|
|
Weekly News Digest
 |
August 3, 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.
|
Elsevier Introduces the Scopus AI Tool for Generative AI-Based Research
Elsevier rolled out an alpha version of Scopus AI for researcher testing. Scopus AI is “a next generation tool that combines generative AI with Scopus’ trusted content and data to help researchers get deeper insights faster, support collaboration and societal impact of research.” It “provides easy-to-read topic summaries based on trusted content from over 27,000 academic journals, from more than 7,000 publishers worldwide, with over 1.8 billion citations, and includes over 17 million author profiles. Content is rigorously vetted and selected by an independent review board, that is made up of 17 world-renowned scientists, researchers and librarians who represent the major scientific disciplines.”Additional functionality of Scopus AI includes concise snapshots of any research topic, Go Deeper links for extended research, and natural language queries. For more information, read the press release.
Plagiarism Today Explores the Efficacy of AI Detection in Education
Jonathan Bailey writes the following in “The Current State of Detecting AI Writing” for Plagiarism Today:[In June], Turnitin acknowledged the fallibility of their AI detection system, as other computer scientists warned that true and reliable detection of AI writing may never be feasible. And it’s not just Turnitin facing these challenges. [On July 26], OpenAI shut down their ChatGPT plagiarism detector, citing a ‘low rate of accuracy’. Though the company says they have ‘made a commitment to develop and deploy mechanisms that enable users to understand if audio or visual content is AI-generated,’ there are no immediate plans for a replacement. This means that even the creator of ChatGPT cannot reliably tell if ChatGPT wrote a particular work. For more information, read the article.
Research Solutions Acquires the ResoluteAI Advanced Search Platform
Research Solutions acquired ResoluteAI, “an advanced search platform aimed at equipping organizations with search, discovery, analysis, and knowledge management tools powered by AI and NLP [natural language processing] technologies. ResoluteAI’s state-of-the-art integrations of taxonomies, ontologies, and knowledge graph technology, together with the latest Large Language Models … make information discovery and retrieval highly efficient,” the press release notes. “The transaction will enable Research Solutions to deliver true enterprise search capabilities across a comprehensive suite of data sources and extend their reach into effective knowledge management, including search across customer internal datasets.”For more information, read the press release.
Smithsonian Magazine Reports on the Current State of Paleontology
Riley Black writes the following in “How Many Dinosaurs Remain Undiscovered?” for Smithsonian magazine:Paleontologists are uncovering new dinosaurs at an astonishing rate. On average, a new species of ‘terrible lizard’ is named about every two weeks from fossil sites all over the world. And as experts announce each astonishing species, the nature of the dinosaur family tree shifts. Fossil hunters are not just uncovering new dinosaur species—they’re revealing entirely new dinosaur groups that were unknown even ten years ago. … Future finds are likely to be of small dinosaurs. Big dinosaurs were often found first because their remains were more resilient to scavenging, weathering and destruction than those of smaller animals, and museums liked having large, impressive dinosaurs to reconstruct for patrons. Small species were harder to find and often overlooked when they were uncovered. Now that paleontologists are making a concentrated effort to fill in entire ecosystems, however, they’re discovering some of those smaller dinosaurs and filling in parts of the dinosaur story that were previously missed—even in formations that have been explored for more than a century. For more information, read the article.
The Verge Reviews Barnes & Noble's E-Reader Strategy
Alex Cranz writes the following in “Barnes & Noble Is Reinventing Itself but Not Its E-readers” for The Verge:Wall Street Journal has a profile of the company out this week that’s a fascinating look at how Barnes & Noble is learning to compete with Amazon without cannibalizing itself in the process. The Nook business doesn’t come up in the profile, and [that’s] probably for the best. When you’re trying to rebrand your company as indie and cool you can’t show up with the Nook. While most e-readers are slim, with small bezels and sleek exteriors, the E-Ink part of the Nook line up looks like it stumbled out of 2012. Looking at it I feel the urge to ask the Glowlight 4 who the president is. For more information, read the article.
Digital Science Announces Exclusive Beta Launch of the Dimensions AI Assistant Research Tool
Digital Science is hosting a limited and exclusive beta launch of Dimensions AI Assistant, “a new research tool designed to enhance how users engage with the wealth of knowledge available on Dimensions, among the world’s largest linked research databases.” It uses AI to “provide users with semantically rich summaries and contextualized results, surpassing traditional keyword-based searches.”Dimensions is asking beta testers from around the world to “participate in shaping how AI will support Dimensions users in the future. These users will be based in various sectors, including academia, corporations, publishers, government agencies, and funding organizations,” the press release states. For more information, read the press release.
The Big Ten Open Books Project Publishes Its First Collection
Penn State, a member of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, shares the following:In partnership with six member university presses, the University Librarians of the Big Ten Academic Alliance announce the launch of the Big Ten Open Books project, a collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The first 100-title collection centered on gender and sexuality studies is now published. The works included in the collection have all been previously published in print by the partnering university presses and are now being made openly available in digital form to read and reuse at no cost. … The Big Ten Open Books first collection brings to the reader a wide variety of materials in arts, humanities and social science disciplines that are centered on gender and sexuality themes. … This collection has established a distinctive model for unified, open-access publishing of scholarly monographs. It creates open content that is immediately and universally available, on open infrastructure, Fulcrum, hosted by the University of Michigan, using open distribution models (including Project MUSE, JSTOR, and OAPEN) to envision a robust programmatic future for open monograph publishing. For more information, read the press release.
Jisc Spearheads a Review of Fully OA Academic Publishing
Jisc announced the following:To kick start the slow shift towards fully open access academic publishing, Jisc has launched a review. Commissioned and governed by Jisc’s strategic groups with input from Deltathink, an open access data and analytics company, the aim is to gather evidence, agitate discussion in the higher education sector and make recommendations for action. Exploring the open access landscape in general and the particular role of transitional agreements (TAs), the review findings will be published early in 2024. For more information, read the news item.
AP Looks at the Need for More Inclusive Disinformation Education During the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
Christine Fernando writes the following in “Election Disinformation Campaigns Targeted Voters of Color in 2020. Experts Expect 2024 to Be Worse” for the Associated Press (AP):As the 2024 election approaches, community organizations are preparing for what they expect to be a worsening onslaught of disinformation targeting communities of color and immigrant communities. They say the tailored campaigns challenge assumptions of what kinds of voters are susceptible to election conspiracies and distrust in voting systems. … A growing subset of communities of color, especially immigrants for whom English is not their first language, are questioning the integrity of U.S. voting processes and subscribing to Trump’s lies of a stolen 2020 election, said Jenny Liu, mis/disinformation policy manager at the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Still, she said these communities are largely left out of conversations about misinformation. For more information, read the article.
Springshare Enhances LibCal With Crestron Room Scheduling Panel Integration
Springshare rolled out “a set of customized UI screens in LibCal, [its] calendaring and space reservations solution, designed to seamlessly integrate with Crestron room scheduling panels. The new interface allows patrons to view availability and check in to rooms/spaces via Crestron room scheduling panels mounted in front of the bookable rooms.” That means library users can view details about a space directly on its Crestron room scheduling panels—seeing whether its is available, in use, or has a booking that starts soon—as well as scan a QR code to book the space in LibCal.For more information, read the press release.
Springer Nature Buys the protocols.io Platform for Sharing Reproducible Methods
Springer Nature acquired protocols.io, “a secure platform for developing and sharing reproducible methods,” the press release states. “With protocols.io joining Springer Nature’s leading protocol offering, researchers will now have the option to make their protocols openly available on the protocols.io platform (fully OA) as well as publishing them in peer-reviewed publications (searchable via the Springer Nature Experiments).”“With protocols.io on board, we’re driving forward an open, more reproducible research ecosystem that accelerates solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges,” says Harsh Jegadeesan, Springer Nature’s chief publishing officer. For more information, read the press release.
Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor
Brandi Scardilli
|
