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

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 will summarize the discussion in a forthcoming post in the OCLC Research blog, Hanging Together, as part of our 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.

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

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!

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

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

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.

This Week’s UC Transformative Agreement …

In case you haven’t heard is Elsevier. Yes, after two years, the University of California not only has access to read but UC authors can publish #openaccess. UC secures landmark open access deal with world’s largest scientific publisher.

CC BY-NC-SA Shelly (2007). Balancing Equations: Dancing Hands #flickr https://flic.kr/p/MtnhP

Find out the details:

UC Press release, the UCSD Library news piece, and the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication uc-publisher-relationships/elsevier-oa-agreement/

Pedagogy and Profession CFP

New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, an #openaccess no-APC peer-reviewed journal, is has made a call for submissions (by May 15, 2021) for their “Pandemic Collection.” This new journal, @NewChaucer_PP offers brief essays on teaching, service, and institutional cultures for teachers and scholars of Chaucer and his age. The journal is published on the University of California’s eScholarship #OA repository and publishing platform with a founding editor from the #UCSD Literature Department, Lisa R. Lampert-Weissig.

The first issue launched in December of 2020 and for most of us, it is one of the most positive things to come out of the-year-that-can-not-end-soon-enough!

The Merchant – Ellesmere Chaucer by AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

For our Fall 2021 issue, we are planning a special cluster on the ongoing pandemic and the effects it has had on all of us. Inspired by other projects that assemble responses to the current COVID-19 pandemic (see hereherehere, and here), we have wondered, How will we in the community of medievalists remember the impact of this global crisis? How have we reacted and responded as teachers? As scholars? In order to create a collective assembly of voices and experiences, we seek short contributions (ca. 1000-1500w) that consider the writers’ pandemic experiences in the education and scholarly contexts where they work, learn and create. Contributions will appear in the Fall 2021 issue of New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession and in the NCS: Pedagogy and Profession Newsletter.

For consideration in the Fall 2021 issue of New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, please submit your contribution at https://escholarship.org/uc/ncs_pedagogyandprofession by 15 May 2021.

Contributions to the NCS: Pedagogy and Profession Newsletter are considered via a rolling acceptance process. Please submit your contribution as an attachment to ncs.pedagogyandprofession@gmail.com.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the editors at ncs.pedagogyandprofession@gmail.com.

________________________________________________________

New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession

Lisa Lampert-Weissig, University of California-San Diego, @TalesoftheNight

Katie Little, University of Colorado

Eva von Contzen, University of Freiburg, @eva_von_c

Candace Barrington, Central Connecticut State University, @CBarrington

UCSD OER on East Asian History

Schneewind, S. “An Outline History of East Asia to 1200” (2020). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d699767 

  • Interview: Allegra swift
  • Interview transcript: Anna Gabrielle F. Isorena
  • Interview recording editing and textbook final formatting: Haneen Mohamed

A demon from The Chʼu SilkManuscript:TranslationandCommentary(Canberra: Department of Far Eastern History,Australian National University, 1973).

Professor Sarah Schneewind approached the library in the spring of 2019 seeking options for self-publishing a textbook for the UC San Diego undergraduate course HILD 10 East Asia: The Great Tradition: Early History and Cultures of China, Korea, and Japan. She felt that the textbook she had been using was not meeting her needs and students were upset about the high cost of the book. As the Scholarly Communication Librarian focused on supporting the dissemination and sustainability of the scholarship and research produced at UC San Diego, I was excited to be able to work with Sarah to find the best publishing solution to both meet her needs and produce a textbook that could be used by others, without cost or barriers to access. I met with Sarah and consulted with the Digital Scholarship Librarian, Erin Glass, and the subject specialist librarian, Xi Chen. We looked at options such as Lever Press/Manifold, GitBooks, Scalar, Pressbooks, and, eScholarship, the UC’s open access repository and publishing platform. 

UC scholar publications:

Ultimately, eScholarship won out. The platform presents a low-barrier to entry as far as technicality and cost. The only restriction to uploading a publication to eScholarship is that authors need to be employed by the UC. Journals published on the platform are an exception – there must be some connection to a UC campus, while authors submitting manuscripts can be from outside the UC. While it is simple to post a pdf, some textbooks produced on eScholarship, such as the climate science OA textbook – Bending the Curve, have a high production value and an entire team to produce the work. Sarah was creating this resource herself without technical support and her only criteria being complete creative control, no book publishing charge (BPC), and provided at no cost to her students.

The work was not without cost to produce however, and this is an important consideration if libraries are going to support the production of open educational resources (OER). Sarah successfully petitioned for course release to work on the book but it only covered a portion needed. She was able to pay a graduate student to work with me on locating images that were Creative Commons licensed or in the public domain. I also helped the student with template requests for getting permission from rights holders. I was able to employ an undergraduate to format the final pdf. I spent a lot of time giving guidance on discoverability and rights best practices. Sarah good-naturedly called my methods “bullying,” but I would describe myself as persistent 😉 . At any rate we’d agree that the effort was successful. As of this posting, the metrics are pretty impressive for only being online a couple of months. As Sarah said in the interview that I recorded (interview recording and transcript).

“Of course, my colleagues, just like me, have students who have no money, so they’re very happy to have an open access textbook that they can use. On my eScholarship statistics, I had 2,111 views or something on this textbook in the last month since you posted it. Again, I’m never going to attain that on anything that I write just based on my own actual research. I would say, overall, the response numerically has been very good.”

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d699767#metrics

Unlatching @KUnlatched

10 title(s) have now been unlatched over the last 7 days, please see below the breakdown by collection. The following titles are now available on the Open Research Library (search titles here).

  • KU Open Services
    • Biomaterialbanken – Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen
  • KU Select 2019: HSS Backlist Books
    • Becoming a European Homegrown Jihadist
    • Francophonie and the Orient
    • Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China
    • Medieval Saints and Modern Screens
    • Nazism and Neo-Nazism in Film and Media
    • Women in the Silent Cinema
  • KU Select 2019: HSS Frontlist Books
    • Frontier Tibet
    • Independent Filmmaking across borders in Contemporary Asia
    • Women and Power at the French Court, 1480-1565

In other KU news:

@ucsdlibrary contributes to @KUnlatched. Read #oa chapters and editions in LSP pubs by #ucsd linguists @ryanlepic, @emily_clemily, & the Dean of UCSD Social Sciences, Carol Padden!

Chapter 23 of On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses by Ryan Lepic and Carol Padden.
Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics co-edited UCSD’s Emiliy Clem.

Open Access Week 2019

International Open Access Week

During Open Access Week, the UC San Diego Library will be kicking off our scholarly communication awareness campaign to engage the campus in issues related to knowledge production and information access. We’ll have content displayed on our digital signage as well as physical swag and fact sheets at information desks in the library. As always, contact your librarian (or us) with questions or if you are interested in taking action! Follow us on Twitter for more info or just to engage!

EVENTS AT THE UC SAN DIEGO LIBRARY

9am – 10 am on Tuesday 22 Oct 2019 in the Geisel Library Dunst Classroom: webinar “ACRL DSS Open Research Discussion Group: Open Data Activism in Search of Algorithmic Transparency: Algorithmic Awareness in Practice

The ALA (American Library Association and its units) and the ALA-APA (Allied Professional Association) (collectively “ALA”) use the personal data you provide to the ALA to process membership, inform you of products, services, conferences, education opportunities, events and for other purposes which are within the Association’s mission. To accomplish these actions, ALA contracts with third-parties who gather and process personal data to complete interactions such as online purchases, conference registration, and fulfillment. The personal data as provided is processed and stored as a legitimate Interest to the ALA in order to fulfill your requests for information and services from ALA.

11 am – 12 pm on 22 Oct 2019 in the Geisel Library Dunst Classroom : ACRL webinar: “Open for Students and Educators: Open Educational Resources Level the Playing Field

Open educational resources (OERs) are not usually a hard sell for students. But what about educators? How do they benefit from having access to resources that are licensed openly? And how can we, as librarians, guide faculty in adopting and adapting OERs? This free webcast will cover essential OER questions and topics, including:
• What does OER mean?
• How is OER helpful not only to students, but to educators as well?
• Locating and adapting OER (or how to interpret Creative Commons licensing attached to OERs)

9 am – 10:00 am on 24 Oct 2019 in the Biomed Library Bldg Events Room: “How the University of California Libraries Drive the Open Access Movement”

This International Open Access Week our guest, Anneliese Taylor, Head of Scholarly Communication, Library at the University of California San Francisco, joins the F1000 team to share key tactics that she and her team have deployed to promote Open Access publishing in the UC system. We’ll follow Anneliese’s presentation by opening the floor to a Q&A and also share the latest updates across F1000Research, F1000Workspace, and F1000Prime. 

OpenAIRE

Join OpenAIRE for a series of webinars (and more) during Open Access Week 2019!

The 2019 International Open Access Week will be held October 21-27, 2019. This year’s theme, “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge,” builds on the groundwork laid during last year’s focus of “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge.”
As has become a yearly habit, OpenAIRE will organise a series of webinars during this week, highlighting OpenAIRE activities, services and tools and reaching out to the wider community with relevant talks. For registration or more info, see the OpenAIRE page

On the programme this year:

– Monday October 21st at 11 AM CEST: OpenAPC – cost transparency of Open Access publishing by Christoph Broschinski and Andreas Czerniak (UNIBI)
– Monday October 21st at 2 PM CEST : Research Data Management by S. Venkataraman (DCC) and Thomas Margoni (CREATe)
– Tuesday October 22nd at 10 AM CEST: Horizon 2020 Open Science Policies and beyond by Emilie Hermans (OpenAIRE)
– Friday October 25th at 11 AM CEST: Plan S compliance for Open Access Journals’. Can we make it: ‘Plan S compliance for Open Access Journals – what we know so far and where we think we’re heading’ by Dominic Mitchell (DOAJ)
– Friday October 25th at 2 PM CEST: From Open Science to Inclusive Science by Paola Masuzzo