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Weekly News Digest
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September 7, 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.
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cOAlition S Celebrates the Plan S Initiative's 5th Anniversary
Johan Rooryck, executive director of cOAlition S, shared a blog post marking 5 years of Plan S. It states the following:In September 2018, a group of national research funding organizations, with the support of the European Commission, rallied behind an initiative to make research publications openly accessible to all: Plan S. These visionary organizations came together as cOAlition S, and adopted a set of 10 principles that were intended to function as a catalyst for the accelerated transition to full and immediate Open Access. For most cOAlition S members, the policies and tools that support the implementation of Plan S came into effect in 2021. Although the full impact of these policies will still take several years to unfold, it is a good moment to reflect on what has been achieved so far. In addition, cOAlition S announced that it will be hosting a free webinar (registration required) for the 5th anniversary of Plan S on Nov. 2, 2023. It “will bring together funders, researchers, and experts from the scholarly communication field to discuss how Plan S has developed since its launch as well as what lies ahead for the future of scholarly communication.” For more information, read the blog post and the news item.
Oxford University Press to Publish an Interdisciplinary Resource
In 2024, Oxford University Press (OUP) will launch Oxford Intersections, “a new resource combining original research from multiple academic disciplines centred on a complex global topic.”The first six topics are Racism by Context, AI in Society and Culture, Place and Space, Social Media, Borders, and Food Security. These were “selected because of the critical role of interdisciplinary research in helping policy and decision-makers address the world’s most complex and urgent environmental, cultural, political, and psychological challenges, the solutions of which are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research,” OUP notes. “For each work, a General Editor will oversee and mobilize a diverse team of world-leading scholars and researchers from across disciplines. New research will be rapidly integrated into each Intersection on an ongoing basis, ensuring readers can access the most comprehensive and current thinking on a global topic.” For more information, read the press release.
AP Reports on Library Boards and Lawmakers Leaving ALA
Mead Gruver writes the following in “Conservative Book Ban Push Fuels Library Exodus From National Association That Stands Up for Books” for the Associated Press (AP):After parents in a rural and staunchly conservative Wyoming county joined nationwide pressure on librarians to pull books they considered harmful to youngsters, the local library board obliged with new policies making such books a higher priority for removal—and keeping out of collections. But that’s not all the library board has done. Campbell County also withdrew from the American Library Association, in what’s become a movement against the professional organization that has fought against book bans. This summer, the state libraries in Montana, Missouri and Texas and the local library in Midland, Texas, announced they’re leaving the ALA, with possibly more to come. Right-wing lawmakers in at least nine other states—Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming—demand similar action. For more information, read the article.
ZDNET Looks at the Future of How Companies Will Use AI
Eileen Yu writes the following in “Why Companies Must Use AI to Think Differently, and Not Simply to Cut Costs” for ZDNET:Organizations have to look at how artificial intelligence (AI) can enable them to do things differently, rather than at a lower cost, in order to stay relevant in the future. In fact, 21st-century companies will not be defined by the quality or the price of their products and services, but by their use of AI, said Mike Walsh, futurist and CEO of tech consultancy Tomorrow. There will be significant shifts in the way these businesses operate in the future, said Walsh. … Growing interest in generative AI also has pushed companies to tap their data assets and build their own large language models. This, he added, will create new proprietary data platforms that will power new types of products and services. For more information, read the article.
European Commission Announces the Tech Services That Must Comply With the Digital Markets Act
Jon Porter writes the following in “Google Search, Whatsapp, and TikTok on List of 22 Services Targeted by EU’s Tough New DMA” for The Verge:The European Commission has officially confirmed which tech companies, and which of their services, count as ‘gatekeepers’ under its strict new Digital Markets Act (DMA). … There’s Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft from the US, plus ByteDance from China. 22 core platform services provided by gatekeepers must now comply with the DMA’s obligations by March 2024. Broadly, the DMA is the EU’s attempt to rein in the market power of Big Tech by opening up entrenched platforms and curbing ecosystem lock-in and anti-competitive behavior, making them compete on the merits of their products and services alone. Major messaging apps will have an obligation to make themselves interoperable with competitors, for example, while operating systems will need to be designed to offer third-party app stores and allow developers to offer alternative in-app payment options. For more information, read the article.
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Brandi Scardilli
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