. Adopting a unified policy for books for the first time, is a further exciting step towards encouraging open research practices across all publications and driving forward open science for all.” The policy will be rolled out across journals progressively.

Springer Nature adds, “Recognising the different journey that books are on in the move to open science—the single books policy will strongly encourage data sharing, and the use of repositories, but DAS will not be mandatory.”

For more information, read the press release.

The Atlantic: The Future of ChatGPT and White-Collar Jobs

Annie Lowrey writes the following in “How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work” for The Atlantic (subscription required):

ChatGPT is just one of many mind-blowing generative AI tools released recently, including the image generators Midjourney and DALL-E and the video generator Synthesia. The upside of these AI tools is easy to see: They’re going to produce a tremendous amount of digital content, quickly and cheaply. …

Yet an extraordinary downside is also easy to see: What happens when services like ChatGPT start putting copywriters, journalists, customer-service agents, paralegals, coders, and digital marketers out of a job? For years, tech thinkers have been warning that flexible, creative AI will be a threat to white-collar employment, as robots replace skilled office workers whose jobs were once considered immune to automation. …

No single technology in modern memory has caused mass job loss among highly educated workers. Will generative AI really be an exception? No one can answer this question, given how new the technology is and given how slowly employment can adjust in response to technological change. But AI really is different, technology experts told me—a range of tasks that up until now were impossible to automate are becoming automatable.

For more information, read the article.



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