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The State of Open Data Report 2022: Researchers need more support to assist with open data mandates

Researchers worldwide will need further assistance to help comply with an increasing number of open data mandates, according to the authors of a new report.

The State of Open Data Report 2022 – the latest in an annual collaborative series from Digital Science, Figshare and Springer Nature – is released today (9:00am BST Thursday 13 October).

Based on a global survey, the report is now in its seventh year and provides insights into researchers’ attitudes towards and experiences of open data. With more than 5,400 respondents, the 2022 survey is the largest since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

This year’s report also includes guest articles from open data experts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), publishers and universities.

Founder and CEO of Figshare Mark Hahnel says: “This year’s State of Open Data Report comes at a unique point in time when we’re seeing a growing number of open data mandates from funding organizations and policymakers, most notably the NIH and OSTP in the United States, but also recently from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in Australia, and in Europe and the UK.

“What is clear from the findings of our report is that while most researchers embrace the concepts of open data and open science, they also have some reasonable misgivings about how open data policies and practices impact on them. In an environment where open data mandates are increasing, funding organizations would benefit from working even more closely with researchers and providing them with additional support to help smooth the transition to a fully open data future.

“We all have a role to play in driving a better future for open data and accessible research, and one way we can do that through this report is by listening to the voices of researchers, funders, institutions, and publishers,” he says.

Primary findings from this year’s report indicated that:

  • There is a growing trend in researchers being in favour of data being made openly available as common practice (4 out of every five researchers were in agreement with this), supported somewhat by now over 70% of respondents being required to follow a policy on data sharing.
  • However, researchers still cite a key need in helping them to share their data as being more training or information on policies for access, sharing and reuse (55%) as well as long-term storage and data management strategies (52%).
  • Credit and recognition were once again a key theme for researchers in sharing their data. Of those who had previously shared data, 66% had received some form of recognition for their efforts – most commonly via full citation in another article (41%) followed by co-authorship on a paper that had used the data.
  • Researchers are more inclined to share their research data where it can have an impact on citations (67%) and the visibility of their research (61%), rather than being motivated by public benefit or journal/publisher mandate (both 56%).

Graham Smith, Open Data Program Manager, Springer Nature, says: “For the past seven years these surveys have helped paint a picture of researcher perspectives on open data. The report shows us not only the progress made but the steps that still need to be taken on the journey towards an open data future in support of the research community. Whether it’s the broad support of researchers for making research data openly available as common practice or the changing attitudes to open data mandates, we must learn from and deliver concrete steps forward to address what the community is telling us.

“Springer Nature is firmly committed to this and we continue to work closely with our partners, such as Figshare and Digital Science, to create better understanding around data sharing.”

Daniel Hook, CEO of Digital Science, says: “Digital Science is committed to making open, collaborative and inclusive research possible, as we believe this environment will lead to the greatest benefit for society. Now in its seventh year, while the articles in The State of Open Data Report represent a unique set of snapshots marking the evolution of attitudes about Open Data in our community, the data behind the survey constitutes a valuable resource to track researcher sentiment regarding open data and their experiences of data sharing. I believe that these data represent an amazing opportunity to understand the challenges and needs of our community so that we can collectively build better infrastructure to support research.”

The MIT Press joins the OpenAthens Federation

Libraries now benefit from a more secure and seamless user experience when accessing MIT Press journals.

The MIT Press is pleased to announce that it has joined the OpenAthens Federation. A secure cloud-based service that provides a fast and reliable connection to digital content, OpenAthens will help extend the reach of MIT Press content to more library customers globally.

OpenAthens provides federated single sign-on to library resources from any country or sector. Many libraries are increasingly turning to federated single sign-on because it is secure, stable, and scalable, especially compared to IP recognition. Thanks to the new partnership, 200 mutual MIT Press and OpenAthens library customers now benefit from a more secure and seamless user experience when accessing MIT Press journals.

As more libraries adopt OpenAthens single sign-on it will reduce time on setup for access to publisher resources. This is a massive benefit to both libraries and publishers in terms of scaling up secure access to services.

“We’ve seen an increase in customer demand for federated single sign-on access to library resources,” said Nick Lindsay, Director of Journals and Open Access at the MIT Press. “We are pleased that our library partners will now benefit from OpenAthens’ superior user experience and granular usage statistics.”

Brian Erb, Director of Library Support and Training at Florida Academic Library Services Cooperative, commented: “We see the most usage increases for resources on publisher platforms such as MIT Press that support federated single sign-on. This is because our library users often start their search for a specific article using Google rather than a library webpage, then simply log in using their institutional credentials.”

Kieran Prince, Business Development Manager, OpenAthens noted, “We’re delighted to welcome MIT Press to the OpenAthens Federation. Our library community will gain huge value from our collaboration. As we continue to grow, even more libraries can look forward to accessing MIT Press content in a more secure and seamless way. We’ve also enjoyed working with Silverchair who have contributed so much to this industry and were key to successfully onboarding the MIT Press.”

To learn more about OpenAthens federated single sign-on, visit http://openathens.pub/IPvsOpenAthens

TNQ and Enago offer AI-assisted product for assessment of the quality of language of a submitted manuscript

TNQ and Enago recently celebrated a milestone in their strategic partnership – TNQ’s product SmartLanguage, which assesses the quality of language of a scholarly manuscript, has been adopted by a large publisher for their journals portfolio. The solution is based on a convolutional neural network framework that uses natural language processing to predict the language quality of an article and integrates with Enago’s AI product, Trinka, as a micro service. The deep learning Trinka ML model uses GEC (Grammatical Error Correction) components to identify different kinds of language errors. The prediction of the model is made at the sentence level, and aggregated for an article. A linguistically informed layer then takes the GEC’s suggestion to provide specific outcomes expected from the SmartLanuage service.

Enago is a leader in scholarly communication services and AI-based products for researcher and author workflows.  TNQ is a leading provider of publishing services and innovative technologies, whose services and products are end-to-end, from authoring, manuscript submission, peer review, proofing to pagination. The combination of TNQ’s core domain and technology expertise for the publishing industry, and Enago’s investments in AI-based editing tools, creates possibilities for world-class products for publishers to better manage content workflows with improved efficiency and quality.

“Enago and TNQ have the perfect symbiotic relationship as both companies have complementary strengths in the publishing industry,” said Sharad Mittal, CEO of Enago. “This partnership will continue to strengthen publishers by providing a suite of tailored AI-assisted solutions to save time and effort in editorial workflows.”

“Both companies are committed and passionate to continually develop disruptive products and innovative technology solutions to deliver services for the publishing community. Enago’s close proximity with the author community coupled with TNQ’s deep understanding of the publishing value chain will lead to ideas and thoughts that will deliver tremendous value to the entire research and publishing community.” commented Abhigyan Arun, CEO of TNQ.

“Eureka moments in science” are a myth – according to new ebook published today 

IOP Publishing has expanded its growing ebook collection today with the publication of ‘Creativity for Scientists and Engineers: A practical guide’ which explores how scientists can utilise collaboration and thinking outside the box to be more creative and in turn, further scientific development and breakthroughs. 

Although the ‘Eureka moment’ makes a great story – the genius inventor suddenly magics up a great new device, the genius scientist runs to her desk to write down the great equation  –  the  much  more  prosaic  truth  is  that  creativity is the outcome of very hard work, over often very long periods of time and building on the work of others” explains Dennis Sherwood, one of the country’s leading experts on creativity and innovation and author of the book published today

Miriam Maus, publishing director at IOP Publishing says: “Creativity is at the core of all we do, and we are proud to publish a book that provides a practical ‘how to’ guide for scientists to improve and develop their creative confidence, decipher between good and bad ideas and how to sustain a culture of creativity and innovation within a team.” 

The book combines pragmatic and powerful processes for generating novel ideas with the fundamental first principles on which creativity is based, including Koestler’s Law in which unrelated components come together in a meaningful way to create a new innovative concept, as well as exploring the cultural factors that need to be addressed for creativity to happen.  

To illustrate the principles, the book gives examples of creativity in science and engineering, as it happened both historically and in modern science, from the discovery of DNA to Newton’s laws of motion and Einstein’s discovery of Special Relativity.   

A key example Sherwood uses to demonstrate the power of Koestler’s law in physics is the discovery of Special Relativity by Einstein. In the paper, Einstein has no references which may suggest special relativity was the creation of a “lone genius”. However, throughout his work, he pulls on the “giants before him” such as James Clark Maxwell and Henrik Lorentz. 

Moreover, the book includes a chapter in which 13 contemporary scientists and engineers tell their own stimulating stories, from how cows in Kansas triggered an idea for reducing noise in valves to the discovery of gravitational waves.  

The essence of Koestler’s Law, combining knowledge from one domain, solved the problem of suspending the interferometer mirrors to detect the waves,” explains Professor Sheila Rowan CBE FRS, from the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow, “I think if you look, you’ll find this kind of story over and over again in the field of gravitational wave detection – where the right ideas and inventions at the right times came together to make progress.” 

Creativity for Scientists and Engineers is written for people who wish to enhance their personal creativity as well as that of the teams they lead. 

This publication adds to IOP Publishing’s high-quality ebook collection which brings together innovative digital publishing with leading authors from across the physical sciences. In 2021, IOP Publishing expanded its collection by 111 new titles.  

Jisc and HESA confirm merger 

The two tertiary education sector bodies officially join forces from 4 October 2022.

Jisc, the UK’s digital body for tertiary education, and HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) have announced a merger, taking effect from the beginning of October 2022.

The move will see all 171 HESA colleagues, including its CEO Rob Phillpotts, move to Jisc, creating a new data collection and statistics directorate. Phillpotts, who has led HESA since November 2021, will head up the directorate and join Jisc’s executive leadership team.

Following consultation with the sector and the agreement of the Department for Education, the legal status as the sector’s designated data body (DDB) for England now transfers to Jisc, managed through the newly defined directorate. This merger means the responsibility for collecting and publishing statutory data for all higher education providers across the UK now lies with Jisc.

Jisc CEO, Heidi Fraser-Krauss, said:

“This merger has been a long time in the making, with Jisc welcoming on board HESA’s skilled data analytics team back in 2019.

“This month, the transfer of the remaining colleagues will consolidate the considerable expertise of both organisations to create a resilient, joint capability for delivering the sector’s data and digital needs.”

Rob Phillpotts said:

“I am delighted that we have completed this merger and are now able to focus on developing the services we offer and delivering benefit to our provider customers, students and other data users.

“Our work will continue without disruption as we bring our two organisations together.

“I am really looking forward to working with Heidi and the rest of the leadership team at Jisc to enhance Jisc’s combined digital and data capabilities and to provide trusted, expert advice and guidance along with a broad range of services across the sector.”

Further information

  • Jisc and HESA have been exploring a merger for some years following the Bell Review of 2017 which recommended consolidation among sector bodies
  • Post-merger and for the foreseeable future, HESA’s brand will continue and its website will remain as a data-hosting platform
  • Jisc is now the data controller of personal data previously controlled by HESA. Privacy information on the HESA website has been updated

Registration for the NISO Plus 2023 is now open

We’re delighted to announce that registration is now open for the fourth annual NISO Plus conference (February 14-16, 2023), which will once again take place online, and across two blocks of time — Americas morning/Europe, Middle East & Africa afternoon and Americas evening/Asia Pacific morning — to allow maximum participation from all around the world. Our 2023 Planning Committee is evenly divided between each broad region, and they are already hard at work to help us make sure we have lots of great content across all time zones. NISO Plus 2022 attracted attendees from 27 countries; this year we’re hoping for even more!

Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, we’ve been able to keep registration rates affordable each year — and NISO Plus 2023 is no exception! We already have commitments from Access InnovationsBowkerCadmore Media (our conference platform provider), figshare (who host our repository), Modern Language AssociationProject MUSESilverchair, and Stony Brook University, with promises of more to come from other organizations (see the sponsorship page for more information if your company is interested in sponsoring the conference). As a result, all early bird rates are well under $200: tickets for NISO members are just $99 each for groups of five or more and $139 for individuals; the same categories for non-members are $149 and $179 respectively; and, as in previous years, students, unemployed, retirees, and those from lower-income countries will pay just $30.

Work on the conference program started in earnest in September, helped by a very productive first NISO Plus Forum, which generated about 20 great ideas for sessions for a conference track focused entirely on metadata — new for NISO Plus 2023. The Planning Committee will help us select six to eight topics of particular interest, which will be supplemented by additional invited sessions and responses to our call for proposals (coming in mid-October!). The committee has already come up with a host of other topic and speaker suggestions, which will be honed down and finalized in the coming weeks.

We’ll be posting NISO Plus 2023 updates here each month between now and the conference, and you can also sign up to receive additional alerts (for example, when the call for proposals launches) here. In the meantime, we hope you’ll reserve your place now at what Dave Shumaker of Information Today describes as: “an informative and thought-provoking multinational survey of the roles that collaboration, conversation, and standardization play in our constantly changing worldwide information environment.

Last Call for Speakers while Morressier goes for Gold

Taking place as a hybrid event, not only in person in London but also online, ConTech Pharma continues to focus on how technology and particularly data science is relentlessly transforming the world of content.

ConTech Pharma 2023 is excited to announce that Morressier are joining as Gold sponsors.

Morressier is an exciting organisation that is revolutionising the way scientific research and discovery works. By introducing new and innovative technologies to research and STM content Morressier is truly a content pioneer that can stand firmly at the heart of the ConTech Pharma mission.

“Morressier is proud to support ConTech for the 2023 meeting! The information industry is in a state of disruption, and we can’t wait for this meeting’s insight and inspiration on the power of data, content, and technology to transform how information is shared.”  Sami Benchekroun, CEO and Managing Director

The call for speakers is live and we kindly request all submissions to be with us no later than the 4th November. Please complete the submission form on the website, where you can also see outline themes.

Participants at ConTech Pharma 2023 will include the pharma and digital healthcare content pioneers who are already seeing the benefits of using data science; the data science visionaries who are building new content tools and those who understand how to start applying data science to their work. Publishers, scientists and technologists coming together to learn, share and network in a fully hybrid environment.

It’s also never too early to get this date in your diary by signing up to attend – early bird discounts are currently available. Book here

Find out more about all of our events  Contech.live

New initiative to publicize and summarize research on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Kudos and Impact Science have announced the launch of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Knowledge Cooperative. This cross-publisher initiative will help companies, educators, politicians, the media and the wider public understand the evidence around EDI issues, as well as increasing the visibility and reach of EDI-related publications within academia. The companies are inviting publisher sponsors to join the cooperative and nominated content that will be summarized and promoted to a broad range of audiences.

Kudos and Impact Science launched the Knowledge Cooperative model a year ago. Since then, over 25 publishers and partners have supported the creation and promotion of hundreds of plain language summaries of research on topics ranging from climate change and COVID to artificial intelligence. Beyond simply collating content, a major feature of the model is publicity campaigns across different channels, from PR to advertising to highly targeted search engine marketing, to ensure content reaches and engages a much broader audience than would otherwise be looking for research content. The existing cooperative Showcases have reached thousands of readers across academia, education, industry, government and healthcare.

“The scholarly publishing sector has a dual responsibility in relation to EDI,” says Nikesh Gosalia, Senior Vice President, Global Academic & Publisher Relations at Impact Science’s parent company, Cactus Communications (CACTUS). “Publishers and providers are working to tackle internal EDI challenges, but are also uniquely placed to help more people find, understand and act on relevant research.” 

“This initiative is an opportunity for the scholarly publishing sector to prove our allyship by taking more active, targeted steps to help improve the lives of those affected by issues of equality, diversity and inclusion,” says Charlie Rapple, Chief Content Officer and co-founder of Kudos. “I’m really looking forward to applying this proven model to improve the visibility and application of research on these important topics.“

Sponsors will identify content to be summarized and promoted via the cooperative, with subject matter potentially covering disability, gender, race, sexual orientation, physical appearance and religion. Plain language summaries, videos and infographics will be created by the professional research & impact communication team at Impact Science. A long-term media and advertising campaign will drive widespread visibility and readership.

To find out more about promoting your content or brand through the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Knowledge Cooperative, please visit the website or contact Colin Caveney. If you would like to book a meeting with Colin at the Frankfurt Book Fair, you can do so here

Study Shows that the AJE Digital Editing Tool Significantly Improves Article Acceptance Rates at Springer Nature Journals

Building on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate books, Springer Nature has invested in, and developed, an AI-based Digital Editing language polishing tool which is designed to add value to scientific publishing. This was done via AJE, part of Research Square Company. 

The AJE Digital Editing tool is the first to provide rapid language polish for scholarly manuscripts, reducing the time authors need to spend preparing their research for publication. The tool frees up more time for researchers to advance society. 

The AJE Digital Editing tool allows authors to automatically improve their manuscripts within minutes, primarily by correcting grammatical errors and improving wording and word usage. Springer Nature recently announced it is making this tool a free service for its book authors and editors after successfully piloting the tool in its Scientific Reports and Discover series of journals. 

The AJE Digital Editing tool achieved high author satisfaction values and improved article acceptance rates over the course of a pilot comprising 500 manuscripts which all had low language scores. All these papers were submitted to Scientific Reports between September 2021 and January 2022. It is notable that, amongst these, manuscripts from China were improved the most in terms of acceptance rates.

INCLUDED PAPERS SAW ACCEPTANCE RATES RISE FROM 28% BEFORE USE OF THE TOOL TO 42% ON AVERAGE.

This highlights the value of the AJE Digital Editing tool for authors whose native language is not English. This increase in article acceptance is due to the tool helping reviewers see the value of the research itself as the language of the article becomes clearer. 

The AJE Digital Editing tool has also been shown to save external editors time and reduce article processing time. The tool helps editors make rejection decisions long before peer review. 

Based on these successful trials, Springer Nature selected a number of disciplines** in 2022 and will also include book authors and editors in these fields in the pilot to improve their publishing satisfaction and experience. Authors typically choose the service during the contract signing phase, so that they can use the tool at the beginning of the drafting and preparation phase, as well as several months before handover, for additional assistance in reviewing and editing the full manuscript.

 The AJE AI algorithm is unique because it was trained on revisions from more than 750,000 manuscripts which were carried out by native English-speaking editors with PhDs. These papers covered 447 fields and over 200 specific topics. This means that all original manuscripts also had an edited manuscript for comparison and makes the AJE tool 95% accurate. The tool is designed to complement the infrequent use of traditional professional editing services, providing all academic researchers with a writing assistant that can be scaled and used on a daily basis, allowing them to focus on the competition for research quality rather than language quality.

What our authors say about the AJE Digital Editing Tool: 

“It’s very flexible. I can submit the revised manuscript at any time.” Dr Chen

“I compared AJE with other software, and it is much better.” Dr Shi

“It is very convenient, the cost is reasonable, and the retouching effect is very good” Dr Fei

“Accurate, quick editing and corrections.” Dr Hassan

Many of the leading scholarly publishing organizations and research institutions across the world use AJE’s innovative services to support the authors and editors they work with every day.

If you’re interested in working with us, our Business Development team would love to hear from you! Click here to learn more about how and why the AJE Digital Editing Tool is best for academic research articles.

Breaking down barriers to global research

A new series of open access journals from Cambridge University Press will address global challenges by bringing together researchers across national and subject boundaries.

Cambridge Prisms will shape solutions to major scientific, technological and medical challenges with cutting-edge research and reviews.

That research will step out of subject silos, with the scope of each journal built around broad, subject neutral topics – Coastal Futures, Precision Medicine, Global Metal Health, Extinction, Plastics, Water – that encourage collaboration between researchers from different disciplines and make it easy for readers to find relevant content.

Collaboration will also be fostered by the journal’s editorial boards and by the Press, which will help researchers find co-authors that complement their work and bring new perspectives.

Jess Jones, the Publisher and Senior Scientific Editor at the Press overseeing the series, said: “As a publisher, we often see papers submitted where we know another author’s work in peer review would have strengthened its reach and impact. We want to break down these barriers and be involved in accelerating the formation of new research networks.

“That means working with our editorial boards to help authors build those networks and find co-authors that bring greater global representation and viewpoints.

“Ultimately, the aim is to unite researchers who are addressing real world challenges and so accelerate discovery.”

The Cambridge Prisms series will also aim for maximum transparency, with editors tracking and openly summarising the diversity and representation of every manuscript. Peer review of manuscripts will also be open. 

The Press has recruited some of the world’s leading scientists and academics to lead the journals in the role of Editor-in-Chief, all of them people who have dedicated their life’s work to addressing major real-world challenges.

Prior to launch, high-profile and rising star authors with diverse knowledge and expertise have been invited to publish reviews across each journal’s topic map and define the interdisciplinary focus for each world challenge.

Mandy Hill, Managing Director of Cambridge University Press, said: “We are launching Prisms as the need to address the world’s biggest challenges grows ever more urgent

“These challenges – climate change, pollution, mental health – are truly global, but all too often research that seeks to address them is not, either because it views those challenges through the lens of a particular discipline or because it provides limited perspectives. Prisms will unite researchers globally across different disciplines, building connections and capturing the wider conversations.”

She added: “It is also vital that this research is published open access so that it can have the widest possible reach and impact, with both an authorship and a readership that is as diverse as possible.

“Open research is at the heart of our mission to benefit society through the pursuit of education, learning and research. We are committed to making the majority of our research articles open access by 2025 and the launch of Prisms is another important step in that transition.”

Webinar – Coopetition in Open Access Management: practices, pain points, and participation

Do you think that charges associated with Open Access publishing are currently being managed across stakeholder groups in a transparent and trustworthy way? What changes would you like to see taking place in the system? Do we need community governance, new standards, or something else?

If you’ve been thinking about these questions, sign up for our webinar on October 25!

To help us uncover the topic, we’ve invited Wilhelm Widmark from University of Stockholm, Sven Fund from Knowledge Unlatched, Jamie Carmichael from Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), Johan Rooryck from Coalition S, and ChronosHub Founder, Christian Grubak. Our moderator is Josh Brown from the MoreBrains Cooperative.

https://chronoshub.io/events/coopetition-in-open-access-management-practices-pain-points-and-participation/

President Zelenskyy and Commissioner Gabriel address the book world

At the joint invitation of Frankfurter Buchmesse and the Federation of European Publishers, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address the book sector on Thursday 20 October at 12.30 p.m. CET via videolink. His speech will be followed by a speech by European Commissioner for culture Mariya Gabriel. The event is open to the public and will take place in Room Harmonie at the Congress Centre. Please register via: info@fep-fee.eu

It goes without saying that all participants in the Fair are convinced that books are key to a better world. Today and tomorrow, all book professionals in Ukraine must be in a capacity to resume their activities and to promote their culture, among their citizens and to the world. For Ukrainian literature to be visible at the Frankfurt Book Fair with a large stand (Hall 4.1 B114) and many publishers present, is also an act of resistance against attempts to annihilate Ukrainian culture. It is the duty of the book world to support our Ukrainian colleagues’ efforts to preserve and promote their books. European publishers and publishers from all over the world have already shown support, but more needs to be done, including with support from governments. 

The European Commissioner for culture been actively involved in developing assistance to Ukraine since the first days of the war, through networking and special calls for support. After visiting the fair, she will speak to delegates about specific developments at European level affecting the world of books. 

Peter Kraus vom Cleff, President of the Federation of European Publishers and Managing Director of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, said “Ever since the start of the invasion, FEP together with Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, have reached out to our Ukrainian counterparts and offered support. What Ukraine is doing now, is standing up for our rights and our values. The whole book community must continue its engagement so that publishing in Ukraine can remain vibrant. I thank President Zelenskyy for having chosen Frankfurt for his intervention and invite all colleagues to join us to listen to him and the Commissioner for Culture”. 

Juergen Boos, President and CEO of Frankfurter Buchmesse, said “The Frankfurt Book Fair has maintained close relations with publishers, authors and industry-related institutions in Ukraine for many years and has carried out numerous trade fair participations, publishers’ training courses and specialist programmes in recent years. This year, it is very important to us to enable and support the networking of Ukrainian colleagues with their partners worldwide, and to let many Ukrainian intellectuals, publishers, authors and cultural workers have their say at the Frankfurt Book Fair to report on the current situation. We want to create publicity and raise awareness of what is at stake.”