United Kingdom

Some UK HEIs have begun to examine whether legacies of colonialism or other injustices are present in curricula. Imperial College has developed a novel computer-based method that combines our reading list management system, a journal database and the World Bank to evaluate the distribution of authors cited on reading lists by affiliated country income status. The results applied to modules over different time periods will be shared as well as our broader thoughts and experience of the implications, opportunities and limitations of quantitative data to support decolonisation, particularly in a STEM setting.

UKSG Annual Conference 2022

Data and decolonising the curriculum

technical paper

The UKSG Annual Conference is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar which attracts delegates each year from around the world - librarians, publishers, content providers, consultants and intermediaries. The conference combines high-quality plenary presentations, lightning talks and breakout sessions with entertaining social events and trade exhibition. This year we are delivering Telford both in-person and digitally.

The UKSG Annual Conference is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar which attracts delegates each year from around the world - librarians, publishers, content providers, consultants and intermediaries.

The pandemic laid bare a trend many educators throughout the world had already noticed. The near reverence with which students used to regard serious newspapers had largely evaporated and, in some cases, been replaced with outright contempt. I taught scholarly research and writing at the start of our new millennium and, like most of my colleagues, I encouraged skepticism toward the media. We taught our students that even the most prestigious newspapers shouldn’t be taken for gospel and that all articles were susceptible to error and bias. Today, this kind of instruction is neither necessary nor helpful. For the most part, students are already skeptical of the media and, where they detect opinions in news sources different from their own, they are increasingly likely to dismiss everything in those sources as fundamentally unreliable. In this session, we will consider the main reasons students have lost faith in the media and explore non-naïve and responsible ways of building it back.

From reverence to contempt: students’ evolving attitudes toward the media and the urgent need for instructional recalibration

Challenges posed by COVID-19 have highlighted the importance of collaboration between libraries, archives, and academics. At Edge Hill University we have established ‘Research Catalyst’, a research group aiming to advance the productive and positive relationship between colleagues in Library and Learning Services (LSS) and the Department of History, English and Creative Writing, and positioning LSS as a co-lead in the research process with the potential of co-supervising or leading research projects. We have established a Memorandum of Understanding defining the purpose of our group and reflecting the complimentary agendas of librarians and academics. This talk introduces Research Catalyst and our ambitions for the future.

Research Catalyst: situating the Archive and library staff at the centre of the research process

The presentation argues that we need a new perspective on ‘open’ in the light of changing technology and the needs of academic libraries. Perceptions differ about what constitutes ‘open’ in terms of the wide variety of systems and solutions deployed by libraries. 

With the rise of cloud computing, software ‘platforms’ are on the rise. The value of a platform. as opposed to a software ‘product’ comes not only from its own features, but from its ability to connect to external solutions, data, and processes. To do this it needs to be ‘open’ in terms of data and the ability to integrate, via (typically open) application programming Interfaces (APIs), with other products which may be developed by customers or provided by other independent software vendors (ISVs). The result is that we see open source library system platforms such as Folio integrating with proprietary software solutions such as reading lists. Equally we see proprietary library system platforms making use of open source software and enabling third parties to integrate to add functionality and re-use data and services provides by the platform.

Open systems and solutions for libraries – a new perspective

This presentation will outline our experiences with launching an open textbook publishing initiative at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) in cooperation with the university press and reflect on the learning points of the ongoing project.
The goal of this session is to support and encourage other university presses and libraries with small budgets to start their own open textbook pilots by sharing our lessons learned along the way and showing how rewarding and low-entry, albeit challenging, the process could be.
We will substantiate our point with examples drawn from the experiences of our open textbook authors, ranging from involving students’ input to making use of the interactive features of a publishing platform. We would like to demonstrate that a successful and innovative open textbook publishing pilot can be both low-cost and high-value, with space to experiment and center around authors’ creative ideas, student needs, and open pedagogical practices.

Open textbook publishing 101: A quick start to your university's open textbook initiative.

The Open Access Books Network (OABN) is a relatively new kid on the block, but it punches above its weight. Our most significant series so far was the Voices from the OA Books Community, devoted to exploring different aspects of policy for OA books.

During the heated discussions, what were the main areas of consensus and which topics emerged as especially controversial? Which aspects of OA policy for books perplexed the community and provoked more questions than answers? In this session we will hear from session leaders and participants as they paint a nuanced picture of a necessary but complex endeavour: how to directly engage the OA books community in developing policies that will materially affect its future.

Now we’ve heard it all! Engaging the community in shaping OA policy for books.

The shift to a more equitable open access ecosystem requires collaborative work between values aligned stakeholders. Libraries and non-profit publishers often share similar missions, but existing structures on both sides can work to create barriers to collaboration. The system remains configured to work with paid subscriptions or perpetual licensing, alongside print procurement, which can work against implementing OA models. What are the major structural impediments for OA? How can smaller and non-profit presses cooperate with libraries to create OA positive structures? We will use the Jisc Open Access Community Framework, MIT Press’s D2O, and PLoS CAP models as case studies for change.

Structuring Open Access Structures: Libraries partnering with non-profit publishers

The role and place of universities in society are shifting and various initiatives seem to bridge the gap between science and citizens. But the framework, knowledge and possible implementation of these new standards seem diverse and somehow not consistent enough to produce sustainable change. This breakout session aims to frame the field, layout strategic options and dwell into concrete cases.

The moderators are members of the LIBER "Citizen Science Working Group". In this session, we will illustrate the interests, the thrill and the achievements working to improve the academic mission in order to better serve the society.

Policy and strategy: International trends, guidelines and recommendations (Thomas Kaarsted)
Strategy and implementation: Supporting Citizen Science in the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship (Kirsty Wallis)
Bridging the gap: SDU Citizen Science Knowledge Center as facilitator between science as society (Anne Kathrine Overgaard)

Bridging universities with society: policy, strategy, and ind practice

Read and publish deals or Transformative Agreements, through which funders and institutions pay for knowledge dissemination rather than access, are a recent pathway toward a more open future. Yet we lack a framework for assessing the combined value of the open publishing and comprehensive read access that these deals provide. Perceived and actual value and price vary according to whether an institution is a major content producer (publish institution) or content consumer (read institution). To assess the value from these differing perspectives, we’ll use top-down data from Delta Think’s OA Data & Analytics Tool and bottom up data from Our Research’s Unsub.

Towards a model for assessing the value of transformative agreements for both "read" and "publish" institutions

There are two main aspects to the AI for academic publishing in use today: the algorithm, and the corpus. Somewhat surprisingly, most attention has been focused on algorithms, yet the corpus may be even more important, from the point of view of potential bias. There is already plenty of experience within the library at measuring the take-up and effect (and limitations) of digital tools. Using some real-life case studies, this presentation gives suggestions for assessing AI tools compared with current manual processes, and considers how use cases can help identify new ways of deploying of AI.

How to evaluate AI tools - and how the library can help

With momentum for Open Access (OA) books on the rise, there have been calls by various stakeholders to open up the library and develop OA book infrastructures to further support the transition to OA for books. One of the key infrastructures for OA books is the OAPEN Library that helps stakeholders tracking usage of OA books. During this session we will show how OAPEN can provide usage data for different stakeholders and seek to explore additional kinds of data that libraries may find useful to inform their OA book strategies and decision-making processes to support OA book publishing initiatives.

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From reverence to contempt: students’ evolving attitudes toward the media and the urgent need for instructional recalibration

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From reverence to contempt: students’ evolving attitudes toward the media and the urgent need for instructional recalibration

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