The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada has developed a tool they hope will better measure the quality and impact of research coming out of the global south. They want to ensure that researchers who are working on projects that positively impact their region are evaluated on criteria that make… read more
Publishing
Editors4BetterResearch initiative
Researchers Chris Chambers, Corin Logan, and Brad Wyble have started an initiative called Editors4BetterResearch. They hope to create a database of journal editors who support reproducibility and open science. Right now they are soliciting feedback on their proposal and collecting names of editors who would like to be listed in… read more
UC takes a stand on journal negotiations
The University of California System has made an announcement that they will be prioritizing an open access future in their journal negotiations with publishers. Their goal is to responsibly transition funding for journal subscriptions towards funding for open access. You can find the full announcement which includes their guiding priorities here.
June brown bag discussion
For our June discussion we’ll be talking about information security, privacy, social media, and algorithmic culture and how all those things are impacting our society. If you’d like to read up on any of this before the June event, here are some helpful resources. Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us… read more
Petition against new machine learning journal
A large group of scholars has signed a petition protesting the creation of a new subscription journal from Nature, Nature Machine Intelligence. https://openaccess.engineering.oregonstate.edu/home They argue that most journals in the field are open access with no charges for readers or authors. The people signing the petition have said they will… read more
Florida State cancels big deal
Florida State University has announced it’s canceling it’s “big deal” journals package with Elsevier. The dean of university libraries, Julia Zimmerman, released a statement about the cancellation. Instead of the big deal, FSU will subscribe to a sub-set of journals that are most-needed. The Faculty Senate voted unanimously to approve… read more
French Universities say goodbye to Springer
It looks like a national consortium of French academic institutions, Couperin.org, has decided to cancel their subscriptions to Springer Journals. They had been in negotiations with Springer for over a year, but were unable to come to an agreement on price. Couperin.org was advocating for a subscription price reduction due… read more
Sci-Hub and LibGen in Perspective
Please join us on Wednesday, Feb. 21st at noon in PCL Learning Lab 4 to hear UT Austin iSchool graduate student, Stephen McLaughlin, speak about Sci-Hub and LibGen. There will be plenty of time for discussion, so bring your questions. Sci-Hub and LibGen in Perspective Over the past decade, websites… read more
Digital scholarship office hours spring semester
We are offering digital scholarship office hours again this semester. Gilbert Borrego, Allyssa Guzman, Jessica Trelogan and Colleen Lyon will be available to answer any questions you may have about digital scholarship, Texas Data Repository, Texas ScholarWorks, research data services, or scholarly publishing. Here are the dates –all sessions are… read more
Evaluating Journal Quality
With the proliferation of new journals enabled by online publishing, it can be difficult for researchers to know if a particular journal is worth publishing in. Here are two resources that could help librarians and researchers when looking into an unfamiliar journal. The first is the Quality Open Access Market… read more
