PubTech Radar Scan: Issue 4
I thought long and hard about sending out a newsletter given the current situation but putting together these links took my mind off virus related news and I am hoping a little bit of publishing tech talk will be a welcome diversion for you too.
Launches and pilots
Cecile Janssens has launched CoCites, a citation-based method for searching scientific literature. See summary thread on Twitter, the full paper or Aaron Tay’s quick analysis on Twitter.
CWTS Leiden and Radboud University have launched a Platform for Responsible Editorial Policies (PREP). “It facilitates journal editors to become transparent about their editorial procedures, advises journal editors and publishers on potential improvements of their peer review procedures, and presents integrated information about the variety of review procedures currently in use.”
Elsevier's International Center for the Study of Research has launched a new cloud-based computational platform, ICSR Lab, which enables informetrics researchers and librarians to analyze large structured datasets, including those that power Elsevier solutions such as Scopus and PlumX.
Hindawi has successfully piloted the use of Writefull (an AI-based language platform which authors can use on manuscripts for submission) to improve the grammar, spelling and specific scientific language in their work.
Academic publishing tech news
European Commission has awarded the contract for setting up an open access publishing platform for Horizon 2020 beneficiaries to F1000Research Ltd.
67 Bricks have a nice case study about their work to validate the usefulness of EMBO’s SourceData initiative. “In molecular and cell biology, most of the experimental data published in scientific journals is locked inside figures, illustrations and tables. These are not machine-readable and so they are hidden from search tools and from further examination and reanalysis. EMBO instigated a programme to unlock this information through its SourceData initiative involving manually enriching article figures by creating granular metadata to describe each experiment succinctly and precisely.”
Jay Patel has a thread on Twitter thinking about how to make Peer Review faster, smarter, and nicer.
Coko’s Editoria (open source book production workflow system) has received additional two-year funding commitment from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant will be used to support development, investigate research community sustainability models and the hiring of a new community manager.
Paul Martin Eve et al. have published Lessons From the Open Library of Humanities in LIBER Quarterly which highlights the less glamorous but essential work need to run a publishing platform.
OASPA has issued an RFI for the OA Switchboard. They are looking for third parties with experience in the scholarly information or solutions space, and evidence of competency in developing and delivering open source solutions. [Deadline to confirm participation 25 March 2020, deadline for responses is 1 April 2020]
Andra Waagmeester et al. describe the data contained within Wikidata, the open-source tools built to add information to add and update it and a couple of use cases in their paper Science Forum: Wikidata as a knowledge graph for the life sciences
Jennifer Kemp and Howard Ratner have updated the Metadata 2020 initiative’s best practices. I really like the first one “Connect to what already exists”
The Authority File has a helpful series of podcasts about Seamless Access and how it works.
Trends
State of Digital Publishing have published their 9 key trends for digital publishing in 2020 or 3 minute video summary. Not all of these are directly relevant to academic publishing, might be a while before academic articles are widely distributed in a stories format 😉, but I think the resurgence of SEO is going to become more important “A consequence of pivoting to the reader’s needs is the resurgence of SEO as a key driver of traffic growth. Putting the user in the center means creating the content the user would search for.”
Events, surveys and grants
The eLife Innovation Sprint 2020 will [hopefully?] take place September 2–3 in Cambridge. (Deadline for project proposals is 13 April). See also the useful write up of lessons learned from previous Sprints.
Jennifer Kemp will be presenting at the free-to-attend webinar, The Metadata Power Hour, from ALPSP and sponsored by Copyright Clearance Center on April 21.
For medics, Scite wants to help to improve their deep learning model to better identify supporting and contradicting citations. Take part in a contest via DiagnosUs.
On Thursday 9th April, 2pm BST, Media Voices Live is hosting a live episode to look at examples of publishers who are adapting to the pandemic, business and editorial innovation despite the challenges, and what these changes will mean for the industry in the years to come.
Scholastica is conducting this survey to develop a report on how society and university publishers are currently approaching journal production and open access publishing, and what their future priorities are in both areas. Questions span core production and access areas, including article typesetting/layout processes and priorities, metadata tagging processes and priorities and OA journal development approaches and funding models. The survey is open until 29 May.
Kim Eggleton is looking for particularly inappropriate / offensive reviewer comments for a work project.
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and Facebook have partnered to provide flash grants of up to $50K for fact-checkers fighting coronavirus misinformation (Deadline 1 April)
The Facebook Journalism Project has partnered with the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Local Media Association (LMA) to offer a total of $1 million in grants to support US and Canadian local news organizations covering the coronavirus. (Deadline 15 April or when all grant funds awarded)
A bit of light relief
Karsten Kryger Hansen has a CC inspired way to tag yourself during a video conference.
Missing the peace and quiet of the library? Try Sounds of the Bodleian. [H/T: @hannaballoo]
Literary Hub has rewritten the first lines of 10 classic novels for social distancing. This one made me smile:
“There was every possibility of taking a walk that day, as long as we kept six feet between us and the others on the path.”