The ISSN International Centre’s sales team will be at IFLA exhibition booth A 112 from 25-28 August 2019. The exhibition takes place at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre.

The sales team will  be available to make a demo of the ISSN Portal, which contains more than 2,5 million ISSN records. The Portal offers users access to free ISSN essential identification metadata, which can also be reused in several linked open data formats. To subscribers, it offers a completely new range of data and services through ISSN records enriched with information from external sources that cooperate with the ISSN International Centre.

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, and Margaret Mering, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA, will chair IFLA session 208 regarding Serial, Continuing Resource and Scholarly Communication Related Standards – Serials and Other Continuing Resources. Several topics will be addressed during this 2 hour session, among which the revision of the ISSN standard, application of the LRM model to continuing resources and  interoperability of metadata schemes.

The 11th Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (COASP) will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark from 24-26 September 2019. Nathalie Cornic, Head of the Metadata and Technical Coordination of the ISSN Network Department, will attend the conference. This is the opportunity for ISSN International Centre to hear about new trends in Open Access, all of which might interest the development of ROAD, the ISSN Directory of Open Access Resources.

The OASPA annual conference is a major scholarly publishing conference that brings the open access community together to discuss new developments and innovations in scholarly publishing and share common goal to enable research around the world to be openly accessible. This year, the opening panel of the conference will be chaired by Robert Kiley (Head of Open Research, Wellcome Trust), who will mediate a discussion between representatives of international funders with an extended Q&A.

The programme is online.

In the next months of 2019, ISNIs and basic supporting metadata will be available in several Linked Data (LD) ‘flavours’ – right now, the work is focusing on RDF/XML and JSON-LD. It will be possible to access the ISNI linked data under an open licence via two mechanisms –via API or utilizing LD data dumps. Members of the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France have collaborated to specify ISNI-IA’s requirements and the ideal data model, while developers from the Leiden, Netherlands office of ISNI’s IT/systems provider OCLC are carrying out the necessary software analysis and programming.

Please contact ISNI LD coordinator Corine Deliot or Tim Devenport if you would like to know more.

The stage is set. Items are ready to be described by metadata, or have some metadata to be augmented or used. But who are the cast of players that interact with metadata to ensure its usefulness? The project Incentives for Improving Metadata Quality, led by Fiona Counsell, has been focused on highlighting the applications and value of metadata for all parts of the community. In order to tell these stories, the project team considered the four key metadata players and how to best describe them.

The French Committee for Open Science (CoSO) was formed as a result of the National Plan for Open Science presented by Frederique Vidal, the Higher Education, Research and Innovation Minister on July 4^th 2018, to the annual conference of the League of European Research Libraries (LIBER). The Committee wrote recommendations for the benefit of researchers and institutions, to foster open identifiers for open science. A large number of identifiers coexist. Good practice guides and action plans are being developed at the international level. The CoSO is defining a strategy to develop and adopt these identifiers with an objective of openness.

Jasmin Lange, Chief Publishing Officer and a member of Brill’s Executive Committee, presents Brill’s endeavors in open access (OA) and about Plan S. Brill is a 336-year old publishing house, and the author explains how the last 12 months have changed her perspective on academic publishing, first presented at the STM conference in Washington in April 2019 (slides available here).

With more than 20 years of experience in research, advice and training to publishers, Latindex promotes this online course Publishing and visibility of scientific journals. This project involves researchers specialized in librarianship and information science and partners of Latindex. The objectives are multiple: to provide Central American publishers with the basic knowledge for publishing and managing printed and electronic academic journals; to promote an improvement in the editorial quality of scientific publications; to promote journals acquiring a better visibility at a global level, and finally to promote Open Access.

CollEx-Persée is a research infrastructure set up in France in 2017. It brings together 19 research libraries, 4 national operators and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It aims to facilitate access to and use of library hybrid collections by researchers.  This communication presents the strategy for creating CollEx-Persée and the breakthroughs introduced by this new system, then its organization, networking activities and first achievements. Calls for projects have made a very concrete contribution to bringing librarians and researchers closer together. Finally, the emerging challenges are presented, in particular the management of change within libraries and training for new professions.

The breadth of the profession was embraced by keynote speakers and breakout sessions at CILIP Conference 2019. CILIP is the UK’s library and information association. Topics covered on day one ranged from artificial intelligence to public libraries. This report highlights the best sessions.

This report is based on a Europe-wide survey run by LIBER’s Digital Humanities & Digital Cultural Heritage Working Group. The survey focused on digital collections and the activities libraries undertake around them. The themes covered were based on input from participants at the Digital Humanities and Digital Cultural Heritage workshop at LIBER’s 2018 Annual Conference (Lille, France; 4-6 July).  The final survey consisted of 83 questions and was open for responses between 1 February and 15 March 2019.

If you could not attend LIBER 2019 annual conference at Trinity College Dublin, the main talks were recorded on Trinity Library YouTube channel. The presentations are also available on Zenodo. Two papers are particularly interesting. University Journals: Consolidating Institutional Repositories in a Free Open Access Publication Platform, a new publication platform that complies with Plan S principles and enables publication and dissemination of all research outcomes. The Open Library of Humanities: a Sustainable Scholar-led Model for OA without Publication Fees, demonstrate how scholar-led initiatives such as the OLH have proven for years that there are alternatives to the standard APC model (pay-to-publish) and that it is possible to sustain them in the long-term.

Each year, IFLA Headquarters compiles its Annual Report. It gives IFLA Members and other interested parties full and transparent details on IFLA activities, achievements and financial performance.

This article explores how the Scopus curation and re-evaluation processes help exclude poor-quality and predatory publications from Scopus. Also highlighted are the new approaches being developed to ensure both quality and breadth of coverage. Scopus content continues to be unrivalled and highly trusted.

The participants of the second AEUP (Association of the European University Presses) conference have committed to cooperate further in enhancing the recognition of university/institutional publishing. Read the full text of the declaration here.

Other reports from the conference can be found here.

The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) 2019 Annual Conference will take place in Shanghai on 23-26 September. Themed ‘Open Science and Open Innovation’, the conference is part of a bigger event co-organised with the Shanghai Competitive Intelligence Forum (SCIF) and the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) and generously hosted by Shanghai Library/Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of Shanghai (ISTIS).  The conference will also present  high-level ITOC (Information Trends and Opportunities Committee) and TACC (Technical Activities Coordinating Committee) workshops on 26th September 2019.

Registration is open.

The preliminary programme is online.

the Association of Learned Professional & Society Publishers (ALPSP), Wellcome and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have appointed Information Power to explore potential strategies and business models learned societies can adopt under Plan S – Society Publishers Accelerating Open Access and Plan S. The final report and toolkit will be launched at the next ALPSP Conference to be held in September 2019. Alicia Wise and Lorraine Estelle discuss some of the initial findings and provide an update from the first phase of the SPA-OPS project.

A group of like-minded individuals from libraries, academic institutions, publishers, and consortia have organized to provide support and advocacy for Learned and Professional Societies called  ‘Transitioning Society Publications to Open Access (TSPOA)’. Through consultations, advocacy, and information sharing, this group aims to connect society journal editors and publishers with useful resources related to transitioning society publications to OA.

In the Indian context, Open Access to science has been facilitated by government-funded repositories of student and doctoral theses, and many Indian society journals are published with platinum OA. Indian journals are increasingly available on OA platforms. However, OA in India faces numerous challenges, notably predatory OA journals and the paucity of funds. There is a need to increase awareness amongst Indian academics regarding best publication practices, and how to avoid falling prey to poor quality OA journals.

Plan S will be a focal point for Europe’s research libraries in the coming months as systems and working routines are adjusted to meet the plan’s requirements. LIBER appreciates the latest guidance, which matches LIBER’s strategic goal of making Open Access the main form of scholarly communication by 2020. At the same time, LIBER’ Open Access Working Group recognises the complexities and challenges faced by research libraries to implement publishing or update services to follow Plan S.

LA Referencia gives visibility to the scientific production of higher education and research institutions in Latin America, promotes open and free access to full text, with a special emphasis on publicly financed results. The Open Repositories conference aimed to address discussions on how repositories can support, interact and improve the experience of their recipients. Within this framework, Lautaro Matas, LA Referencia, and Washington Carvalho Segundo, IBICT (Brazilian Institute of Science and Technology Information), presented the improvement of LA Referencia metadata by linking research profiles with repositories. The presentation is now available for download.
[Article in Spanish]

Researchers applauded Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)’s new selection criteria that removed many existing journals from its index because they are ‘Not Adhering to Best Practice’. However, many of these journals have acceptable scholarly quality. The present study compares such removed journals to a trustworthy bibliometric database, SCImago Journal & Country Rank (the Scopus Database). It finds many overlaps. Some of the overlapping journals have a high score in the SCImago ranks. This paper calls for a more transparent process of journal reviews by DOAJ or even a re‐examination of the selection criteria and/or the evaluation process.

The new RDA (Resource, Description & Access) Toolkit expands on the LRM modeling of serials to encompass all resources issued over time (diachronic works). This webinar covers the modeling of aggregates (manifestations embodying multiple expressions) and serials in the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM) and the implementation of this modeling in the new RDA Toolkit.

 

Some of the themes that will be explored:  Open Research and Transparency, Business Models and Innovation, Internationalization and Diversity.

Keynote speaker: Steven Curry

The programme is online. Registration closes Friday 23 August 2019.

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association webinar features four panelists: Aileen Fyfe, University of St Andrews; Stuart Taylor, Publishing Director of The Royal Society; Rachael Samberg, UC Berkeley Library; Alicia Wise, Information Power.

Register now for free.

iPRES is the longest-running conference series on digital preservation, bringing together 300-400 researchers, information professionals, providers, and other experts to share recent developments, innovative projects and to collaboratively solve problems.

The programme is online.

To make sure you get the best out of the Congress programme, some of the key sessions are featured in July newsletter, giving the tips for the iPlanner – your diary for WLIC 2019, and taking you for a stroll through Athens’ charming neighbourhoods and alleys and discover the city’s hidden gems.

IFLA Serials & Other Continuing Resources Section and IFLA National Libraries Section are organising an exploration of grey literature: its scope in the digital age; how repositories are managing it; and how it is made discoverable and accessible to users.