The ISSN International Centre expresses its thanks to the 1491 colleagues and partners who have submitted a response to the Opinion Survey about the ISSN Standard. The survey was circulated in 7 languages and has attracted attention in 78 countries. The ISO Working Group on the revision of the ISSN standard will now discuss the survey findings. We will keep you posted!

Cambridge University Press has just launched a new content sharing service called Cambridge Core Share. Authors and subscribers can now generate a read-only link to a journal article which can be shared online, allowing anyone to read the final published version of the article for free. This new sharing service is available to over 150 journals, and to content published from 2016 onwards, during an initial pilot. Cambridge Core Share allows article usage to be recorded, thus enabling authors to demonstrate the impact of their work.

An enhanced Metadata Downloader to replace the current MARC downloader has been launched by Springer Nature. This web tool provides librarians and library cataloguers with downloadable metadata updates which can be embedded into library catalogues, as well as title lists for a library’s licensed content.

With the launch of the Metadata Downloader, Springer Nature is also increasing the frequency of available data updates for books and journals hosted on its content platform SpringerLink. Records are updated on a daily basis.

The Serials and Other Continuing Resources Section (SOCRS) invites colleagues to submit proposals for its two-hour open session at the IFLA Congress in Kuala Lumpur on the theme Empowering Scholarly Communication Transforms Societies.

Scholarly Communication encompasses the cycle of the creation, publication, dissemination, discovery and evaluation of scholarly research. It includes everything from data and journal articles to blog postings. Researchers, funders, publishers and, of course, librarians all have roles to play in the scholarly communication life cycle. This program will examine the pivotal role libraries play in scholarly communication. It will explore the most effective ways for libraries to be involved in the process.

Proposal submission deadline: March 1^st, 2018.

Publishers commonly use Article Processing Charges (APCs) to fund open access publications, and some libraries and institutions help local authors pay these costs. However, this strategy is expensive and can usually only address one article at a time. A number of relatively new publishing initiatives rely on a crowdfunding model and allow many libraries to share the cost of open access, often at a fraction of the cost of APCs. This article highlights several alternative publishing projects to help librarians think further about how library funds could be used to support open access.

The ALA (American Library Association) Midwinter meeting 2018 reflected a response to disruption by taking on an ambitious agenda of self-redefinition as institutions, an organization, and a profession. Library Journal reviewed this event.

Academic library consortia have traditionally focused on resource sharing and e-resource purchasing as core programs and value propositions for members. However, as academic libraries increasingly look beyond financial value and seek to demonstrate impact on institutional priorities and student outcomes, consortia must evolve to provide services that support those goals. This paper presents selected examples of innovative consortial programs that can have a significant impact on teaching, learning, and research at members’ institutions as suggested models for other consortia that may be engaged in reviewing strategic priorities and programs.

Digital Science debuted Dimensions, an innovating research information database that links publications, grants, policy, data and metrics with a highly curated and strongly normalized data frame. The free core version of the platform  delivers access to over 9 million open access articles, as well as 860 million abstracts and citations, accompanied with top line altmetrics information. Both paid versions Dimensions Plus and Dimensions Analytics provide full access to the platform’s underlying content and additional features. Built using real-world use cases, it combines advanced concept extraction, natural language processing, categorization and complex machine learning to create a flexible and robust tool that meets the most demanding modern research needs. This blog post gets into deeper technological details.

Reggie Raju, Deputy Director of Research and Learning Services at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, is interrogating the concept of predatory publishing. He alerts on the significant damage caused by the unilateral definition and the application of extremely generalized criteria. Time has come to develop inclusive open access practises. It is proposed that the Library Publishing Coalition develops a white paper that can help wipe out the vestiges of the Beall’s list and develop an inclusive set of criteria for acceptable research publications.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) are scholarly organisations that have collaborated to identify principles of transparency and best practice for scholarly publications. The third version of the Principles was published in January 2018 as a work in progress.

A detailed report of a study performed by Science-Metrix funded by the US National Science Foundation, analyzes the situation of Open Access in the second half of 2016. This report details population-level measurements of the open access (OA) availability of publications indexed in two bibliometric databases—the Web of Science (WoS)  and Scopus. The study identified that among the countries with the highest scientific output, more than 50% of papers published between 2010 and 2014 were available in open access, with Brazil taking the lead with 75% of articles. The study also presents the citation patterns of open access articles in relation to paywalled articles.

The Joint Declaration LATINDEX–REDALYC–CLACSO–IBICT in support of the Latin American non-commercial Open Access Ecosystem was adopted on Dec. 15th, 2017 in Mexico. This declaration recommends the use of CC-BY-NC-SA license to guarantee the protection of the academic and scientific output in Open Access, and aims to create, share, maintain and preserve knowledge produced in the region.

The declaration is published in Spanish, English, Portuguese and German.

DOAJ has launched the DOAJ Best Practice Guide. It is a web resource that provides selection criteria, resources and tools for the identification of reputable open access journals to support researchers, publishers and librarians in their search of best practice and transparency standards. The Guide complements the work of the DOAJ Ambassadors as well as academics, librarians and publishers worldwide. It is based on the information provided on the For Publishers page on the DOAJ website and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

Topic: Building the scholarly publishing model of the global South

Posters submission deadline: Feb. 28th, 2018

Topic: Metamorphosis: the changing role of the modern research library

The programme is online.

The programme is online.

The IFLA Professional Units issued their Calls for Papers for the IFLA WLIC 2018 .

General topic: Transform Libraries, Transform Societies.