ISSN International Centre will be a Gold Exhibitor at the World Library and Information Congress.

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of ISSN International Centre, presented at NASIG 2021 conference an overview of the current ISSN services, and gathered suggestions and opinions on ISSN IC 2024 Strategy.

The ISSN International Centre has set up a KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) version of the free MARC data describing ROAD records, i.e. OA scholarly resources. This data is made available on BACON and can be reused under a CC0 license. KBART is a widely-used NISO Recommended Practice that facilitates the transfer of holdings metadata from content providers to knowledge base suppliers and libraries.

You can download ROAD records as a .csv file or as a json file.

As part of a recent security review and the migration of the ISNI website to a more trusted https environment, ISNI International Agency revisited the preferred format for representing ISNI identiers. The canonical ISNI URI now incorporates the change from http to https so that all ISNI URIs are now of the pattern https://isni.org/isni/ID, where ID is the 16-digit ISNI (without
any spaces) – for example https://isni.org/isni/000000012124423X.

Retraction Watch’s Ivan Oransky says that paper mills are the biggest organised fraud perpetrated on scientific journals ever, eroding scientists’ trust in the publishing system – and in each other. Paper mills serve up professional fakery for their customers on an industrial scale. Buyers can apparently purchase a paper, or authorship of one, on any topic based on phony results to submit to a journal. This makes them not only harder to detect and crack down on, but also exponentially increases the damage they could do.

A new study is underway to investigate the role of research libraries. Conducted by the Association of Research Libraries in the US and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, the study examines research universities’ strategic directions and what information services they need to support their strategies. The report will provide clear evidence and inform a shared narrative about the valued role of research libraries now and in the future. The study will be presented at the Jisc and CNI- leader conference, an event organised by the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) together with Jisc.

The first edition of this book demonstrated the power and flexibility of “rightsizing,” an approach that applies a scalable, rule-based strategy to help academic libraries balance stewardship of spaces and the collection. In the five years since Ward’s first edition, the shared print infrastructure has grown in leaps and bounds, as has coordination among programs. With this revision, Miller addresses new options as well as the increasing urgency to protect at-risk titles as you reduce your physical collection.

Strengthening the global voice of libraries by making every librarian an advocate is a key part of IFLA’s Strategy. But how can we teach advocacy? An interview with Raphaelle Bats, National School for Information and Library Professions (ENSSIB), France, to find out about her experiences. [Article in English, and then French]

The pandemic has underlined the importance of access to information for all, but at the same time, the risks of misinformation. Libraries have a huge potential to contribute, as highlighted in a webinar organised by participants in the IFLA-Goethe Institut Emerging International Voices Programme. These are the challenges that participants in the Emerging International Voices webinar looked to address on 26 May. This joint initiative of the Goethe-Institut and IFLA is designed to support promising new professionals in the library field to build their experience and reach.

In this presentation made for NASIG 2021, Amy Castillo, Manager of the Electronic Resources & Scholarly Communication department of Tarleton State University Dick Smith Library, shares details on carrying out a print serials inventory project that includes training, inventory assignments, and progress tracking. The inventory aims to enhance the library’s catalog and OCLC local holdings records by clarifying available title and coverage; check the health of the print collection; and record an accurate total number of bound units.

Launched in March 2002, COUNTER is an international initiative serving librarians, publishers and intermediaries by setting standards that facilitate the recording and reporting of online usage statistics in a consistent, credible and compatible way. This NASIG 2021 session celebrates the achievement of the COUNTER Code of Practice and the tools and guides that support it.  Lorraine Estelle, the COUNTER Project Director, also takes a practical look at what is required to build relationships across all the stakeholders and to foster collaborative work practices and governance.

IFLA has endorsed the WikiLibrary Manifesto, aimed at connecting libraries and Wikimedia projects such as Wikibase in order to promote the dissemination of knowledge in open formats, especially in linked open data networks. The manifesto supports the application of the principles of FAIR (free, open, accessible, re-usable) data.

This is the third in a series of updates to provide information on the 2021 Journal Citation Reports release. Released originally as a print edition in 1975, Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR) is showing, in its latest edition, a continuous expansion of its contents and metrics toward greater breadth, context and transparency. In addition to refinements discussed in recent posts – expanded journal coverage as well as the new Journal Citation Indicator metric – the 2021 JCR offers a revamped user interface.

With the help of academic search engine optimization (ASEO), publications can more easily be found in academic search engines and databases. Authors can improve the ranking of their publications by adjusting titles, keywords and abstracts. Carefully considered wording makes publications easier to find and, ideally, cited more often. This article is meant to support authors in making their scholarly publications more visible. It provides basic information on ranking mechanisms as well as tips and tricks on how to improve the findability of scholarly publications while also pointing out the limits of optimization.

The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) facilitates cooperation between scientific communications stakeholders. In 2021, ICSTI focused on initiating new partnerships and renewing old ones to foster a greater and more diverse membership, and to move beyond mere cooperation to collaboration and mutual benefit amongst ICSTI members and partners. Look at their brand new website!

Open Access agreements between consortia/libraries and smaller independent publishers are used worldwide increasingly since 2020, signalling a potential for further growth, highlights an independent report released in June 2021 by Information Power. The report was commissioned by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) as a follow up on the outcomes of the Society Publishers Accelerating Open access and Plan S (SPA-OPS) project, published in autumn 2019.

The report indicates that during 2020 there was a clear increase in the number of open access (OA) articles published in hybrid journals, which reverses the downward trend between 2016 – 2019, and deems likely a further increase over the next few years, partly driven by new OA agreements.

Much of the recent effort to transition scholarly publishing to open access (OA) has focused on Transformative Agreements that incentivize change among subscription or mixed-model publishers. Supporting such publishers to transition to OA is important to transform the system of scholarly publishing. However, it is equally important to support existing fully OA publishers – who already deliver open content by default in ways that comply with Plan S and fulfill its original principles and spirit – and to recognize the centrality of their role in normalizing OA and bringing it to the mainstream.

OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association) is announcing the first in a series of webinars focused on the needs of the researcher. A cross-disciplinary panel of researchers will discuss what unites them around open research and open access. Panellists will also consider if their perceptions change depending on their role and discuss the choices they currently make when disseminating their work.

Please register for this free webinar and contribute to the discussion.

The Danish National Archives has finalized the first working edition of a Concept Model for Development of Preservation Plans. In this webinar, the complete set of methods used will be presented, as well as the results from the application so far.

Register now.

The 15th European Association of Science Editors (EASE) General Assembly and Conference  will be held online.

Topic: Promoting sustainability in scholarly publishing: the role of editors

The Programme will include presentations, debates, panels and networking sessions plus a number of satellite events: a poster exhibition and competition, Regional Chapter sessions, workshops and the EASE General Assembly.

Registration is open.

The International Association of University Libraries (IATUL) will be held online.

Topic: Bridging Universities and Society Libraries as Connectors

Please register for free and check the programme. Sessions will be publicly streamed through IATUL’s YouTube Channel.

LIBER is Europe’s largest association of research libraries, representing 450 university, national and research libraries. It is celebrating its 50th annversary.

Topic: Libraries and Open Knowledge: from vision to implementation

Register for free and check the programme.

IFLA WLIC 2021 will be held across three days spanning three time zones. Look at the theme and subthemes and register. Sign up to IFLA WLIC Newsletter to receive regular updates on sessions, speakers and more.

Topic: Building Connections Together

The conference will focus on concrete ways that linked data impacts GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) institutions, and will share pathways that allow others to participate in linked data.

Register now and view the programme.

For their 2021 Annual Conference, the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) is collaborating with FORCE11 and other participating organizations to present FORCE 2021: Joining Forces on the Future of Scholarly Communication in October. The collaborative event will take the form of a curated virtual conference with pre-selected topics and speakers. ICSTI will prepare an additional program of member-to-member presentations and General Assembly meeting.

This year’s American Libraries Association’s Annual Conference brings together an exciting lineup of speakers and educational sessions designed to engage members in a week of collaboration and connection. Tune in to hear from leading authors, thinkers, and activists, and explore the schedule and panel discussions devoted to the library workplace, issues relating to equity, diversity, and inclusion, and more. Former President of the United States Barack Obama will close the conference.

Registration.