The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the ISSN International Centre (ISSN IC) have just signed two agreements stating that the ISSN IC is the Registration Authority responsible for the implementation of ISO 4 Information and documentation — Rules for the abbreviation of title words and titles of publications and ISO 3297 Information and documentation — International standard serial number (ISSN).

The ISSN International Centre will participate in the 2018 Charleston Library Conference (U.S.A.) to promote its new services to librarians and publishers. The Director of the ISSN International Centre will give two presentations (Nov. 7^th and 8^th) focusing on the new Enhanced Transfer Alerting Service (https://journaltransfer.issn.org) and the implementation of standards.

The ISSN International Centre will participate in the 2018 SemWebPro Conference. The Head of the Data, Network and Standards Dpt will make a presentation highlighting the ISSN Portal, its data model and its services. This presentation will be the opportunity to address use cases to improve the description of continuing resources in the web of data.

Registration

The programme is online.

In October 2018, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, the leading global trade association for academic and professional publishers, published its fifth edition of the report entitled The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing.

The 2018 STM Report mentions the ISSN as the key standard for the identification and description of continuing resources. The ISSN Portal (https://portal.issn.org) and the new Enhanced Transfer Alerting Service (ETAS) hosted by the ISSN International Centre (https://journaltransfer.issn.org) are also featured in the 2018 STM Report.

ISNI-IA is a membership organization, to date supported by over forty regular Members and Registration Agencies. Recent months have seen registration agency numbers swell with the addition of EDItEUR member BTLF (active in the Francophone publishing industries in Canada), the National Libraries of Sweden and Spain, and two new entrants from the music industry – Soundways Inc. (USA) and Consolidated Independent (UK). The latter two join YouTube, which became an ISNI Registration Agency early in 2018, in representing the recorded music sector.

LIBER’s 47th Annual Conference in Lille, France brought 440 research library professionals together for a week of discussions focused on doing more with Open Science, and on related topics such as metrics, research data management and copyright reform.

• Presentations are on the conference website and in LIBER’s Zenodo group,
• Photos are on LIBER’s Flickr account,
• Live stream recordings are being added to the University of Lille website.

The conference highlights are presented in this post.

Redalyc decided to require the signing of DORA declaration as an expression of adherence to its principles, so that the journals remain indexed. For Redalyc, it is important to value a journal based on its content rather than basing its impact only on citations; it is crucial that research results are assessed by their own merits and not by where they are published. Redalyc highly values publications that address local challenges, particularly in the social sciences and humanities.

As an advocate for open access, David Cameron Neylon is answering to the questions: What are journals for? How well does a specific journal serve a specific community? David Cameron Neylon expresses his views on the role of the journal that should be to support the privileging of local interactions and content, and to build a community. In this sense, it is precisely those journals that claim to be “international” that are of the least value where it really matters.

Derek Krissoff, Director of West Virginia University Press, provides a positive health check-up of university presses. There are more of them than ever before, and sales are up.

As European science funders promote a radical new open-access (OA) publishing mandate (known as Plan S), the Trump administration is considering changes to a five-year-old directive governing the public release of research literature sponsored by federal agencies. In early October, a delegation led by Robert-Jan Smits, the European Commission’s special envoy on OA, met with officials of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and other federal agencies, as part of an effort to gain broad support for the new European policy.

In October 20-15, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) told the world that Christmas is Over. Its statement Moving Forwards on Open Access formed an important challenge to the 2016 Dutch Presidency of the EU, emphasising that things had to change in the academic publishing world. Plan S, a cooperation of Science Europe and Robert-Jan Smits (Open Access Envoy of the European Commission), is an adventurous attempt to take the debate further.

In an appeal signed by several European scientists protesting against Plan S, Lynn Kamerlin and her coauthors worry that Plan S will deprive them of quality journal venues and of international collaborative opportunities, while disadvantaging scientists whose research budgets preclude paying and playing in this OA league. They offer instead their own suggestions on how to implement Open Science.

Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer at Springer Nature, gives his views on Plan S. A range of publishing options, hybrid as well as highly selective subscription journals, are needed in order to meet the communication needs of researchers.

Toby Green, Head of Publishing at OECD Publishing (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), suggests that preprint repositories are a more intelligent approach to ensuring a fully-open playing field. If all articles were first published as preprints, and only those that succeeded in attracting the attention of journal editors were submitted for formal publishing, the average cost of publishing a paper would fall significantly. In clinging onto traditional journals to advance the careers of the few (authors), OA is delayed for the many (readers): rebuilding the reputation economy to accept preprints could be the catalyst to deliver OA, solve the serials crisis and drive out predatory journals.

 Open Access at MIT and Beyond: A White Paper of the MIT Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access to MIT’s Research examines efforts to make research and scholarship openly and freely available. It provides an overview of the open access landscape at MIT, in the U.S.A., and in Europe to help inform discussions at the Institute over the next year.

 

The SciELO 20-years Conference was held in September 2018 in Brazil. It constitutes an important landmark in SciELO’s evolution. The conference addressed the main political, methodological and technological issues in scholarly communication, and the trends and innovations that are shaping the future of the universal openness of scholarly publishing. A major focus was made on the SciELO network, and why it is indispensable. The presentations were added to the programme. The updated priorities and advances to open science are also refered to.

Danny Kingsley, Deputy Director at Cambridge University Library, provides an overview of OASPA conference that took place in mid-September 2018.

Open Access in the European Research Area through Scholarly Communication (OPERAS) is a consortium of 36 partners from all over Europe, that is working to build a future European infrastructure. Their initial study, OPERAS‐D, revealed a variety of models among the partners influenced by national cultures. The partners’ fragmented activities also reflect the ‘bibliodiversity’ in European societies. To address this challenge, a cooperative model is to be found to enable European actors to share expertise, resources, and costs of development.

DOAJ published its strategy and objectives for 2018-2020. Most of the work undertaken during that period will be derived from 3 key focus areas: funding and sustainability, stability and scalability, education & outreach.

This paper examines Open Access (OA) self archiving policies of different Open Access Repositories (OARs) affiliated to COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories) as partner institutes. After presenting the methodology for analysing policy documents, key findings have been identified and highlighted. OARs are in a critical situation when policy matters are concerned. Aligning repository networks and mandates is likely to be crucial in determining future repository development. A best practice benchmark has been suggested for popularizing and strengthening OARs as national research systems.

Hybrid journals are playing an important role in the OA process. However, visibility and discoverability of OA content in hybrid journals can be problematic. The solution proposed by the JEMO Project is to include CC license information in journal’s APIs and TOC RSS feeds .

Topic: The Redesigned RDA Toolkit: What You Need to Know to Get Ready.

The programme is online: http://www.rda-rsc.org/sites/all/files/RSC-A-4-rev.pdf

Executive Sessions are closed to observers.
Observers must register ahead with the RSC Secretary.

This event immediately precedes the annual meeting of the RSC, which will be held at the McGill Library.

The National Library of France (BnF)

Topic: Take the train for the Bibliographic Transition: which strategy?

The programme is online. Registration is free. Sessions are in French.

The International Society of Managing & Technical Editors (ISMTE) is organising the 2018 European Conference around the following topics: current trends in pre-prints, open access developments in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, quality assurance in journal editorial processes, blockchain for publishers.

The programme is online.

STM Week returns for 2018 with a new three-day format around these topics: processes and standards, innovative products, diversity and inclusion in publishing.

RLUK is welcoming submissions to the call for papers.
Reshaping scholarship reflects RLUK’s commitment to achieve transformations in research, innovation in collections, and cultural change in UK institutions.

Deadline: Friday 2 November 2018.

Organised by SPARC, this global event is now entering its tenth year.

Topic: Designing equitable foundations for open knowledge

Check the events calendar for updates.