Category Archives: News & Notices

COVID19, online teaching, and OER solutions

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Source: Johns Hopkins accessed 2020 March 12

Here at UC San Diego the situation is similar to many other universities as we rapidly flip our classrooms from in person to online due to the #COVID19 situation. The library remains open and librarians mobilize to support our faculty, students, staff, and even the larger public with information on the virus (COVID 19 resources: official word by our health sciences librarian), government resources (Coronavirus by our gov docs librarian), and even legal access to resources as courses are moved online to #flattenthecurve.

This is an opportunity for the campus staff, especially EdTech and Centers for Teaching and Learning as they offer strategies for remote instruction, to partner with libraries. Mention of the application of Fair Use (COVID-19, Copyright, & Library Superpowers) or utilizing Open Educational Resources #OER when posting resources online, even on password protected learning management systems (we use CANVAS) is imperative. Librarians are sharing this information and resources through list-serves (SPARC OER) and guides (also, just straight up talk to your librarian for resources).

OER for Faculty – UC San Diego Library Scholarly Communications
Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Accessed on Wikimedia 2020 March 12.

The Swedish Elsevier Cancellation Affect

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Researchers from Swedish universities are looking at the impact of cancelling Elsevier contracts.

Consequences of Sweden Cancelling Elsevier : a presentation at the LIBER 2019 conference (June 27, 2019) by Lisa Olsson, Camila Hertil, Frida Jakobsson, and Lovisa Österlund.

The Surveys used to collect the data were posted by the same authors to figshare on Jan 31, 2019. Links are included to the press release, and FAQ on the cancellation and the assignment.

OA textbooks published at the UCs

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UC Berkeley Library just announced the recent publication of an #OER #opentextbook resulting from their @UCBerkekyLib faculty grant program. The library used @pressbooks as a platform for “Interpreting Love Narratives in East Asian Literature & Film.”

CC-BY-SA John Wallace https://berkeley.pressbooks.pub/interpretinglovenarratives/

Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions for the multi UC campus course, Bending the Curve is edited by UC San Diego’s Veerabhadran Ramanathan has previews (OA June 2020) on the UC Office of the President’s section of eScholarship. One of our faculty contacted us to get access so that he can use the preprints for his Fall 2019 semester class!

CC-BY-NC-SA The UC Regents https://escholarship.org/uc/bending_the_curve_digital_textbook

More publishing merger news – the pushback grows

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https://www.infodocket.com/2019/08/13/group-of-textbook-authors-file-breach-of-contract-lawsuit-against-cengage/?utm_source=id&utm_medium=IDTW&utm_campaign=articles

The groups opposing the merger of Cengage and McGraw-Hill are growing. Textbook authors and SPARC, a “global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education,” have joined a coalition of students to bring legislation and focus advocacy efforts on stopping the merger of the textbook publishing giants.

Textbook merger and student pushback

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The U.S. PIRG group, consumer and antitrust groups, and SPARC are submitting letters to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to protest the merger of Cengage and McGraw-Hill, two of the largest textbook publishers.

When Cengage and McGraw Hill announced the merger, the companies claimed it would promote affordability by increasing the use of access codes — where students pay to submit homework online, and automatically bill students for materials. However, due to the lack of other options, the combined company would be able to effectively lock students into paying to submit homework, and eliminate the used book market. 

U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, and partners submit letters to DOJ opposing Cengage -McGraw Hill merger. July 29, 2019

At UC San Diego, the LMS has been replaced with Canvas, a system embedded with Cengage, and Wiley, among other systems and products. The Wiley name might be familiar as one of the major journal publishers but the company has been moving into product development engaging the entire research lifecycle as we’ve seen with another high-profile publisher. (ongoing data collection of the rent-seeking and financialization of the academic publishing industry.)

It is worth libraries being conscious of the growing role of Edtech in the schools, colleges and universities that they serve. IFLA has produced this briefing to outline the key ethical and security concerns for libraries to consider, and suggest some ways for libraries to promote responsible and ethical use of Edtech.

Educational Technologies and Student Data – Briefing for Libraries, (July 31, 2019) International federation of Library associations and institutions, FAIFE (Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression) https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/92339

Contact us if you’d like to develop courses that include #OER and affordable course materials to ensure all of your students have access to the educational materials that you assign. Don’t add to the cost burden that students face! This campus is in a high cost housing area and we have high numbers of transfer students and low-income students. OER have been shown to lead to #studentsuccess #retention.

Make Textbooks Affordable – UCSD PIRG campaign

ORCiD news and research

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Due to a new (announced July 10, 2019) NIH Requirement for ORCID iDs for Individuals Supported by Research Training, Fellowship, Research Education, and Career Development Awards Beginning in FY 2020, Scholarly Communication at the UC San Diego Library has received an increasing number requests for training and best practices by our faculty, research centers, and campus administration. UCSD has an institutional membership but we have not yet integrated with our RIM, profile, IR, or ETD submission systems. Contact us for more information or a training.

In other news: Presentations are available from Open Repositories 2019 recently concluded in Hamburg, Germany. Several presentations on ORCiD have been posted:

Some other #OR2019 lectures especially relevant to the UC campuses:

CFP reminder for FSCI2019, FORCE11’s annual scholarly communication institute

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Force11 #FSCI19 Call from FSCI2019@UCLA:
> Do you have research, experience, or skills in Scholarly Communication that you can share with others?
> Could you help improve Scholarly Communication by proposing and leading a FSCI summer course?
> Do you want to teach and learn in a premiere community-led Scholarly Communication Summer School?
Submit a course proposal for FSCI 2019! New and returning instructors are welcome!
DEADLINE:  January 18, 2019

_____________
ABOUT FSCI2019

FSCI 2019 (FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute)  is being held this year at UCLA in Los Angeles, California from August 5 – 9, 2019.  It is the premiere community-led and organised summer school on current trends in Scholarly Communication. Our instructors are community members who are passionate about passing on their knowledge and experience to others in Scholarly Communication and Open Research. They range from up-and-coming researchers and practitioners to world-leading experts. The students they teach come from a wide variety of backgrounds: research, funding, administration, publishing, libraries, and information users; from absolute beginners to discipline leaders. They are eager to learn and represent an excellent source of potential collaborations. Learn more.

About FORCE11

FORCE11 (The Future of Research Communication and eScholarship) is a community of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders that has arisen organically to help facilitate the change toward improved knowledge creation and sharing. Individually and collectively, we aim to bring about a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology. Visit FORCE11.org for more information.
https://www.force11.org/fsci/2019

One of our own won the inaugural 2019 California Young Book Collector’s Prize

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Matthew is committed not only to providing access to his award winning collection related to his PhD research, but is intent on inspiring other scholars to actively participate in open access. He is an active member of several working groups in the library, one the library’s student advisory group and the Scholarly Communications Working Group. We’re thrilled that Matthew Wills’ collection will be on display at the 52nd California International Antiquarian Book Fair, February 8-10, 2019. #openaccess @ABAA49

“First place was awarded to Matthew Wills, of [UC San Diego], whose collection is on the theme of “Anti-Confucian Propaganda in Mao’s China”. In Matthew’s words:  “[As an] historian and bibliographer, I research the history of book publishing and propaganda in Chairman Mao’s China. In particular, I study books that show the Communist state’s hostility to China’s Confucian traditions.” For a time the state-controlled publishers printed “hundreds of propaganda books critiquing Confucian ideas”, and it is these primary source materials which constitute the foundation of Matthew’s collection, which has approximately 700 unique items, including editions in different languages, comic books, and even five volumes printed in Braille.” Northern California Chapter of the Antiquarian Bookseller’s Association of America announcement 

Liu Xiazhi Denounces Old Kong Number 2.

Historic and Scientific Publications from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography now available OA via the HathiTrust Digital Library

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By Amy Butros, @ucsdlibrary Subject Specialist for Earth and Marine Sciences and @Scripps_Ocean Liaison.

The HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository with content from a large number of international partners, libraries, institutions, including Google and the Internet Archive. University of California is one of the HathiTrust partners collaborating to improve access to and promote preservation of scholarly materials both digital and print, in a variety of formats.

The UC San Diego Library’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography Collection is the second largest collection in HathiTrust, containing over 111,350 items, books, technical reports, and series in oceanography, earth & marine sciences, plus Scripps Institution of Oceanography publications, with over 21,050 items available open access (OA), full text online viewing and downloading.

Recently, after processing of copyright permission, via a Creative Commons license, a large collection of Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) created and produced publications became available as OA.  These SIO publications, currently over 500 volumes, are mainly series such as annual reports, technical reports, the SIO Bulletin, plus books covering the significant accomplishments of the institution and evolution of oceanography.  These SIO publications are now available for full text access, with the number of items in the SIO Collection growing when authors and publishing groups, rights holders, allow access to their publications by completing the HathiTrust Creative Commons Declaration Form.

This collection includes the highly cited historic publication: Bulletin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the popular series containing landmark papers and technical reports, SIO Reference Series, plus many data rich reports such as the California Coastal Data Collection Program, and the SIO Center for Coastal Studies’ Cruise Reports.

 

More OA Pathways: The Elsevier Chapter

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Collecting and updating the public news about Elsevier negotiations and possible exit, with a University of California focus.

Key Resources:

  1. Update on the UC’s Negotiations with Academic Journal Publishers and Potential Impacts in January 2019

  2. UC and Elsevier FAQ:  https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/journal-negotiations-faqs/
  3. UC alternative access information:  https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/alternative-access-to-articles/
  4. UC San Diego alternative access information:  https://ucsd.libguides.com/elsevier

2018-12-30

UC IS LEADING THE FIGHT FOR OPEN ACCESS TO RESEARCH, OpEd by UC San Diego’s faculty member, Eric Bakovic on December 30, 2018 in the The Mercury News (San Jose, CA) Authors: Eric Bakovic, Christopher M. Kelty and Karen Ottemann . UCSD access to OpEd through database subscriptions.

2018-12-30 International alignment across open access initiatives, funders and research organisations for a complete and immediate open access

There is an “urgent need to accelerate the transition to open access.” This post lists scholarly communications initiatives and developments regarding Elsevier led by the University of California.

2018-12-20 Elsevier willing to compensate editors to prevent them from ‘flipping’

“With Plan S rapidly approaching the editorial boards of some journals are considering leaving the paywalled journals at major publishing houses and ‘flip’ their journal to open access. To prevent editors from leaving, Elsevier now appears to be willing to pay editors considerable yearly amounts to stay on.”

2018-12-19 Max Planck Digital Library to discontinue the Society’s Elsevier subscription

“The Max Planck Society, one of the world’s largest research performing organizations, counting 14,000 scientists who publish 12K new research articles a year—around 1500 of which in Elsevier journals, has mandated the Max Planck Digital Library to discontinue the Society’s Elsevier subscription when the current agreement expires on December 31, 2018.

With this move the Society joins nearly 200 universities and research institutions in Germany who have already cancelled their individual agreements with Elsevier and affirmed their support of the national-level Projekt DEAL negotiations seeking transformative agreements as a strategy to drive large scale transition of scholarly publishing to open access.

As no sustainable offer meeting DEAL’s fundamental criteria for transformation has been forthcoming, negotiations are suspended and Elsevier cut off access last July. Despite the immediate implication of lack of access to new Elsevier content from January 1, 2019, the Max Planck Society’s researchers and highest level administration provided their full support in the decision. “DEAL is fully in line with the objectives of the OA2020 Initiative, which is strongly supported by the Max Planck Society,” emphasized MPS President Martin Stratmann.” Read the full press release here– Max Planck Digital Library

2018-12-19 UC San Diego post  Update on the UC’s Negotiations with Academic Journal Publishers and Potential Impacts in January 2019

CC-BY-NC 4.0 Allegra Swift. 2018

UC Libraries Journal Negotiations: FAQs

2018-12-12  In Talks With Elsevier, UCLA Reaches for a Novel Bargaining Chip: Its Faculty  – Faculty asked to suspend peer review.

2018-12-07 In UC’s battle with the world’s largest scientific publisher, the future of information is at stake. By Michael Hiltzik

Potential Changes to UC’s Relationship with Elsevier in January 2019 (2018-11-28)
Potential Changes to University of California’s Relationship with Elsevier in January 2019