United Kingdom

University of Birmingham has always worked closely with academics to identify and purchase key databases outright, to own the content and avoid the risk of rising recurring costs. However, what happens when interest in the resource starts to fade, and when it is no longer new and exciting? In this talk I will cover the different ways we have been tackling the issue of less visible, owned-outright electronic resources, and how we have worked to reposition them with the aim of higher usage and greater academic engagement. I will explain how we identified our under-used resources, and will use case studies to demonstrate the different routes we used to spark interest in these resources, and to raise their usage – such as engaging academics in curriculum mapping and asking for short story submissions for National Storytelling Week. I will also discuss how we are measuring impact, along with lessons learned so far, and planned next steps.

UKSG Annual Conference 2023

Increasing Collections Engagement at UoB – identifying and promoting purchased but underused resources

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.

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 transition to open access for scholarly content such as books and journals enables research to be widely and freely available to readers worldwide. As publishers, funders, libraries and researchers are increasingly engaged in making scholarly books available open access (OA), how do these OA versions find their way through the supply chain for scholarly books? Which, for a large part, is built around print and digital (non-OA) books. As part of this session we will hear from the OAPEN & Thoth team – two open metadata service providers that are part of the Open Book Collective and work together to increase discoverability for open access books. Jointly, we’ll take a closer look at the OA ebook supply chain and how these solutions contribute to bringing OA books to their readers, the challenges along the way and how we can ensure, collectively, that OA books are as (or more) discoverable compared to their closed counterparts.

The [in]discoverability of open access books, taking action to improve the OA ebook supply chain

Evidence shows that women in academia are more likely to publish sole-authored papers than men and our findings add the additional insight that this occurs predominantly early in a woman’s career. There are several possible explanations. Earlier in their careers, women often seek tenure, and sole-authored publications are very important for promotion. Moreover, younger women may also have young children: family obligations can impede collaboration or travel. Women have been shown to have smaller networks than male counterparts, and this may reduce possible partnership opportunities. Further, collaboration can result in second or third authorship, which would reduce the impact of women’s contribution; women may be unwilling to receive less credit. Other reasons may be discrimination and bias, but these are less likely than the reasons suggested above.

Gender and ethnicity productivity patterns in the scientific literature

In September 2021, we made our formal commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) across our external Research & Solutions activities. Since then, our journals, books and magazines are elevating issues of diversity, representation, equity, justice and much more in both their content and their processes. From launching the industry’s first guide to content that may be harmful to human population groups, a new approach to ethics dumping and helicopter research, a transgender name change policy and Nature’s first ever guest edition on racism in science: we’ve taken steps to integrate DEI into the way we work and the content we create. In this session, we’ll talk about our experience so far turning strategy into practice, and the projects we’re planning for the near future from language guides to data collection

Advancing DEI in research publishing – putting strategy into practice

Dynamica a calm, modern university infrastructure software for the future of Open Access publishing. No paying to publish or read, and all the automated workflow management for researchers, libraries, and funders in one tool. Stockholm University launched a pilot of this software during Open Access week in 2022. In this session, we will be honestly going through what didn't work, what happened over the months, what we learned, and what the status of this pilot will be as of April 2023.

Innovation vs Onboarding for the Future of Academic Publishing: Status of the Dynamica Pilot with Stockholm University

This breakout session will scrutinise two very different scholarly communications teams and identify the similarities, differences and chasms within. Each team represents a ‘side’ of this inequality: A. x When you ‘have’ - what do you focus on? B. x When you ‘have not’ - how to achieve when your resources are very limited? We will share our different experiences of challenges we have in common, such as grappling with Transformative Agreements; establishing processes to support data-driven decision-making; and advocacy and securing buy-in from senior leaders. We’ll also consider some challenges which are specific to our local context; how we have addressed these; and identify future issues on the horizon. Using our own institutional perspectives, we hope to invite discussion on how we can do better, for and by each other, recognising that by acknowledging similar uncertainties, we may find solutions that can benefit all of the academy.

Certain in our uncertainty: Acknowledging, addressing and achieving in an unequal scholarly communications landscape

Abstract Research Portal Denmark collects and exhibits data from global, national, and institutional sources for Danish research in four parallel databases, including publications which have been mapped to one or more of the 17 SDGs. Unsurprisingly, the portal's databases show that due to the sources' SDG mapping methods, there is a big difference in the number of SDG tagged publications from different sources, as well as which- and how many SDGs the respective publications have been mapped to. The presentation will discuss how – and whether you can handle this inconsistency in an analytical context in a responsible way.

SDG’s in Research Portal Denmark – providing insights on a national level

Open Access Monographs simultaneously represent a challenge and opportunity for both researchers, academic libraries and publishers Firstly in supporting academics to navigate the changing monograph landscape and achieving a wider readership, whilst also complying with funder policies. Secondly in terms of libraries working in dialogue with publishers to support the wider development of the OA monograph sector, as well as ensuring students and researchers have continued access to optimum content. Thirdly for publishers in terms of financial sustainability.

Open Access Monographs, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

The evolving world of academic publication can give rise to complex questions around publication ethics involving multiple stakeholders: researchers, journal editors, publishers, and different teams within an academic institution. Publication ethics may be covered by institutional policies, by research group codes of conduct, by journal and publisher policies, or collaborative agreements. If an issue arises, this may be complex, leading to delays and extra work for all those involved. In this panel session we will explore publication ethics issues from a wide range of stakeholder perspectives to consider where the various responsibilities lie and more effective ways to resolve issues.

Cold comfort or hot potato: who’s responsible for publication ethics?

In this session we look at how Library Services at Birmingham responded to researchers wanting to leverage the UK’s copyright rules around text and data mining (TDM) for non-commercial research purposes. Our talk will cover our journey from initial engagement with researchers, to exploring infrastructure issues with IT colleagues, and encountering skills gaps as we look to develop new services and activities that meet the needs of those using TDM, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) or Big Data methodologies in teaching and research.

A TDM journey: understanding user needs and developing library support

As a department of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Press and Assessment shares the University’s aim of contributing to a sustainable future for all. Setting a target of reducing our energy-related carbon emissions to zero by 2048 is one way in which we aim to add social and environmental value to the world and minimise impact on the environment and the communities where we operate. Many other universities represented at UKSG will have similar targets and we have much to learn from each other about how to achieve them. Working collaboratively with our partners, suppliers and stakeholders is essential to scale up global progress. Find out how we are addressing the challenge of environmental sustainability at CUP&A, including how we are decarbonising buildings, analysing our own Scope 3 data and tackling the knotty problems of reducing emissions associated with both print and the digital hosting of publications.

Increasing Collections Engagement at UoB – identifying and promoting purchased but underused resources

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The [in]discoverability of open access books, taking action to improve the OA ebook supply chain

Increasing Collections Engagement at UoB – identifying and promoting purchased but underused resources

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Next from UKSG Annual Conference 2023

The [in]discoverability of open access books, taking action to improve the OA ebook supply chain

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