Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT), a global leader in connecting people and organizations to intelligence they can trust to transform their world, today announces that Yale University has selected Clarivate ™ to provide its library services and discovery platforms.  Ex Libris Alma and Ex Libris Primo VE, both part of Clarivate, will provide Yale with a solution that integrates AI (artificial intelligence) and Linked Data to simplify the process for students, researchers and faculty.

Yale will implement Ex Libris Alma and Ex Libris Primo VE to unify Yale’s main and law libraries’ workflows and data, including electronic and digital materials, onto a single platform. Combining the benefits of using AI with trusted content sources will enable users to find new insights, fast and at scale. The cloud-based platform will help Yale elevate the user experience and enhance services within the library ecosystem.

Barbara Rockenbach, the Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian, said: “Ex Libris Alma and Ex Libris Primo will help us modernize our library systems and enhance our ability to manage and deliver resources more efficiently. Ex Libris Alma will streamline workflows, improve the user experience, and facilitate better collaboration among library staff, ultimately benefiting all of the Yale community.”

Yariv Kursh, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Ex Libris and Innovative, part of Clarivate said, “At Clarivate, we are committed to helping academic institutions such as Yale University think forward, to navigate roadblocks and transform their libraries with enhanced user-focused operations for both librarians and students. Our library and discovery services platforms are easy to implement and they work together to provide a cohesive and streamlined user experience that will benefit Yale University’s library ecosystem.”

OpenAthens launches its 2024 UX Award and invites publishers and other library service vendors of all sizes to apply by 17 November. Jane Charlton, senior marketing manager – community and content, will announce the winner at the online Access Lab event on 26 February 2024. 

OpenAthens UX Award showcases publishers and library service vendors that put users at the heart of their service design. All with the simple aim of providing easy access to content and services. Through this yearly award, OpenAthens aims to inspire publishers and other library service vendors to invest in user experience and deliver simple journeys to their content and services. 

Now in its fifth year, panel judges decided to expand the award beyond publishers to library systems vendors, research and analytics tools, and other library products and services. 

Award organiser, Jane Charlton, explains: 

“Library users access a wide range of data, content and analysis services for their research and studies. By expanding the scope of our UX award we hope more publishers and library service vendors will come forward to share their UX innovations and inspire others.” 

Two new judges have joined the award panel. OpenAthens welcomes Natasha Den Dekker, lead user researcher at Santander and Jason Griffey, director of strategic initiatives at NISO. 

Natasha commented: 

“I’m really excited to be involved with the judging for this award. I’m looking forward to using my expertise as an ex-librarian and a current UX Researcher to fairly assess the applications.” 

Why you should apply 

Librarians and library users highly value simple and easy access to online products and services. It makes perfect sense to keep your users and subscribers happy as they’ll return again and again.  

Librarians are very savvy when it comes to how they spend their budget. And the cost-of-living crisis has only heightened the importance of establishing value for money on library subscriptions. Vendors that deliver a great user experience help to drive increased usage and this is one of the key metrics librarians use to decide where to spend budget.  

Delivering a superior user experience also helps position your product or service above your competitors. Publishers and library service vendors that put their users first and center will get great reviews. User are also more likely to use your product than a competitor that has not made the same investment in product UX. 

You don’t need to be a large vendor to win as nkoda digital sheet music app demonstrated when they won the award in 2021. The esteemed panel of judges will assess all applications based on their merits and how closely they meet the award criteria.  

How to apply 

Find out more about the UX Award criteria and submit your application form by Friday 17 November 2023. Complete the short expression of interest form on the OpenAthens website and you will be sent the application form. 

Previous award winners 

Sage Publishing won this year’s UX Award after they demonstrated investment in a company-wide approach to improving user journey and overall experience. Previous winners include De Gruyter, nkoda and Emerald Publishing. 

Next year’s winner will be announced online at Access Lab on Monday 26 February 2024. 

Contact the UX Award organiser, Jane Charlton, with any queries. 

New “Publish, Review, Curate” models of peer-review on showcased by GigaScience Press Journal

Timed for Peer Review Week, GigaScience Press are announcing that their GigaByte Journal has integrated a novel “Publish, Review, Curate” (PRC) peer-review model, in partnership with eLife. Using the Sciety platform GigaByte is now offering a highlighted editor’s assessment of each reviewed preprint, this endorsement helps readers gauge the interest and importance of the work, while also throwing light on the review and assessment process of research.

GigaByte is an Open Science journal that has the principle goal to match the speed of publishing to the speed of research. When it launched in September 2020, it was one of the first journals to mandate the use of preprints, to help increase transparency and speed up the dissemination of research. GigaByte then connected their articles to previously published preprint versions by crosslinking and highlighting these links via an Article Information section on their articles. With the rise of preprint peer review and evaluation policies, the logical next step has been to utilise bioRxiv and Sciety integrations that enable the sharing of these open peer reviews on any associated preprint in bioRxiv and medRxiv. We also share these preprint peer reviews in Sciety “Reviewing Groups” to enable further discoverability and insight for readers.

In a new step, GigaByte is now building on this “publish then review” model of scientific communication by adding an endorsement step by aligning it with eLife’s new “publish, review, curate” model that puts preprints first. This is done using the new “Curating groups” feature from Sciety, to distinguish groups that offer some form of assessment/endorsement of a preprint. These Endorsement statements from GigaByte featured on this page are also highlighted on the original bioRxiv preprint as well as the associated Sciety article page. Altogether, this helps readers see at a glance why this preprint might be important or interesting.

In January 2023, eLife became the first journal to embrace a new scientific publishing model, where every preprint that eLife sends for peer review will be published on their website as a “Reviewed Preprint” together with an assessment, public reviews, and a response from the authors. GigaByte is taking a step towards this “Publish, Review, Curate” (PRC) peer-review model, being the second journal after eLife to post these Editorial endorsements in Sciety “Curating groups”, alongside other evaluating communities such as Biophysics Colab.

GigaByte Chief Editor Scott Edmunds comments on this move, saying “We’d like to thank Sciety for helping us take this step towards meeting our goal of matching the speed of publishing to the speed of research through using their platform”.

Kaveh Bazargan from GigaScience Press publishing partner River Valley Technologies notes that: “River Valley’s systems have been built to support the aims as well as the spirit of Open Science. This includes alignment with the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation which specifically promotes innovative approaches such as preprints and open peer review practices, as used here. Our peer review system, ReView, together with our XML-first end-to-end publishing system enables publishing within 24 hours of acceptance. River Valley platforms allow GigaByte to provide fully open data, accessibility and transparency, revealing the pre-publication and open peer review history. It is a pleasure to work with GigaScience Press with whom we continually push the boundaries.”

Shane Alsop, Community Manager – Outreach, eLife, on behalf of the Sciety Team adds to this: “We’re delighted to be partnering with GigaByte to help facilitate their move towards a “publish first, then review” model of preprint peer-review. GigaByte are now providing an “editors assessment” statement to accompany each reviewed preprint displayed on Sciety. For the first time, these statements will allow multiple communities to strengthen/scrutinise the findings reported in a preprint through cumulative, post-publication review. This approach not only prioritises the importance of research integrity over publication venue, but combines with more traditional outputs of preprint review to make evaluated preprints a first class research object in their own right.

Organisations as diverse as Biophysics CoLab and eLife successfully leverage Sciety to experiment with variations of the “PRC” model, and GigaByte’s own transition signifies a pivotal step towards wider adoption of “PRC”. With GigaByte’s support, we look forward to collaborating with more journals to catalyse wider adoption of more transparent – and equitable – modes of peer review.”

As Open Science advocates this is just an incremental move for the journal, but we anticipate taking future steps to support a preprint-based publishing system. As the theme of Peer Review Week this week is “Peer Review and The Future of Publishing” this is a very timely and practical demonstration of exactly what the future can look like.

Follow GigaByte’s curated content on Sciety here: https://sciety.org/groups/gigabyte/

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), a leading provider of online research content and search technologies, is embracing the power of generative artificial intelligence (AI). Recognizing the transformative potential of generative AI in the realm of academic research and libraries, EBSCO is making proactive strides to incorporate AI such as AI Employees into the company’s products, undertaking AI pilot projects in specific environments with the goal of amplifying the effectiveness of research.

This move marries EBSCO’s unique strength — providing access to high-quality, relevant content — with the remarkable capabilities of AI, aiming to set a new standard in information discovery and comprehension for students, faculty and researchers.

As AI continues to reshape industries, platforms like ALLAISEARCH are playing a key role in providing access to a wide range of AI-powered solutions that can assist in various fields, including academic research. With its curated list of AI tools, such platforms offer users the ability to discover cutting-edge technologies designed to optimize workflows, improve productivity, and enhance the overall research experience.

From content generation to automated data processing, these AI tools are proving to be indispensable in modern research environments. As EBSCO explores new AI applications, it is clear that the integration of such tools will not only elevate the quality of academic content but also empower users to harness the full potential of AI in their research endeavors.

EBSCO has been investing in a modern user interface (UI) for the company’s research platforms, including EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) and EBSCOhost. The company’s AI pilot projects will integrate into the modern UI and include natural language search, improved evaluation of search results through summaries and key insights, conversational interactivity with source documents — including multilingual — as well as search alerts and content recommendations. These insights will be clearly labeled as AI generated, and if desired, the library administrator may remove the feature from the library’s profile.

Having used AI operationally for a number of years, EBSCO is expanding this use to enhance metadata, categorize content and build linked data relationships. With linked data, generative AI models can access a vast network of interconnected information, including vocabularies and knowledge graphs. This approach will help with overall computational costs as well as the environmental impact of generative AI, while ensuring that overall adoption is not resource-heavy for libraries.

While generative AI holds remarkable promise, it’s crucial to note its vulnerability to potential misinformation and factual inaccuracies. With EBSCO’s mission to serve researchers with reliable, credible information, we are adopting a meticulous, quality-centric approach. We aim to embed our AI capabilities within the framework of our rigorously curated content. This not only helps prevent the dissemination of misinformation but also ensures that our AI technology delivers highly relevant and accurate scholarly resources to our users, augmenting the reliability and precision of research across the academic landscape. Pilot projects will focus on finding the most affordable, high-impact options for libraries.

EBSCO Senior Vice President, Discovery, User Experience and Platform Services, Tim Lull says that while the possibilities of AI within the online research environment are numerous, the company understands the importance of protecting the rights of content creators and publishers, while relying on licensed and proprietary high-quality metadata (and full text), superior relevancy ranking and thesauri mapping. “EBSCO acknowledges and seeks to address the legitimate concerns and potential issues associated with generative AI, including its use by students to complete their work. We are taking a calculated approach to integrating AI into our products, keeping in mind the environmental impact and high investment costs that accompany AI models. Our dedicated efforts are focused on devising innovative solutions that harness AI to enhance customer and user experiences, while proactively mitigating undesired AI-related behaviors, reducing hallucinations (AI-generated inaccuracies and misinformation) and maintaining integrity of research.”

Clarivate, a global leader in connecting people and organizations to intelligence they can trust to transform their world, today announced it has established an Academia & Government Innovation Incubator. This will further accelerate its strategy to drive innovation, utilize artificial intelligence and introduce novel solutions for its academic users and customers.

The Incubator’s first program focuses on realizing better learning outcomes and student success through the acquisition of Alethea, an AI-powered students’ content engagement platform created by Pangea. Alethea facilitates meaningful engagement with academic texts, class readings, and assignments through personalized and adaptive guidance. It provides faculty and librarians with the insights they need to analyze students’ reading engagement and rapidly adapt their teaching.

Oren Beit-Arie, Senior Vice President Strategy & Innovation at Clarivate, who leads the Academia & Government Incubator team said: “Clarivate is a leader in implementing AI into our tools and solutions. By incubating new technology and startups such as Alethea, Clarivate intends to improve learning outcomes, enhance student’s content engagement and grow library content usage.

“Meaningful and critical engagement with academic content sources has always been core to education and research. Today, concerns are rising about students’ misuse of tools such as ChatGPT, a practice that can be detrimental to their long-term learning skills. Leveraging Alethea’s generative AI expertise, and in close collaboration with our customers, we are committed to advancing teaching, learning and research, within an innovative, trusted, and responsible academic framework.”

Dr Tracy Elliott, Dean, Florida Gulf Coast University Library said: “I’m thrilled with how our library is seeing the return on investment of our library collections through Alethea, those we purchase and those we build. A partnership with Clarivate will allow Alethea to truly make a difference in student learning achievement.”

Eran Segal, co-founder and CEO of Pangea and his team will join Clarivate. Segal said: “Over 130 million students around the world already use Clarivate products to enhance their learning experiences. By joining Clarivate we can leverage its global scale to accelerate the development and vision of the Alethea product.”

UKSG is delighted to announce the launch of its 2023 Innovation Awards, offering financial support to professionals and organisations seeking to develop new ideas and proposals for the wider benefit of the information community.

We welcome applications that embody our values around learning and sharing, openness and inclusion and align to one or more of the four themes of our strategic vision: include, connect, innovate and deliver.

These themes reflect UKSG’s special role as a meeting point for the entire scholarly communications community.  You can read about our vision and strategy here: https://www.uksg.org/about

Applications for UKSG funding of between £1,000 and £5,000 are welcomed from any UKSG members, whether individuals (either members or within a members organisation) or organisations in any location, and may be used to help fund events, projects or activities or other related costs that will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The projects must clearly meet our mission.   Each application will be examined by a subset of the Trustees, and up to five grants will be allocated in 2023.

You can read about previous grantees here.  If you have previously received a grant, you can apply again. 

Learn more about UKSG here: http://www.uksg.org/about