Topic: Scholarly communication
Blog Post
October 31, 2019
Three Questions for Mark McBride
SUNY central system administration and its 64 campus libraries have been working with Ithaka S+R to develop strategies for collaboration and partnership in the context of substantial strategic and technological change. For our most recent newsletter, we spoke with Mark McBride, senior strategist in SUNY’s Office of Library and Information Services, about how this is unfolding across the system and why he thinks it is so important. What did you learn from Ithaka S+R’s analysis of publishing across SUNY’s…
Past Event
October 22, 2019
Network Ecosystems – Story-Telling & Sharing among Partners
Roger Schonfeld at SUNY's Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education Conference
On Tuesday, October 22, Roger Schonfeld will present on “Network Ecosystems – Story-Telling & Sharing among Partners” as part of a panel at SUNY’s Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education Conference in Albany, New York. He will be joined by Mark McBride (Library Senior Strategist, SUNY System), Norman Bier (Director of the Open Learning Initiative, Carnegie Mellon & Executive Director, Simon Initiative), Donna Desrochers (Associate, rpk Group), Kim Thanos (Chief Executive Officer, Lumen Learning), and David Yaskin (Chief Executive Officer, Faculty…
Blog Post
October 21, 2019
Beyond Innovation: Emerging Meta-Frameworks for Maintaining an Open Scholarly Infrastructure
There are numerous free and community-based academic and cultural resources that are designed and built on open source or open access principles. Undertaken by not-for-profit mission-driven organizations, such services and technologies aim to introduce innovation to various stages of scholarly communication from designing research projects to publishing results. Today, amid growing concerns about their long-term durability and agility, there is renewed interest in sustainability, business models, revenue, and maintenance. In our previous post, we looked back at some…
Past Event
October 13, 2019
The Labor of Open
Danielle Cooper at the Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute
From Sunday, October 13 through Wednesday, October 17, Danielle Cooper is participating in the 2019 Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The theme of this year’s institute is “Equity in Scholarly Communications.” Danielle will be working on a team with Leslie Chan (University of Toronto Scarborough), Emily Drabinski (CUNY Grad Center), Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Jojo Karlin (CUNY Grad Center), and Ela Przybylo (Illinois State University) on “The Labor of Open.” The Triangle…
Past Event
November 8, 2019
The Impact of Market Consolidation on Libraries and Universities
Roger Schonfeld at the Charleston Conference
On Friday, November 8, from 9:45 – 10:30 am, Roger Schonfeld is taking part in a panel discussion, “Good, Bad or Somewhere In-Between: The Impact of Market Consolidation on Libraries and Universities,” at the Charleston Conference. He will be speaking with Meg White (Rittenhouse Book Distributors), Kara Kroes Li (EBSCO Information Services), and Doug Way (University of Kentucky Libraries). For more information and to register, please see the conference website. About the panel Mergers and acquisitions are a normal…
Past Event
November 7, 2019
Preprints – Why Should Librarians Care?
Oya Rieger at the Charleston Conference
On, Thursday, November 7, from 2:30 – 3:10 pm, Oya Y. Rieger will join Susan K. Kendall (Michigan State University Libraries), Rachel Burley (Springer Nature), and Jessica Polka (ASAPbio) for a panel discussion on “Preprints – Why Should Librarians Care?” at the Charleston Conference. For more information and to register, please see the conference website. About the panel Librarians play a critical role in supporting students and faculty in understanding the trends and developments in scholarly communications. Librarians also…
Past Event
October 16, 2019
Roger Schonfeld at the SSP Micro-Conference
Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019
On Wednesday, October 16, Roger Schonfeld is joining other “chefs” from The Scholarly Kitchen at the SSP Micro-Conference and Business Meeting at the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019 to discuss “What’s Hot and Cooking in Scholarly and Academic Publishing.” To learn more, please see the SSP website. About the session Founded in 2008, The Scholarly Kitchen is read by thousands of publishers, editors, librarians, researchers, and publishing service providers in more than 200 countries each day. In lightning-round format, TSK Chefs will explore what’s in scholarly…
Blog Post
October 1, 2019
Sustaining the Open Sector: A Brief Look Back
During the last two decades, we’ve seen the emergence of several open source (OS) and open access (OA) initiatives designed to support the academic and cultural community’s needs for more effective, versatile, and cost-efficient tools. Since 2006, Ithaka S+R has explored the sustainability requirements of these resources, investigating both the factors that lead to success and the reasons behind setbacks and failures. Today, amid the failure of several cross-institutional “open” initiatives and the broader search for funding to…
Blog Post
September 19, 2019
Emergent Data Community Spotlight III
An Interview with Kitty Emery and Rob Guralnick on ZooArchNet
Successful data sharing crosses disciplinary silos. As Danielle Cooper and I argued in a recent issue brief, “data communities” — formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of data with each other — emerge both within and across disciplinary boundaries. In order to understand how these data communities emerge — and to understand how they can best be supported — I’ve been seeking out leaders who are at the…
Blog Post
September 16, 2019
Building Data Skills across the Globe
A Virtual Roundtable with Library Carpentry
As scholars across disciplines increasingly turn to data-intensive research methods, academic libraries are considering how to adapt to meet the growing demand for research data instructional and advisory services. In a recent blog post, I observed that among R1 institutions in the United States overall staffing levels for research-data-dedicated library roles remain low, with over half of R1s sporting zero or one data librarian in their university libraries. But hiring dedicated data librarians…
Blog Post
September 10, 2019
Emergent Data Community Spotlight II
An Interview with Felicity Tayler and Marjorie Mitchell on the SpokenWeb Project
For all today’s technological affordances, research data sharing remains a fundamentally social activity, dependent on building “data communities” from the ground up. Danielle Cooper and I argued as much in a recent issue brief, and since then, I’ve been seeking out pioneers who are at the forefront of efforts to grow emergent data communities in a variety of research areas. What does it take to get a successful data sharing movement off the…
Past Event
November 6, 2019
Library Collections: Creatively Adjusting Budgets to Invest in Open Content
Roger Schonfeld at the Charleston Conference
On Wednesday, November 6, from 2:00 – 3:10 pm , Roger Schonfeld will join Barbara Dewey (Penn State University), Julia Gelfand (University of California, Irvine), and Dan Cohen (Northeastern University) for a panel discussion, “Library Collections: Creatively Adjusting Budgets to Invest in Open Content,” at the Charleston Conference. For more information and to register, please see the conference website. About the panel Building on the 2019 ACRL/SPARC Forum on Collective Reinvestment in Open Infrastructure, this program will explore how…
Past Event
November 7, 2019
The Future of Subscription Bundles: Big Deal, No Deal, or What’s the Deal?
Roger Schonfeld at the Charleston Conference
On Thursday, November 7, from 4:30 – 5:15 pm, Roger Schonfeld will present on “The Future of Subscription Bundles: Big Deal, No Deal, or What’s the Deal?” as part of a Charleston Conference panel. Beth Bernhardt (Oxford University Press), Tim Bucknall (the University of North Carolina at Greensboro), and Mark McBride (SUNY System Administration) are also presenting. For more information and to register, please see the conference website. About the panel In light of well-publicized negotiations around journal deals…
Past Event
November 6, 2019
Resolved: Preprint Servers Have Improved the Scholarly Communication System
Oya Rieger at the Charleston Conference
On Wednesday, November 6, from 4:45 – 5:45 pm, Oya Y. Rieger is taking part in a “Hyde Park Debate” at the Charleston Conference. Oya will argue in favor of the proposition: Resolved: Preprint servers have improved the scholarly communication system.” Taking the opposing side is Kent Anderson (Caldera Publishing Solutions). Rick Anderson will serve as moderator and timekeeper. For more information and to register, please see the conference website. From the conference website The structure of the event…
Blog Post
September 3, 2019
Ithaka S+R Student Surveys: 2020 Edition
Ithaka S+R is gearing up to update our local student surveys and we are now accepting expressions of interest from libraries to field the surveys in the spring 2020 semester. Our student surveys, which have been fielded at dozens of institutions since 2014, were developed to complement our local faculty survey. They cover the perspectives of undergraduate and graduate students on their objectives for pursuing higher education, their coursework activities, and their use…
Blog Post
August 27, 2019
Powerful Partner Questions
Survey Design Strategies from the Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey
When responding to a survey, do you ever have a sense of déjà vu, as though you already answered a very similar question a minute before? There might be a very good reason for the repetition. Across seven cycles of the US Faculty Survey and in our implementation of this instrument with more than 100 institutions across the globe, we have often found great value in approaching the…
Blog Post
July 29, 2019
Announcing Two New S+R Projects on Supporting Data Work
Evolving data practices are re-shaping the academic landscape. Here at Ithaka S+R we’ve been tracking how scholars’ data support needs are evolving more widely through our triennial U.S. faculty survey and through deep dives into specific disciplinary practices, such as our recent report on Civil and Environmental Engineering. We’ve also uncovered how scholars’ work in data communities challenges the traditional disciplinary and institutional siloing…
Blog Post
July 29, 2019
Counting Data Librarians
How many data librarians does the average research university have? As data science methodologies are embraced by more and more academic fields–and as funders and administrators increasingly prioritize big data projects–academic libraries are staffing up to meet a growing demand. “Research data services” is a term that encompasses a broad range of support functions that help students and scholars conduct research with data. Some of these include: Directing users to…
Blog Post
July 22, 2019
Emergent Data Community Spotlight
An Interview with Dr. Vance Lemmon on Spinal Cord Injury Research
Encouraging scholars to share research data with one another promises to increase research efficiency, reproducibility, and innovation. In a recent issue brief, Danielle Cooper and I argued for a new conceptual framework for understanding and supporting research data sharing: data communities. Data communities are formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of data with each other, regardless of disciplinary…
Blog Post
July 17, 2019
Gearing Up for the Ithaka S+R National Library Director Survey
This fall, we will field the triennial Ithaka S+R Library Survey for the fourth time. The survey examines strategy and leadership issues from the perspective of academic library deans and directors, and through this project, we aim to understand the opportunities and challenges they face in leading their organizations. This project serves as a strong complement to our work with a variety of other communities of academic librarians and is intended to ensure…