Author Archives: Allegra Swift

About Allegra Swift

Allegra Swift is the UC San Diego Library’s Scholarly Communications Librarian. She spends her days infusing research and scholarship support with critlib, digital citizenship, and digital literacy ideals.

OCLC Research Library Partnership (RLP) : Addressing Bias in Research Analytics

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A conversation on the challenges of bias in research metrics and how libraries could respond.

IBM 704 mainframe at NACA in 1957. Public Domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_mainframe 

Today’s universities and scholars increasingly rely upon an array of indicators about research activities to support institutional decision making, competitive analysis and economic development, impact assessment, and individual and institutional reputation management. But increasing reliance on big data also brings the responsibility of asking questions about how biases may be baked into frequently used research metrics resources.

For instance:

  • What do researchers and institutional leaders need to know to use research analytics responsibly?
  • What is the role of the library?
  • Who can libraries partner with?
  • How can we support scholars who may be affected by bias?
  • And how can these biases negatively impact institutional climate?

We will explore these questions in this RLP event. Sheila Craft-Morgan will kick off out conversation by sharing her perspective as the research impact librarian at Ohio State, with extensive experience in institutional research. Allegra Swift will follow sharing about the Library’s collaboration with the Office of Compliance and Integrity and Research Ethics Programs at UC San Diego. We will then have ample time for discussion and sharing among all participants.

Participants are encouraged to come prepared to listen, contribute, and participate, including sharing about your own institutional efforts (even if these are still emerging). This is a rich opportunity for us to learn from each other and to find mutual support for efforts that challenge us all.
This discussion will not be recorded or shared after the fact, but we summarized the discussion in a blog post in the OCLC Research blog, Hanging Together, as part of their blog series on bibliometrics and research impact.

Dates (two sessions available)

Thursday, 16 February 2023 | 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EST (UTC -5) (Europe/North American East Coast friendly time)
Thursday, 16 February 2023 | 6:00 – 7:00 pm EST (UTC -5) (North American West Coast/Asia Pacific friendly time)

All affiliates of OCLC Research Library Partnership organizations are invited to participate. Registration page.

New Memoir Published on eScholarship by Prominent Sio Emeritus Faculty

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We’re thrilled to announce the publication of Charles Kennel’s autobiography, From the Cold War to Global Warming: A Scientific Odyssey.

Charles F. Kennel, between 1970 and 1985. SIO Photographic Laboratory Collection. SAC 44. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb66222247 . Photograph used with permission.

In November of 2021, a colleague in the library, Peter Mueller, had a chance to visit with Ellen and Charles Kennel and learned that during the Covid “lockdown,” Professor Kennel had taken the opportunity to write his memoirs. Peter suggested that he work with the UC San Diego Library’s Scholarly Communication to publish the autobiography on the UC’s open access institutional repository and publication platform, eScholarship. It was important to partner with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s embedded librarian and Subject Specialist for Earth and Marine Sciences, Amy Butros. Amy works tirelessly to build the OA collection of SIO research on eScholarship and has a deep knowledge of SIO’s history and the impact of its former director.

We guided the publication through image rights review and publication metadata best practices. Given the time-consuming nature of rights review, we hired a student, Xinbei Li, to help track down rights holders and locate openly licensed alternatives. Eight months into the project, Amy recommended that Dr. Kennel hire Tim DeBold, who had recently worked at SIO as Instructional Scheduling Coordinator and had begun to freelance in editorial services. Tim came on board to finalize the manuscript as a proofreader and copyeditor. In a little over a year after the introduction of the project, Amy did the final review and posted the final manuscript on eScholarship January 23, 2023!

Charles F. Kennel is an American plasma physicist who served as the Executive Vice Chancellor of UCLA, the Associate Administrator of NASA, the Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and is the inaugural Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge. This volume contains his autobiography, which not only covers Dr. Kennel’s own life but also offers perspectives on the history of science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the author’s work in space research, plasma physics, astrophysics, climate change science, and sustainability.

Description written by Timothy DeBold for Kennel, C. F. (2023). From the Cold War to Global Warming: A Scientific Odyssey. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6pj6c3rf

For more information on Dr. Kennel’s illustrious career and personal papers see the catalog of his archives in the UC San Diego Library Special Collections, Charles F. Kennel Papers, 1989-2012 (SMC 9).

Charlie Kennel and Ellen Lehman at Charlie Fest. Photos from the August 28-29, 2014 celebration of Charlie Kennel at Scripps Seaside Forum. Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Flickr.

Day 2 of 2022 Open Access Week – UCSD is OPEN FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE!

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https://www.openaccessweek.org/theme

Today’s #OAWeek tweets highlight 7 #UCSD student works #OpenforClimateJustice . Find all UCSD dissertations https://escholarship.org/uc/ucsd_etd  & many graduate theses & UG research in @eScholarship. Any recent #UCSD student work on #climatejustice you’d like to highlight?

1/7 Quintanilla, O. (2020). Inafa’ maolek Restoring Balance through Resilience, Resistance, and Coral Reefs: A Study of Pacific Island Climate Justice and the Right to Nature. UC San Diego. ProQuest ID: Quintanilla_ucsd_0033D_19784. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m5z662kv. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6wn683wr 

  • 1/7 ⬆️ Integrating multiple fields & addressing various social perspectives, Olivia Quintanilla’s PhD dissertation in ethnics studies in UC San Diego discusses indigenous action to the climate justice issue of Pacific region coral reefs. #OAWeek #OpenforClimateJustice

2/7 Villanueva, M., Dimitrova, A., & Benmarhnia, T. (2022). The Impact of Climate Shocks and Women’s Empowerment on Child Undernutrition in Mozambique. UC San Diego: Undergraduate Research Hub. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75s3g91b 

  • 2/7 ⬆️ This undergraduate paper published in the Challenger: A McNair Scholars Paper Series looks at how malnutrition in children in Mozambique is compounded by climate change. #OAWeek #OpenforClimateJustice 

3/7 Arab, P. (2021). The Environmental Justice Implications of Air Pollution Changes Following COVID-19 Stay at Home Policies in San Diego County. UC San Diego: Climate Science and Policy. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ph8m7cz   

  • 3/7 In this Capstone project, master student Pargoal Arab from UCSD analyzes climate justice from an innovative angle–the implications of the air quality in San Diego County impacted by the COVID-19 policies. #OAWeek #OpenforClimateJustice ⬇️

4/7 In the eye of the storm, what do we witness? Through printmaking, UCSD master student Simona Mercedes Clausnitzer @sea_simona explores the social vulnerability and inequity brought by climate change in an artistic and inspiring way. #OAWeek #OpenforClimateJustice  ⬇️

  • Clausnitzer, S. (2020). En el Ojo del Huracán // In the Eye of the Storm: Conceptualizing Climate Justice through Printmaking. UC San Diego: Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24d8r7db 

5/7 Melanie Herrera, a master student of Scripps Institution of Oceanography of UCSD, assesses the years of wetland and blue carbon research to optimize strategies for local climate equity, inclusiveness, and justice. #OAWeek #OpenforClimateJustice ⬇️

  • Herrera, M. (2022). Catching Carbon: A Blue Carbon Assessment of San Diego Wetlands for Equitable Climate Action Planning. UC San Diego: Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9gt456dq 

6/7 A health impact assessment of the Paris LEZ done by UC San DIego master student Erika Moreno reveals the social injustice that existed and also implicates the possible equity policies for facing it.#OAWeek #OpenforClimateJustice ⬇️

  • Moreno, E. (2020). Environmental Justice Implications for the Paris Low Emission Zone: A Health Impact Assessment. UC San Diego: Climate Science and Policy. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9pb9m7hb 

7/7 UCSD graduate student Elizabeth Duran assesses the environmental implications of wildfire and wildfire PM2.5 in the case study of 2007 San Diego wildfire, revealing the relation between wildfire smoke and health inequalities in low SES communities. #OAWeek #OpenforClimateJustice ⬇️
Duran, E. (2021). The environmental justice implications of wildfire smoke: Exploring differential exposure and susceptibility of the 2007 san diego fire storm (Order No. 28862993). Available from Dissertations & Theses @ University of California; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. (2620806317). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/environmental-justice-implications-wildfire-smoke/docview/2620806317/se-2

2022 Open Access Week – UCSD is OPEN FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE!

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International OA Week https://www.openaccessweek.org/theme/en

Happy Open Access Week 2022! This week our plan is to highlight UC San Diego research, scholarship, and art related to the theme, “Open for Climate Justice.” During #OAWeek, we’ll tweet about publications authored by a diverse range of authors and initiatives happening on our campus. At #UCSD, we have entire centers devoted to bringing about climate justice with everyone from undergraduates, faculty, and community partners working to “make our world a better place.”

The UC San Diego Center for Global Justice has devoted a research cluster to #climatejustice http://gjustice.ucsd.edu/climate-justice/. Check the CFP for an #OA Lecture Video & Digital #OATextbook Chapter to contribute to the 10 UC campus course, Bending the Curve & @eScholarship #OER on climate science, “Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions” 

The #UCSD Center for Global Justice’s founding director is our own political science professor, Fonna Forman. Dr. Forman has written chapters for the OER as well as participated in our #OAW event last year as part of a faculty and student panel on equitable & affordable course materials.

The Center on Global Justice is committed to research, advocacy and consultation on climate disruption and climate justice, working at top-down and bottom-up scales simultaneously to slow the warming, as well as to help vulnerable communities adapt to a warming climate.  New technologies, policies and financial tools must be paired with new social strategies, to produce meaningful change.

Through the UCSD Community Stations, we are committed to advancing new methods of climate education and participatory climate action in close partnership with underserved communities across the San Diego-Tijuana border region.

http://gjustice.ucsd.edu/climate-justice/

WORKSHOP SERIES : GLOBAL EQUITY IN OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING

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OA2020 WORKSHOP SERIES ON PRACTICAL MECHANISMS AND ACTION PLANS TO REMOVE BARRIERS FOR READERS AND AUTHORS

Organizers of the workshop series.

Link to webpage and registration describing the event – registration deadline is 07 October 2022 but recording will be posted

Workshop 1 Viewpoints and contributions from Africa and Europe

This workshop will be an opportunity for those who fund and produce research, including scientists and scholars, research administrators, libraries and library consortia, university leadership, science councils and grant funders, and ministries of research and education, to better understand the current tensions in the scholarly communication landscape and explore immediate and long-term actions they each can take to ensure open access publishing is delivered in accordance with these principles:

  • Fees associated with open access publishing services should be fair, reasonable, transparent, and globally equitable;
  • Scholarly communication is part of the research process and, as such, costs for open access publishing services should ultimately be borne by research funders and institutions;
  • Spending on scientific publishing should enable global open access by both readers and authors.

The first in a global relay, this workshop will be held in European and African time zones. The outcomes will be integrated with those of two additional and incremental workshops in early 2023 featuring viewpoints and contributions from the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas, with the aim of defining and promoting global practices and action lines in pursuit of the principles above.

The suggestions and outcomes of all three workshops in the series will be openly disseminated here and will be further discussed with other stakeholders, including scholarly publishers, in a second phase of activity from mid-2023.

IFLA STL/Author Carpentry Workshop on Predatory vs. Legitimate Journals

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Publish by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Join UC San Diego Scholarly Communications Librarian Allegra Swift and Annelise Sklar, the Assistant Director of the Scholarship Tools and Methods Program and Librarian for Political Science, Law & Society, International Studies, and International Government Information as they present “Identifying Reputable OA Journals,” a 90-minute hands-on workshop.  This workshop is the first in a two-part series featuring the Author Carpentry curriculum founded at Caltech.

Date: Wednesday, June 22, 2022 There are two times available and registration is necessary.

Time: 7:00am – 8:30am PST Registration and 3:00pm – 4:30pm PST Registration

Author Carpentry is a researcher-to-researcher training and outreach program in open authoring and publishing, scholarly identity and reputation, and research impact. Inspired by the Modern Scientific Authoring lesson proposed by Software Carpentry founder Greg Wilson, Author Carpentry was envisioned by founder Gail Peretsman-Clement to complement and extend the research pipelines covered in Software and Data Carpentry. Author Carpentry picks up the “last mile” of the research process: writing, reporting, review, dissemination and licensing, impact measurement, and establishing author identity and reputation. This section will focus on dissemination, deception, and diversity through a publishing literacy lens. Please contact Allegra or Annelise with any questions.

This workshop is sponsored by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Science & Technology Libraries Section.

CNI 2022 Project Briefing slides and Recording

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Thanks to the Coalition for Networked Information for posting our project briefing (along with Regina Gong‘s MSU update) on the work UC San Diego Library has been doing to advance affordable course materials and Open Educational Resources (OER) on this campus.

Cook, D.B., Gong, R., Martin, L., & Swift, A. (2022, March 22). CNI Spring Meeting. Open Educational Resource Program Development: A View from Two Institutions. (Conference Presentation).

The image above features a few UC San Diego OERs published with guidance from UC San Diego Library Scholarly Communication.

  • Schneewind, S. “An Outline History of East Asia to 1200, second edition” (2021). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d699767
  • Murphy, T. W. (2021). Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet. Location: eScholarship. http://dx.doi.org/10.21221/S2978-0-578-86717-5 Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m

The CNI presentation is also posted to @eScholarship : Cook, D.B., Gong, R., Martin, L., & Swift, A. (2022, March 22). CNI Spring Meeting. Open Educational Resource Program Development: A View from Two Institutions. (Conference Presentation). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3xc007br

OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING: Opportunities for Authors

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UC San Diego Library’s 2021 Open Access Week Virtual Event

November. 3rd at 2:30-3:30 pm [PST]

Learn about open access publishing opportunities through the UC’s transformative agreements (open to UC authors) and other avenues open to all authors. 

The UC San Diego University Librarian, Erik Mitchell, will give an update on the UC Transformative Agreements and where we are in the process of increasing sustainable journal subscription access and OA publishing discounts or full-coverage for UC authors. 

Allegra Swift, UC San Diego Scholarly Communication Librarian, will discuss OA publishing avenues for authors whose chosen publishing venue or format is not covered by the UC agreements.

The event was recorded (see the Library’s YouTube channel) and transcripts and slides are shared here.

Questions? Contact Allegra Swift.

“It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity.”

the theme for this year’s International Open Access Week

Join the UCSD Rady School for a virtual OER Webinar on June 4th

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In partnership with the Library and UCSD CALPIRG Affordable Textbooks Campaign, the UC San Diego Rady School of Management will host a webinar next Friday, June 4th at 11 AM PST titled, Adapt Your Course Materials and Save Students Money. While business-flavored, the content is cross-disciplinary as we’ll learn about UCSD student body textbook costs and access concerns, introduce quality open-access material tailored to the varying fields of business & management, and offer options for publishing your own materials.

We hope this webinar will serve as a starting point for establishing affordable and equitable course materials across your departments and campuses. We look forward to seeing you next Friday for this impactful learning opportunity! Zoom registration Link

Can’t make it? The recording and slides will be posted here.

This past year, in an effort to lower course material costs for our students, members of our faculty implemented various resources available to them to offer their materials… I thank those who have adapted … and helped students by lowering their out-of-pocket costs. However, in order to advance in this collective effort, I believe we need the involvement of campus partners. 

Estefania Perez
UC San diego rady school of management Undergraduate Education Program Assistant