ISSN Newsletter n° 127 - March 2024

ISSN news

ISSN International Centre at BiblioCon, 04-07 June 2024, Hamburg, Germany

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of ISSN International Centre, is invited to participate in a panel discussion together with Ana Maria Cetto, Universidad Autónoma de México, Chair of the UNESCO Open Science Commission, and Sibylle Hermann, Information and Communication Centre of the University of Stuttgart. This session International perspectives on openness in science and information infrastructures will be held during the BiblioCon 2024 Conference that will take place from 4 to 7 June 2024 in Hamburg, Germany.
Based on the position paper Openness in Libraries, this roundtable will discuss experiences and developments from other regions of the world.

Look at the programme of the conference.

National Library of Spain (BNE) first library in Spain to join the Keepers Registry

To give libraries worldwide an overview of titles for which digital preservation is already being guaranteed or not, and who is responsible for it, the ISSN International Centre keeps a list, the Keepers Registry, integrated into the ISSN-Portal.

The Keepers Registry is a service that provides a public, global preservation registry of significant digital content of digital-born or digitised journals preserved by archival organisations. The Keepers Registry also provides the statistical basis for alerting libraries, publishers and other interested parties about digital material at risk of being lost. The BNE will regularly provide the ISSN International Centre with metadata about its contents in the Digital Periodical and Newspaper Library (Hemeroteca Digital) to be included in Keepers Registry. 

The Keepers Registry cooperates with the world’s most important academic libraries which have certified programmes for digital preservation. Among these are the Library of Congress, the National Library of France and the National Library of the Netherlands. 

Signalement des revues juridiques

                   

 

La Bibliothèque interuniversitaire Cujas a intégré les titres du corpus du plan de conservation partagée des périodiques PCP Droit dans Mir@bel. Dans ce cadre, 707 revues et 627 signalements d’accès en ligne ont été ajoutés en février 2024 à Mir@bel. Sur 707 revues, 48 ont fait l’objet d’une demande d’attribution d’ISSN, majoritairement auprès du centre ISSN France. Ce travail a permis d’améliorer la couverture de Mir@bel dans le domaine du droit, de vérifier les accès aux ressources déjà existants, et notamment de préciser les filiations entre les titres du corpus.

Digital preservation

Fair Use in Action at the Internet Archive

Fair use is essential to the functioning of libraries, and underlies many of the ordinary library practices. As the Internet Archive celebrated Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week (26 February-1st March, 2024), this blog post describes a few of the ways the fair use doctrine has helped the Internet Archive build their library. The Fair Use Fundamentals infographic explains what fair use is, why it is important, who uses fair use, and provides some examples of fair use.

Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet

An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge.

More than one-quarter of scholarly articles are not being properly archived and preserved, a study of more than seven million digital publications suggests. The findings, published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication on 24 January 2024, indicate that systems to preserve papers online have failed to keep pace with the growth of research output. Eve’s study suggests some measures that could improve digital preservation.

Las sucesivas etapas de la política española a través de cien nuevos títulos digitalizados de prensa histórica en la Hemeroteca Digital de la BNE (Biblioteca Nacional de España)

Se amplía la colección de periódicos digitalizados con una serie de títulos de vida breve que ilustran, desde 1811, las sucesivas etapas de la historia política de España. Con la incorporación de estas publicaciones procedentes del actual proyecto de digitalización de prensa histórica, además de otros títulos de prensa moderna digitalizados con fines de conservación, la Hemeroteca Digital supera ya los 3.400 títulos y los 96 millones de páginas, de los cuales 2.660 títulos, con 7.806.690 páginas, corresponden al fondo histórico. Ya están actualizados y disponibles en la Hemeroteca Digital de la BNE 101 nuevos títulos de prensa histórica.

Libraries

Introducing Ex Libris AI Metadata Generator

This article is the fourth in a series of blog posts on AI developments at Ex Libris.

Ex Libris, part of Clarivate, has developed an AI-driven metadata generator that has already been able to enrich Alma Community Zone Bibliographic records for books. The current enrichment is focused on generating metadata for three specific MARC fields: Language (041 and 008), Summary (520), LC subject headings (650). As of February 2024, Ex Libris’ AI metadata generator is live with 200 ebook titles from ProQuest EBook Central. For more details and updates on the evolving status of the project, read the article.

Open Science

Open science is making headway but needs further support, UNESCO says

UNESCO report shows that since 2021, eleven more countries have adopted open science policies. But there are to persistent problems with rising costs and uneven geographical spread. Today, nearly 85% of open access repositories are in western Europe and North America. More needs to be done to ensure open access is the norm everywhere, with UNESCO encouraging its member states to take action in seven areas. Moreover, in February 2023, EU science ministers adopted a joint call to make immediate and unrestricted open access publishing “the default mode in publishing, with no fees for authors.”

Le Baromètre français de la Science Ouverte 2023

Selon l’édition 2023 du Baromètre de la Science Ouverte (BSO), 65 % des 160 000 publications scientifiques françaises parues en 2022 sont en accès ouvert en décembre 2023, soit un taux stable par rapport à l’année précédente.

Découvrez le Baromètre de la Science Ouverte.

Articles, software, data: An Open Science ethological study

In the context of the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation adopted in November 2021, this comparative study is based on a recent work on the evolving concepts of research software, research data in the context of Open Science. The goal is to better visualize and describe the relationships between the stakeholders of this changing landscape. The study concludes on the need for new concepts to analyze the context as well as to contribute to ongoing research-on-research. This is also necessary to improve the implementation of Open Science practices, in order to foster better ways towards a sound, inclusive and fairer Open Science landscape.

Open Access

Supporting diamond open access journals

As Article Processing Charges (APC) has been a growing concern in academia and policy making, the need for a model where both authors and readers do not pay – the so-called Diamond, or non-APC model – is regularly called for. However, this call is often combined with questions about its sustainability, particularly in financial terms. To answer this concern, this article explores the practical conditions to implement a direct funding mechanism to Diamond open access journals, that is recurrent money provided by funders to support the publication process.

OASPA: Looking ahead to 2024 and beyond

If 2023 was a year of consolidation for OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association)– thinking about connections with OASPA members and stakeholders, reviewing areas of focus and streamlining  internal structures and operations – 2024 is planned to be a year of action and intention. Claire Redhead, Executive Director, provides an overview of OASPA’s vision, priorities and activities planned for the coming year.

Plan S: Annual Review 2023

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access (OA) publishing, which requires that from 2021 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant OA journals or platforms. This annual review provides an overview of Plan S activities in 2023, along with the latest advancements in their policies. The review sheds light also on specific actions taken by cOAlition S funders in the realm of scholarly communication.

View the review as a pdf version.

Publishing Industry

Global Scientific & Technical Publishing 2023-2027

Simba Information’s Global Scientific & Technical Publishing 2023-2027 report details the trends impacting the market, profiles leading scientific and technical publishers, identifies mergers and acquisitions that have occurred in the market from 2023-2024, and provides a global forecast of the sector. Journals remain the dominant product form, with a 42% share of revenue, but with a slow pace of growth, just under 2%. The report states that product development involving AI was a significant strategy in the market over 2022 and 2023 with the online content segment fueling growth for publishers.

Scholarly Communication

DOAJ and Crossref renew their partnership to support the least-resourced journals

             

Both organisations agreed to work together in 2021 in a variety of ways, but primarily to encourage the dissemination and use of scholarly research using online technologies, regional and international networks, partners and communities, helping to build local institutional capacity and sustainability around the world. The new agreement, signed in early March 2024, will slightly shift focus to build upon existing collaborations, particularly around metadata. One of the primary sections of the MOU is enhancing support for the least-resourced journals.

Study on scientific publishing in Europe

This study provides a deeper understanding of the issues around practices and costs of scholarly publications, offers an analysis of the situation, and proposes advice for policy actions. The report documents the pervasive lack of information on contracts and deals with publishers and recommends specific actions, mostly required on the side of the member states, institutions and libraries to enhance transparency regarding the costs of publishing. These include, among others, publishing the contracts and working on making available structured information about them.

How to avoid being duped by predatory journals

Some journals capitalise on researchers’ and clinicians’ need for publications by luring them in with flattering emails, only to subject them to poor editing practices and threatening invoices. Instead of relying on (white) lists of journals, Dominic Mitchell / DOAJ recommends researchers learn what to look for when submitting a paper. Precisely, Think. Check. Submit is an initiative set up by several international scholarly publishing associations to make researchers more aware of what to look for when submitting to a journal.

Standards

Project PID Network Germany

The research project PID Network Germany has been actively involved for a year in establishing a network of existing and currently forming actors in science and culture, which covers the application, implementation, standardization and international connectivity of PID systems. The two-year workshop series started as part of the project. In this series, actors and stakeholders in the PID landscape are specifically addressed in order to identify needs and thus jointly develop recommendations for a national PID roadmap.

A look back at BIBFRAME January 2024 Update Forum

Initiated by the Library of Congress, BIBFRAME provides a foundation for the future of bibliographic description, both on the web, and in the broader networked world that is grounded in Linked Data techniques. This Update Forum held on 22 January 2024 featured BIBFRAME activities of two institutions: ExLibris and OCLC. ExLibris described their plans for using BIBFRAME linked data as defined by the Library of Congress with their system, Alma. And OCLC followed with developments underway for supporting libraries that will be using BIBFRAME.

The video recording and the slides are online.

Events

OPERAS Conference 2024, Zadar, Croatia, 24-26 April 2024

OPERAS is the research infrastructure supporting OPen scholarly communication in the European Research Area for social Sciences and humanities. The European Council called in May 2023 for transparent, equitable, and open access to scholarly publications. OPERAS welcomes this Council conclusion that fits with their aim to make open science a reality for Social Sciences and Humanities. This is why the conference will focus on Opening collaboration for community-driven scholarly communication. The conference will address issues involving equitable publishing, multilingualism, bibliodiversity, and other related topics.

There is no registration fee.

2024 Library Publishing Forum, Minneapolis, MN, USA, 15-16 May 2024

The Forum includes representatives from a broad, international spectrum of academic library backgrounds, as well as groups that collaborate with libraries to publish scholarly works, including publishing vendors, university presses, and scholars. The Forum is sponsored by the Library Publishing Coalition.

The 2024 Library Publishing Forum will be an in-person event, scheduled to take place on 15–16 May 2024, at the McNamara Alumni Center at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Please register and look at the programme.

2024 ICSTI annual conference and General Assembly

The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) is happy to announce its 40th Anniversary Annual Conference and General Assembly. This will be an in person meeting collocated with PiDFest (June 11th-13th). ICSTI will hold its General Assembly the afternoon of June 13th, followed by a full day of open workshops on June 14th.

Proposals for workshop speakers are currently accepted until 22 March 2024. This year’s workshops will explore the following topics: Interoperability methods that ensure efficient machine-readability, and Responsible Research and Innovation. 

NASIG 2024, 3-7 June, Spokane, WA, USA

NASIG 39th Annual Conference will take place in early June 2024 as an entirely in-person event.

You can already register for the NASIG 2024 conference whose schedule includes in-depth workshops.

The virtual NASIG Autumn conference will continue in fall 2024.

Regina Romano Reynolds, Library of Congress, Director of the US ISSN Centre, will make a presentation on 6 June 2024 about BIBFRAME at the Doorstep.

 

 

 

OASPA webinar: The impact of Plan S: a discussion on findings so far, 9 April 2024, 4:00 pm Central European Time

Last October the cOAlition S group of funders commissioned a study by scidecode science consulting to assess the impact of Plan S. The study investigates various aspects of where this initiative may have had an influence on the global scholarly communications landscape. Five months on from the kick-off meeting for this project, this session will offer an opportunity for the early results of this work to be presented and discussed with the OASPA network.

Please register and join live for this free webinar