Topic: Scholarly communication
Blog Post
April 21, 2020
Research Library Digitization Has Found Its Moment
Long-term Investments Pay Off and Provide Lessons for the Future
Academic libraries have been on the leading edge of universities’ digital transformation for two decades. As a result, they were prepared for this moment of crisis. The broader lesson here, not just for libraries but for the entire higher education sector, is to continue investing “just in case” in enabling capacities—rather than, in this time of looming cutbacks, budgeting narrowly for today’s immediate needs only. Recent weeks have seen the collapse of…
Blog Post
April 14, 2020
Technologies at Hand
On Researcher Practices During a Pandemic
On March 25 I had the privilege of giving the introductory talk to NISO’s virtual conference on Research Behaviors and the Impact of Technology. The relationship between research behaviors and technology is a topic I have a birdseye view on through my work at Ithaka S+R, where I oversee a program examining scholars’ research practices discipline-by-discipline and we conduct a US-wide faculty survey triennially. The event was always already virtual and I found myself preparing amidst the…
Blog Post
April 6, 2020
Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic
Archiving the Present for Future Research
As we go through the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, we are inundated by articles, images, video, statistics, and graphs through our handhelds and desktops coming from a variety of channels–including social media, news outlets, journals, and preprints. The sources of information expand from governmental agencies to research institutions, from policy makers to advocacy groups. And now archivists and others are asking how we can archive these rich and diverse sources of information–not only for future generations but also for…
Blog Post
April 2, 2020
The Latest US Library Survey
Since 2010, Ithaka S+R has fielded its triennial survey of academic library directors to track evolving strategies and priorities across the sector. Today we release findings from the 2019 survey cycle, which was fielded from October to December 2019. Much has obviously changed in the world since then. Most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered the plans of not only academic libraries but higher education as a whole. As we face an uncertain future,…
Research Report
April 2, 2020
Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2019
Every three years Ithaka S+R conducts our Library Survey to track the changing strategic directions and priorities of the deans and directors of academic libraries. The data are gathered during a relatively brief window of approximately four weeks. In the case of this most recent survey cycle, that moment in time was the fall of 2019, well before any of us had heard of COVID-19.
Past Event
March 25, 2020
Researcher Behaviors and the Impact of Technology
Danielle Cooper Speaks at Virtual NISO Conference
On Wednesday, March 25, Danielle Cooper is presenting at NISO’s virtual conference on Researcher Behaviors and the Impact of Technology. Her talk, “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication: Accessible, Ubiquitous Technologies & Their Affordances for Research,” is from 12:15-12:45. For more information on the conference, please see NISO’s website. About the presentation When we think of what technologies have the potential to drive research forward our minds often alight to exciting new developments that…
Blog Post
March 4, 2020
Project Announcement: Cancelling the Big Deal
As Big Deal spending has come to occupy a greater and greater share of materials budgets, libraries are increasingly questioning the status quo of their Big Deal subscriptions. Recent years have seen a number of prominent cancellations, precipitated by questions about the value of the subscription materials. In 2020 we expect this trend to continue with libraries becoming increasingly assertive in their negotiating stance with publishers. This may yield some interesting compromise agreements,…
Blog Post
February 18, 2020
Progress in Biomedical Data Sharing
Headlines from the Recent NIH Workshop
The biomedical sciences have been a key focus area for efforts to promote research data sharing. Effective data management and sharing policies have the potential to improve research efficiency and accuracy, with real implications for human health. Last week, I attended a workshop hosted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on “Establishing a FAIR Biomedical Data Ecosystem: The Role of Generalist and Institutional Repositories to Enhance Data Discovery and Reuse.” NIH has been making significant…
Past Event
April 21, 2020
Roger Schonfeld at the International Coalition of Library Consortia
On April 21-22, Roger Schonfeld is presenting twice at the 2020 North American ICOLC Meeting in Columbia, South Carolina. On Tuesday, April 21, at 2:00 pm, Roger and Gwen Evans (OhioLINK) will speak on “It’s Not What Libraries Hold; It’s Who Libraries Serve Seeking a User-Centered Future for Academic Libraries.” On Wednesday, April 22, at 10:30 am, Roger is presenting on “Market Consolidation in Information Industry. ” More information is available on the ICOLC event site.
Past Event
March 19, 2020
National Academy of Sciences Journal Summit
Roger Schonfeld Moderates Panel of Deans of Research
This event has been postponed. We will update the event when we have additional information. On Thursday, March 19, at 2:15 pm, Roger Schonfeld is moderating a panel of deans of research at the National Academy of Sciences Journal Summit in Washington DC. The panel includes John Bixby (University of Miami), Susan Martinis (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Padma Raghavan (Vanderbilt University), and Keith Yamamoto (University of California San Francisco). The working agenda for the summit is available here.
Blog Post
February 3, 2020
The Primacy of Print Is Past
OhioLINK recently shared its vision for the library system of the future in a white paper. That vision, developed by a group of library deans and directors whose work was facilitated by Ithaka S+R, involves two key elements that have garnered some attention for what they say about the future of the library and the work performed within it. The first element is centering the library system—just like the library itself—around the user. And the second involves enabling the…
Blog Post
January 30, 2020
Preprints in Biology and Medicine
ASAPbio Workshop and Roadmap
Preprint services have been getting a lot of attention recently. Last year saw a comprehensive review of the landscape by the Knowledge Exchange, two discussions at the Charleston Conference (why preprints, Hyde Park Debate), and a two-day preprints event organized by NISO. On January 20-21, the new decade opened with a preprints roadmap workshop…
Blog Post
January 22, 2020
Copyright Education for Cultural Institutions
A 21st Century Approach for Libraries, Archives, and Museums
Today, Ithaka S+R is co-publishing, with Columbia University Libraries, a summary report about a roundtable held over the summer about Copyright Education in Libraries, Archives, and Museums. This is the latest step by a group of copyright experts and educators towards strengthening and sustaining copyright education for memory institutions and the research and educational missions they serve. Ithaka S+R’s, in close partnership with Columbia’s Rina Elster Pantalony and Lyrasis’s Tom Clareson,…
Issue Brief
January 22, 2020
Copyright Education in Libraries, Archives, and Museums: A 21st Century Approach
A Summary Report of Roundtable Discussions at Columbia University
On July 11-12th, 2019, with the generous financial support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and together with project partners Ithaka S+R and LYRASIS, Copyright Advisory Services at Columbia University Libraries held roundtable discussions as a second phase of research to determine how to structure and implement a professional development copyright education initiative for cultural heritage professionals working in libraries, archives, and museums. In particular, the purpose of these discussions was to examine whether there might be a way to…
Past Event
January 20, 2020
Oya Y. Rieger at the ASAPbio January 2020 Workshop
A Roadmap for Transparent and FAIR Preprints in Biology and Medicine
Oya Y. Rieger is one of the organizers of the upcoming ASAPbio January 2020 Workshop: A Roadmap for Transparent and FAIR Preprints in Biology and Medicine. The workshop will take place on January 20-21, in Hinxton, UK. Oya will also lead a session on citations, archiving, sustainability, and adoption on Tuesday January 21 at 11:45 am. To view the complete agenda, please see the workshop website. About the workshop reprints offer an opportunity to advance science through…
Blog Post
January 14, 2020
What Is Humanities Research Now?
Roundtable at the Modern Language Association 2020 Convention
Today, the discipline of modern languages and literatures faces both challenges and opportunities. Although humanities research and the liberal arts education model have come under public scrutiny, new methodologies and ways of disseminating information, including “public humanities” and “digital humanities,” hold out promise for reinvigoration of the discipline. On Friday, January 9, I had the pleasure of joining six participants from Ithaka S+R’s Supporting Research in Languages and Literature project, sponsored by the…
Past Event
January 10, 2020
Rebecca Springer at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention
On Friday, January 10, Rebecca Springer is taking part in a panel discussion on “What Is Humanities Research Now?” at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Seattle. She’ll be joined on the panel by Amanda L. Watson (New York U), John Tofanelli (Columbia U), Matthew Roberts (U of Illinois, Urbana), Ashley Champagne (Brown U), Darby Fanning (U of Utah), and Julie Frick Wade (MLA). The Modern Language Association’s Mary Onorato is moderating. For more information, please see the…
Blog Post
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business: New Report Explores the Needs of Business Faculty
Today Ithaka S+R is releasing the first report in a new program focused on supporting teaching practices. In it, we explore the needs of faculty teaching undergraduate business. We started with business as it is consistently one of the most popular majors in the United States, and understanding the needs of faculty in this field can have a large impact on undergraduate teaching and learning. Informed by interviews with 158 business…
Research Report
December 12, 2019
Teaching Business
Looking at the Support Needs of Instructors
Business represents the most popular undergraduate major at American colleges and universities and was seen as the ideal discipline to begin with, especially as the potential number of students to be positively impacted is correspondingly large. The goal of this report, therefore, is to provide actionable findings for organizations, institutions, and professionals who support the teaching practices of business educators. This report describes the teaching practices of business instructors, both those that are common to all college level instruction as…
Blog Post
December 10, 2019
Perspectives on the 2018 US Faculty Survey in Against the Grain
Every three years when we release findings from our national faculty surveys, we receive a plethora of reactions and responses to the results. There was no exception when we released the 2018 results in conjunction with the ACRL conference in April 2019. While these high-level quantitative results offer strong evidence toward understanding faculty practices and perspectives, particularly for tracking change over time, many who work in academic libraries, learned societies, and…