Month: October 2018

Open Access Week: Some Current Trends

Posted on by Kevin Gunn

This week is Open Access Week (October 22nd-28th, 2018)! A lot has happened in Open Access in the past year so I will try to encapsulate the latest trends. Why care about Open Access? Our former CUA colleague, Marian Taliaferro, Digital Scholarship Librarian at the College of William and Mary explains why in 5 Reasons You Should Care about Open Access.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of Open Access, the term refers to “the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results—to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives.” (SPARC*).  The Open Access movement has been around for years but the public declaration began in 2002 with the Budapest Statement on Open Access Publishing (2002; 10th anniversary statement in 2012), followed closely by the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access (2003).

For a current understanding, see the following video:

 

 

New Publishing Models?

The Author Publications Charges (APC) model is not working. Other transactional models need to be explored. Sven Fund writes in the Scholarly Kitchen about the evolving structure of open access author pay models to one where there are still operational challenges to open access. OA2020 is another initiative that has gained prominence recently. OA2020 advocates for accelerating the change to an Open Access business model. OA2020’s mission is to eventually move subscription journals to an open access model based on a paper published by the Max Planck Digital Library in 2015 demonstrating that there is enough money in the journal publishing ecosystem to permit a transition to open access. Written by Ralf Schimmer, Kai Geschuhn and Andreas Vogler and titled “Disrupting the subscription journals’ business model for the necessary large-scale transformation to open access,” the paper outlines the steps the global community would need to take for the transition.

Institutions who want to be involved in the OA2020 can sign an “Expression of Interest” and scholars can advocate at their home insitutions.  College and Research Libraries News has an article focusing on U.S. academic institutions. Rachael Samberg, Richard A. Schneider, Anneliese Taylor, and Michael Wolfe, in their article What’s Behind OA2020?, ask why only five U.S. insitutions have signed on so far.

Another point Fund makes that is worth considering pertains to academia and libraries in particular:

The other key element, at least in some parts of the world, is the internal structure of the library. It not only follows the interests of faculty and students, but (at least in Europe) it also quite often has its internal professional rules. The slow dissemination of OA is a vivid example of how stability in the academy comes with a lot of disadvantages. Libraries find it hard to shift budgets more radically, in part caused by the fact that they became addicted to easy solutions like the Big Deal, that in turn tie up a large part of their budgets. APC funds fit the scheme: They are easy to decide upon, and their existence appeases those advocates on campus that would like to see more alternatives.

There is a push for having all research papers funded by funders made open access. In Europe this move was announced on September 4th by Robert-Jan Smits, the Open Access Envoy of the European Commission, and Marc Schiltz, the President of Science Europe.  Plan S is to ensure that by 2020 all research papers arising from European funding are made open access immediately on publication. An interview with Robert-Jan Smits outlines some of the elements of the plan, including problems with Plan S — pushback from publishers AND researchers, no perceived role of institutional repositories, and contrary to principles of academic freedom — are some of the issues discussed. Plan S is not the first call for changing research assessment. The Leiden Manifesto and the UK report “The Metric Tide” were both released in 2015 and essentially went nowhere. A paper on the Leiden proposal titled “The Leiden Manifesto Under Review: What Libraries Can Learn From It” was published in 2017.

Sally Rumsey, head of Scholarly Communications & RD at the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, has noticed a change in the researchers themselves:

I detect a more subtle culture change that is happening at the grass roots i.e. by the researchers themselves. To disseminate your research in the past, it was necessary to follow the standard traditional publishing route – publish in a respectable journal and those people who have paid can read your paper – plus you can post a few copies to your mates. Today, in order to get your research noticed and ‘out there,’ there are many more options available. The ‘standard’ route is being enhanced, and many researchers don’t want to be confined to a single model, or to limited sharing of their work. Open Access: reflections on change. Many are taking advantage of the diversity that the internet offers: how research findings are presented and distributed, such as articles with integrated data, open commentary to published findings, new models of peer review and comments, registered reports, and rapid publication. Add to this the immediacy of promotion by social media, academic networks, and altmetrics scores that can give rapid indication of one type of impact. In some disciplines, particularly the sciences, authors are becoming frustrated with continuing barriers to access and re-use as they habitually adopt a more open stance. There remain some areas of confusion and mistrust of OA, but I detect a definite sense of acceptance of and shift to ‘open.’

Rumsey goes on to write that libraries have set up services for supporting open access research initiatives. ORCIDs are one such attempt in the discovery and dissemenation of research through the use of unique identifiers. Another article from the Scholarly Kitchen focuses on libraries: Libraries Face a Future of Open Access. Read the comments too!

 

Open Source Platform for Data by Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee is working on an open source platform for data called “Solid”. One response to his work is titled “A Critical Review of the Solid Platform.”

 

Open Educational Resources

UNESCO defines Open Education Resources as:

any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.

OER is moving forward albeit slowly.  A year-end article by Mike Silagadze in EdSurge talks about 2017 being a pivotal point in OER adoption: “OER Had Its Breakthrough in 2017. Next Year, It Will Become an Essential Teaching Tool.” He writes that that three key tests will need to be met: OER content quality needs to improve, OER needs bells and whistles, and OER needs to be easier to find and adopt.

For more information on this movement in general check out these sites:

SPARC’s Open Education

UNESCO Open Educational Resources

Affordable Course Content and Open Educational Resources SPEC Kit (2016)

OASIS – Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool for making the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches from 66 different sources and contains over 164,000 records. OASIS is a project developed at SUNY Geneseo’s Milne Library with consulting from Alexis Clifton, SUNY OER Services Executive Director.

 

Open Data and Academic Institutions

Christine Borgman, Distinguished Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA, gave a lecture on October 9, 2018 titled “Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier,” at Harvard University. Borgman sees the growth and availability of digital data resources collected by universities as a balancing act between academic freedom, stewardship, trust, privacy, and confidentiality, on one hand, and the value of using this data for science and commercial ends:

Researchers provide open access to their data as a condition for obtaining grant funding or publishing results in journals, leading to an explosion of available scholarly content. Universities have automated many aspects of teaching, instruction, student services, libraries, personnel management, building management, and finance, leading to a profusion of discrete data about the activities of individuals. Many of these data, both research and operational, fall outside privacy regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, and PII. Universities see great value of these data for learning analytics, faculty evaluation, strategic decisions, and other sensitive matters. Commercial entities, governments, and private individuals also see value in these data and are besieging universities with requests for access.

 

 

Borgman, C. L. (2017, November). Open Data, Trust, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier. The 10th Annual BCLT Privacy Lecture, Berkeley, CA. Retrieved from https://berkeley.app.box.com/s/v35vb4gee2iloxkxeu94l7a3it4wbx2y

Borgman, C. L. (2018). Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 33(2), 287–336. http://btlj.org/data/articles2018/vol33/33_2/Borgman_Web.pdf

 

Advocating for Open Access

There are a number of ways to promote Open Access:

1. Join The Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) and advocate for OA at your insitution.

2. Publish in Open Access journals. How? See the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

3. Advocacy Organizations for OA. Worldwide directory.

4. UNC Health Sciences Library: Open Access and Scholarly Communications: Advocating for OA

The Archivist’s Nook: Catholic Yank on the Western Front, 1918

Posted on by William J. Shepherd
Weary but hopeful soldiers gaze skyward from “I Was There!” With the Yanks in France: Sketches made on the Western Front 1917 — 1919 by Pvt. C. Leroy Baldridge A.E.F., 1919, p. 4. O’Connell Papers, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University.

As part of our ongoing efforts to mark the centenary of the First World War a previous blog post explored the 1917 experiences of Connecticut Catholic Robert Lincoln O’Connell training as a combat engineer in Washington, D.C. This is documented by the collection of digitized letters to his mother and sisters housed in the Archives of The Catholic University of America. Now we turn to his 1918 accounts of the war as O’Connell and his unit, the First Engineer Regiment, part of the famed First Infantry Division and vanguard of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in Europe, saw harrowing service on the Western Front in France during the war’s culmination. To complete their military instruction, which began in Washington, O’Connell and the First Engineers were trained by the French in the construction of trenches, dugouts, command posts, heavy weapons sites, observation posts, wire entanglements, and other obstacles. They also learned to destroy enemy fences by cutting wire or using explosives. In addition, they drilled as regular infantry in the use of rifles, hand grenades, and gas masks.

The First Engineers served near Toul, January-April 1918, where they quarried rock, repaired roads, built dugouts, command posts, and wire entanglements while often being shelled and gassed as they worked. American efforts to strengthen the positions in Cantigny, where the engineers served, April-July 1918, helped the French thwart a German offensive. To contain yet another German attack, the First Infantry Division shifted to the Aisne-Marne sector, with the engineers deployed to the Compiegne forest where O’Connell was wounded on July 18. The engineers not only overcame natural obstacles, but fought in the front line and suffered many casualties, O’Connell among them. During his rest and recuperation, he missed the fighting in the St. Mihiel Salient, but after recovering returned to service in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in October and was there when the war ended on November 11, 1918.

A pontoon bridge built by the First Engineers. O’Connell Papers, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University.

The O’Connell collection includes fourteen of his often breezy letters and eleven postcards sent home from France. In his March 18, 1918 missive to his mother he noted:

I am writing each week now because I have my own paper, in case I haven’t a chance to reach a Y.M.C.A. tent or an S.A. but there are few places that those people haven’t opened buildings. In this village, the two huts face each other, across the street, but the Y.M. draws the crowd and the money because they have a better equipped place. A real band has been around town for the last week and the way they grind out ragtime is a treat…Yesterday was Patrick’s day but only one man had any green and that was a scrap of weed in his buttonhole, that he had brought back from the trenches. He seemed to be the only good Irisher in sight.

In the same letter he muses about his enlistment and service:

This letter will probably reach you about the end of my first year in the Army. If you remember, it was Apr. 10, when I went up to Hartford to see if they would pass me. It has been a short but lively year and I hope I get home before another passes but I’m glad I got in early because the drafted crowd certainly didn’t have places like Washington Barracks to train in or warm weather, either, but they will have the laugh on us when they get over here and find things cleaned up.

Colorful French postcard sent by O’Connell to his mother in July 1918. O’Connell Papers, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University.

O’Connell was wounded in action on July 18, 1918, as he explained in his July 24 letter to his mother:

There was a little round hole in my leggin, at the sore spot, so I took my rifle and started back for the dressing station, about half a mile away. It was just an emergency station, though, and they told us to keep going, to a larger place in a big cave. There was five in the party, by now, either limping or nursing a bad arm and that cave was almost two miles farther along. I’d have walked twenty, I think, to get some relief from those shells….When you get this, I’ll be back with the company again, but I’ll have had this rest, anyway, just for a little hole less than half an inch deep.

Robert Lincoln O’Connell in his Army uniform, ca. 1917-1918. O’Connell Papers, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University.

He apparently downplayed his injury for his mother’s sake because he did not return to active duty until October, demonstrated in several later letters and postcards, such as his postcard of September 27 to his mother where he said:

Ought to be back with the boys in a week or so, Leaving the barracks at this place. A few of the boys are here after the St. Michael drive. No mail since early in July. Guess never will get it all. Have had a fine rest. Seems as if all the original company had been resting. Wish this darned war was over. I want to see what is going on at home.

And, finally, his postcard of October 15 announcing his return to his unit, plus additional commentary:

Got back to the company about a week ago. Received four letters, one from you, and from Mame and Helen. Better than money. Paid last in June. Did you receive the $20 from the YMCA and the piece of German airplane cover? I don’t need any money. I can send it, instead. Hope all are well. Good news in the papers, lately.

The war ended on November 11, 1918, and the First Engineers arrived in Germany’s Rhineland shortly thereafter as part of the army of occupation, but that is another story for a future blog post. O’Connell’s wartime experiences are a well preserved and freely available testament at Catholic University that give voice to the millions of soldiers of all nations whose accounts have not survived.

The Archivist’s Nook: The CatholicU Campus Coffin Cavalcade

Posted on by Shane MacDonald
The 1930s Tower mastered early clickbait headlines.

Imagine you are heading out to Homecoming, visiting with returning alumni and catching the football game. There are numerous events you wish to catch during the weekend, but one in particular that all your friends are talking about…the “annual coffin parade.” Checking the student newspaper for more details on this strange event, you learn that during the match against the Western Maryland (now McDaniels) Green Terror, “on Saturday morning, C.U. cheerleaders will drag the casket out on the field…for the edification of the Terror team and rooters.” Do you decide to attend?

Sometimes when one is digging through the archives, one unearths all manner of buried tales. The tradition of the so-called “Western Maryland Coffin” is one such a tale. Similar to the Old Oaken Bucket of Indiana-Purdue or the Michigan-Michigan State Little Brown Jug, the Western Maryland-Catholic coffin was a rivalry trophy handed off between the schools. Whoever won the grudge match each season would carry off the macabre reward to their home campus. While the tradition of such trophies is not unusual, the choice of object is certainly eyebrow-raising.

The November 14, 1935page 5 Tower reports the origins for this curious tradition as follows:

The annual homecoming event between the Green Terrors of Western Maryland and the Flying Cardinals, of Catholic U. brings to light one of the those hoary tales of tradition that the “old boys” love to retell. It has to do with the famous Western Maryland Coffin. Now way back yonder in 1913, when the Terrors first met with the Cards, one of the C.U. carpenters who was evidently imbued with the C.U. victory spirit thought the best thing to do with the Terrors who were to be beaten, was to bury them, so he went to work and built the coffin.

With a score of 17-6 in favor of Catholic, the coffin seems to have done the trick and remained on campus. The two teams would not meet on the gridiron again until 1924, with the coffin reemerging. However, this time, the Terror defeated the Cardinals. Rather than surrender the coffin to their victorious rivals, it is reported that:

[Coach Eddie] La Fond and some of his cohorts stole the object of the argument – the coffin…after beating around the bush, La Fond admitted the theft, but said that it was impossible for him to return the article because he has mislaid it.

St. Thomas Hall, looking perfectly like the scene of a spooky story.

Lest you think that a coffin’s shadow had passed from the campus, the lost trophy was located a decade later! In 1934, the Tower exclaimed, “The Terrors’ Ghost Coffin, Aged Sarcophagus Unearthed,” declaring that the superintendent of maintenance had located the long-lost coffin in the basement of St. Thomas Hall.

St. Thomas Hall, also known as the Middleton House, was the oldest structure on the campus. Originally built as a summer cottage (named Sidney) in 1803 by newspaperman Samuel Harrison Smith, who had relocated to Washington at the invitation of President Thomas Jefferson. (During this period, Smith would host many dignitaries at the House, including Jefferson and James and Dolly Madison.) Sold in the 1830s to James and Erasmus J. Middleton, father and son respectively. With the surrounding land purchased for the new Catholic University in 1886, the House became a residence, first for the Paulist Fathers from 1889 until 1914, and later a dormitory for lay students until 1933. From that date, until its demolition in 1970, it housed the School of Social Service…and apparently a misplaced coffin.

After its rediscovery in 1934 – and some quick repairs – the coffin was triumphantly paraded around campus during the following week’s pep rally events. And despite a Terror victory (2-0) over the Cardinals that fall, the Western Maryland team seemed uninterested in carrying off the coffin, with the Tower declaring that, “Catholic University is particularly proud of the fact that this coffin has never left the C.U. campus.”

The following season, the Cardinals would win against the Terrors (19-6) and go on to win the 1936 Orange Bowl. Eddie LaFond, the once tomb raider, was by this point the longstanding and nationally recognized head of the University’s boxing, football, and basketball programs.

Eddie LaFond (center) at the Orange Bowl, 1936.

With the Orange Bowl win and the tradition of the casket well-established, the student press trumpeted the presence of the coffin during the fall semester of 1936. The homecoming events even advertised a halftime show, which included “the annual coffin parade.” But the parade was not to be that year or any years after. In the dead of night, the coffin vanished days before the big game. The Tower was quick to blamepage 3 Western Maryland, stating, “This conclusion was drawn quite logically because of the fact that it would be of value to only the Green and Gold [Terror] followers.”

However, while this archivist plans to check further into the whereabouts of these legendary trophy, there is a part of me that believes the coffin is still stashed away somewhere on campus…

Digital Scholarship Fundamentals Workshop: Cleaning and Manipulating Data

Posted on by Kevin Gunn

Thu., Oct. 25, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm, Mullen Library Instruction Room

When working with your dataset, have you wondered how to remove ‘null’ or ‘N/A’ from fields, handle different spellings of words, or determining whether a field name is ambiguous? When interviewed, many data scientists complain that the most tedious, time-consuming aspect of any project is the cleaning and manipulating of data. For this workshop, we will use the open access software, OpenRefine, to clean, manipulate, and refine a dataset before analysis. Since this workshop is focused on saving you time by discovering and avoiding common pitfalls in data preparation, a brief foray into regular expressions will be useful. You are welcome to bring your own dataset.

Please RSVP to gunn@cua.edu.

Open Access Week Events: What is ORCID?

Posted on by Kevin Gunn

Open Access Week is October 22 – 28, 2018. Open Access “is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results—to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives.” (SPARC*). As part of Open Access Week, CUA Libraries is offering a number of initiatives.

What is ORCID? As a faculty member or a graduate student, you should be establishing a scholarly presence and managing your scholarly reputation. Have you ever wondered:

  • if you have a common name or publish under various aliases (e.g. John Smith and J. Smith) whether you are getting credit for your research?
  • how to save time by integrating your manuscript and grant submission workflows (that is, by not having to enter your same information over and over again)?
  • how you can keep track of your scholarly output?

The solution is having a persistent digital identifier such an ORCID ID. Acquiring an ORCID account is necessary for professional advancement. In fact, many journals require that authors have ORCID accounts for manuscript submissions. Watch this video for a quick overview.

What is ORCID? from ORCID on Vimeo.

ORCID stands for the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. With an ORCID ID, you can integrate your research over various platforms such as Kudos, Mendeley, Scopus, Web of Science, and Humanities Commons. For example, ScienceOpen uses ORCID ID with “enabling verified users to integrate their published content, build collections, and perform post-publication peer review across publishers and journals for free.”

Furthermore, funding organizations like the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health: SciENcv: Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae are requiring ORCID ID.

 

Publishers are collecting ORCID IDs during manuscript submission (e.g. Taylor and Francis), scholars are using it in Open Access platforms like PLOS (Public Library of Open Science), and even subscription databases like the Modern Language Association International Bibliography use ORCID IDs to distinguish scholars.

As part of Open Access Week (October 22-28th, 2018), CUA Libraries will have tables set up in various buildings on campus for students and faculty to sign up for an ORCID account.

  • MONDAY October 22nd
    Pangborn Portico
  • TUESDAY October 23rd
    McMahon Foyer
  • FRIDAY October 26th
    Mullen Library

All times are 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM. Drop by for 30 seconds and we will sign you up!

Your ORCID ID will belong to you throughout your scholarly career so acquire this unique identifier to showcase your research and ensure proper attribution of your work. If you cannot make the table sessions, follow these instructions in getting started:

1. Claim your free ORCID ID at http://orcid.org/register

2. Import your research outputs and add biographical information using our automated import wizards

3. Use your ORCID when you apply for grants, submit publications, or share your CV. Learn more at http://orcid.org

 

Need help or have questions? Please contact Kevin Gunn, Coordinator of Digital Scholarship (gunn@cua.edu).

FACULTY TALK OCT. 24 – Andrew Earle Simpson to Perform Original Piano Score to STAGE STRUCK (1925)

Posted on by Thad Garrett

On Wednesday, October 24, at 5:15 p.m. in the May Gallery of Mullen Library, composer and Ordinary Professor of Music Andrew Earle Simpson will discuss the art of composing for silent film. Following a brief presentation, he will perform his new original piano soundtrack live to a showing of a recently released edition of the 1925 silent film Stage Struck, starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Allan Dwan.

Popcorn and beverages will be served.

Learn more about Professor Simpson and his work at AndrewESimpson.com.

FACULTY TALK OCT. 24 – Andrew Earle Simpson to Perform Original Piano Score to STAGE STRUCK (1925)

Posted on by Thad Garrett

On Wednesday, October 24, at 5:15 p.m. in the May Gallery of Mullen Library, composer and Ordinary Professor of Music Andrew Earle Simpson will discuss the art of composing for silent film. Following a brief presentation, he will perform his new original piano soundtrack live to a showing of a recently released edition of the 1925 silent film Stage Struck, starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Allan Dwan.

Popcorn and beverages will be served.

Learn more about Professor Simpson and his work at AndrewESimpson.com.

WUNDERBAR: A Celebration of German Film – Kanopy + Goethe Film Collection

Posted on by Thad Garrett

Das muss gefeiert werden! – Time to Celebrate!

Kanopy has partnered with the Goethe Institut to promote A Celebration of German Film as part of their Wunderbar Together event highlighting German-American friendship. During the entire month of October, CatholicU students and faculty have free access to a specially curated collection from Kanopy’s German film catalogue—the Goethe Film Collection! Check it out now at cua.kanopystreaming.com.