1. Rethinking Authentication, Revamping the Business
IP authentication is the most important mechanism for authorising access to licensed e-resources. Substantial business and policy issues for libraries and publishers alike connect up to IP authentication. Today, there is substantial interest in eliminating IP authentication, so it is timely to examine the implications if we were soon to see its end, notes Roger C. Schonfeld, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): While I have heard these arguments on and off this year, the meeting hosted by CCC made abundantly clear that there is great dissatisfaction with IP-based authentication across the community. Publishers want to move away from it due to their piracy concerns, their desire to improve seamlessness for researchers, and their expectations about the value they can offer through greater personalisation. Corporate librarians want to move away from it because of administrative headaches and workflow deficiencies it imposes in their environment. And at least some academic librarians want to move away from it because of the poor user experience, especially with off-site access. Taking aim at IP authentication and proxy servers has become all the rage. But what might supplant them?……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Libraries May Have Gotten the Privacy Thing All Wrong
What can academic libraries learn from Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn? The aim of this merger is to collect end-user data from corporate accounts. Libraries are facing a similar situation when publishers develop end-user strategies that compromise the privacy of library patrons, discusses Joseph Esposito, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): I have written about this phenomenon in the academy before (I see that the date of that blog post was 2009), but it's worth reiterating that a library bypass strategy is a means by which a publisher strengthens its position by developing end-user relationships. This is not the same thing as going over a librarian's head (though few publishers would fail to do so if they thought it would work): making a sales pitch to a department head or even someone in the provost's office is simply a bullying mechanism to keep libraries as customers. A bypass strategy moves the relationship to the end-user, leaving the library with little or no role. What LinkedIn will provide to Microsoft is a trove of end-user information (Google "data is the new oil"). By analogy, imagine what consumer markets would look like if Apple were to merge with Facebook……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Progress on pragmatic sharing of clinical data
We are interested in exploring pragmatic approaches to publishing articles about, and linked to, clinical or sensitive data as we recognise some data cannot be safely shared openly or might be too burdensome to fully anonymise (de-identify). However, we believe many of these datasets would benefit from the peer review and discoverability provided by publications in scholarly journals. In his post in the BioMed Central Blog, Hrynaszkiewicz shares experiences of clinical data sharing and introduces guidelines which will facilitate more effective sharing.
The blog post says (quote): Guidelines are only useful if they are put into practice and the benefits of sharing clinical research data need to be more comprehensively demonstrated to researchers. By working with interested repositories and early-adopter researchers, we are beginning to build a collection of examples of peer-reviewed articles linked to clinical data that are available with legitimate restrictions, summarised below. Scientific Data has also published in 2016 a meta-analysis of patient level data from eight prostate cancer clinical trials, where the data were obtained from a data request service, Project Data Sphere……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. How should academics interact with policy makers? Lessons on building a long-term advocacy strategy.
What can academics learn from how civil society organisations and NGOs approach policy impact? Julia Himmrich, in her post in The Impact Blog, argues that academics have a lot to gain from embracing the practices of long-term advocacy. Advocacy is about establishing relationships and creating a community of experts both in and outside of government who can give informed input on policies. Being more aware of the political aspects of research can help academics understand and re-evaluate their own arguments about the impact of research.
The blog post says (quote): For some advocacy is equivalent with political campaigns focused on one cause promoted by specialised civil society or interest groups. Instead advocacy is in fact a continuous process of establishing relationships and creating a community of experts both in and outside of government who can give informed input on policies. Those who try to influence foreign policy in civil society have developed networks over time and partnerships with many individuals and institutions. A key aspect of this is to identify and engage allies. In foreign policy these can be Parliamentarians, civil servants in various ministries, or representatives in specific missions. Just as important is the expert community outside of government as civil society, think tanks and academics with a similar expertise……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
5. Hootsuite for academia? How to increase the visibility, downloads and impact of publications using Kudos
Kudos is a web-based service that aims to increase the visibility of academic publications and their eventual impact. In her post in The Impact Blog, Charlie Rapple provides a background on why Kudos was created and what the team have learned since its launch in 2014. The service looks to provide a clear picture to researchers, publishers and institutions of how to optimise their communications activity. Recent investigations suggest when researchers explain and share their work, it can increase downloads of the full text by 23 percent.
The blog post says (quote): We built a platform for researchers to explain work in plain language and manage efforts to share it - a sort of Hootsuite for academia, with publications metrics added alongside communications metrics. This enabled us to map data about how, when and where work was shared against daily counts of (for example) downloads; we could then show researchers, publishers, libraries and societies which tools and networks seemed most effectively to increase the visibility and impact of publications. The platform launched in May 2014, and since then over 100,000 researchers, 65 publishers, 6 institutions and 9 societies have signed up. We have also partnered with the Altmetrics team at the Centre for HEalthy and Sustainable CitieS (CHESS), Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore) to analyse the data compiled so far……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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