Category Archives: Scholarly Communication 

UCSD OER on East Asian History

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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

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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

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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

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.

The UCs & Elsevier

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Today (August 2, 2019), the UC negotiating team issued a fact-check of Elsevier’s claims in their multi-pronged messaging campaign.

Understand the reasons behind the UC’s efforts to ensure access to research generated at our campuses and practice fiscal responsibility for the research funding provided by taxpayer dollars. Open Statement: Why UC terminated journal negotiations with Elsevier (March 2019)

Have questions? Talk to your librarian!

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:

#UCSD workshop on “predatory” publishing

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Good Publishing Practices and the Risks of Predatory Publishing workshop is brought to you (all UC San Diego faculty, staff and students) by the UC San Diego Library and the UC San Diego Research Compliance and Integrity Office (RCI) Research Compliance Hot Topics and Training Program.

In this session, you will be introduced to strategies and tools to avoid predatory publishers and conferences and to identify reputable publishing opportunities that are worth your time and resources. Questions? Contact scholcomm [at] ucsd [dot] edu

SLIDES

Date: Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Time:  12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Location: Leichtag Auditorium, Room 107

Continuing Education Units (CEUs) will be available through the UC Learning Center.  Light refreshments will also be provided.

REGISTRATION (Register by August 19, 2019): 
To register, please click UC Learning Center for a direct link to the session registration.  Select Register in the dropdown menu.  Select Add and click Submit in the lower right corner of the page. You will receive an email registration confirmation. 

Image credit: Little Red Riding Hood by Luis Prado from the Noun Project