CNI News

This conference (the second in a series, the first having been held in Norway last December) will, I think, definitely be of interest to the CNI community.
There are many timely and important topics on the agenda here. Note that the second day is quite hands-on and technical.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

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Registration is now open for Fantastic Futures 2019, the 2nd International Conference on AI for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Join us December 4-6 at Stanford University for three days of study and community building. This conference is a forum for in-depth discussion of the effects of these new technologies, demonstrations of work already underway, and workshops to help increase AI literacy across our organizations.

How will AI transform the library?
How will the library transform AI?
What role will libraries, archives, and museums play, as trusted sources of information, when more and more of the information we consume is algorithmically generated? How will the values of neutrality, privacy, authority, and preservation that these institutions advance help shape AI. How will our institutions adapt these values to a changing landscape? How can we put AI to work for us, to transform and elevate our services beyond 20th century modalities?

December 4, 2019 Plenary Sessions
The conference day will convene thought and practice leaders from academia, libraries, industry and society to address these questions and help shape the future of AI in libraries, and the role of libraries in AI.

December 5, 2019 Workshops
Organized in multiple tracks over one full day, the workshops will provide practical instruction on a range of topics appropriate for individual across libraries, archives and museums, whether administrators, content experts, catalogers, designers, or engineers.

December 6, 2019 Unconference
A core mission of this conference is to encourage and support international collaboration around efforts to apply AI within libraries, archives, and museums. The third day will provide an opportunity for self-organizing around interest groups, demonstrations of works in progress, and extended workshop sessions that grow out of day 2.

Visit the conference website for more details at https://fantasticfutures.stanford.edu or go directly to registration at https://fantasticfutures2019.eventbrite.com/

The Knowledge Exchange is a joint undertaking of some six European organizations, including JISC in the UK and DFG in Germany (both CNI members). They’ve done a great deal of work on changes in the scholarly communication system, and have recently published a book examining the economics of the transition to open scholarship that I think will be of interest to many in the CNI community. This can be found at

http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/event/os-collective-action

Below, more details on this work.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

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I’m happy to let you know that Knowledge Exchange (KE) has published its first book “The Economy of Open Scholarship and the Need for Collective Action”.
The transition to Open Scholarship is immensely difficult and in this book we look for ways to move forward in realizing the full potential of openness.

The book aims to increase understanding of the challenges to make scholarship more open.  It addresses various perspectives offered by KE’s Open Scholarship Framework, combining levels (micro, meso and macro-level actors), arenas (political, economic, social, technical) and research phases (discovery, planning, project phase, dissemination).

As many of the challenges in navigating the transition to Open Scholarship are economic, the focus of the book is on the economic arena. In addition, great attention is given to the incentives, actions and influences of meso-level actors: groups, communities or organisations such as universities, disciplines, scholarly societies or publishers because of their enormous impact on developing open scholarship.

Taking in the Open Scholarship landscape, the authors of the book – experts and experienced actors in the field of Open Scholarship – look at the stakeholders and their interactions and networks. They examine the historic developments leading to the current organisational complexity, responsibility issues, conflicting motives and values, and the importance of interaction between institutions.

The authors analyse how economic models can be applied to scholarship and conclude that economic theory cannot fully explain nor prescribe how Open Scholarship can be achieved. The challenges to achieve Open Scholarship, such as gravitational hubs and the complex governance of common pool resources, are highlighted.

The conclusion of the book is that for a successful transition to Open Scholarship, collective action approaches and establishment of a supportive infrastructure are key.

The Knowledge Exchange (KE) partners are six key national organizations within Europe tasked with developing infrastructure and services to enable the use of digital technologies to improve higher education and research: CSC in Finland, CNRS in France, DAFSHE in Denmark , DFG in Germany, Jisc in the UK and SURF in the Netherlands.

In May 2016 I shared the report of a National Academies workshop dealing with issues arising from the need to transition the internet to cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to quantum computing. This is a very large, complex undertaking. Very recently, the Computing Community Consortium issued a report of a workshop that they held earlier in 2019 that focuses on research challenges involved in the migration (as opposed to work going on under the auspices of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) that addresses the selection of quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms themselves).

A web page summarizing the findings of the workshop and a link to the full report can be found at:

https://cra.org/crn/2019/10/research-challenges-in-post-quantum-cryptography-migration-and-cryptographic-agility

A direct link to the report is here

https://cra.org/ccc/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/11/CCC-Identifying-Research-Challenges-in-PQC-Workshop-Report.pdf

We’ll continue to track and report on key developments related to this critical problem.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

Our friends at Jisc have commissioned a very interesting research project being conducted at DEMOS which is investigating the implications of a group of technologies related to artificial intelligence and robotics for the work of researchers, including the ability to automate at least some classes of research work. The project is called Research 4.0: Research in the Age of Automation. This month they issued a very thought-provoking  Interim Report with their initial findings and a discussion of the next steps in their investigation.  The report is here:

https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Jisc-OCT-2019-2.pdf

A JISC Blog posting discussing this work is here

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/how-will-automation-impact-uk-research-07-oct-2019

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

The 2020 Library Publishing Forum will take place in Worcester, MA, on May 4-6; proposals are being accepted through Nov. 15th. CNI is pleased to serve as a Strategic Affiliate of the sponsoring organization, the Library Publishing Coalition. More information is available below, and at the event website: https://librarypublishing.org/library-publishing-forum/

-Diane Goldenberg-Hart
CNI Communications

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Library Publishing Forum CFP and Scholarships

The Library Publishing Forum is an annual conference bringing together representatives from libraries engaged in (or considering) publishing initiatives to define and address major questions and challenges; to identify and document collaborative opportunities; and to strengthen and promote this community of practice. The Forum is sponsored by the Library Publishing Coalition, but you do not need to be a member of the LPC to attend. The 2020 Forum will be held in Worcester, MA, May 4-6, hosted by the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Call for Proposals

A call for proposals is now open! In addition to the full sessions and individual presentations formats we have used for the last couple of years, we are also welcoming two new proposal formats: poster talks and experimental sessions. We warmly encourage proposals from first-time presenters and representatives of small and emerging publishing programs. Proposals may address any topic of interest to the library publishing community and all disciplines. However, with the conference being hosted by the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), we extend a special invitation to sessions exploring projects or topics related to STEM publishing and the Open Science Movement. The proposal deadline is November 15th.

Learn more and submit a proposal

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Melanie Schlosser

Director of Scholarly Communications, Educopia Institute

Community Facilitator, Library Publishing Coalition

Working from Columbus, OH

melanie@educopia.org | @mbschloss

Pronouns: she/her

I am delighted to share this call for nominations for the Paul Evan Peters Award. The Committee would welcome your nominations, which do not need to be elaborate. Details below.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

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Call for Nominations: Paul Evan Peters Award DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 8, 2019

The Paul Evan Peters Award recognizes the most notable and lasting international achievements related to information technology and the creation and use of information resources and services that advance scholarship and intellectual productivity. Past recipients have been Herbert Van de Sompel (2017), research scientist, Lost Alamos National Laboratory; Donald A.B. Lindberg (2014), director of the National Library of Medicine; Christine L. Borgman (2011), professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies, UCLA; Daniel E. Atkins (2008), inaugural director of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure; Paul Ginsparg (2006), founder of arXiv, an e-print archive for articles in the sciences; Brewster Kahle (2004), founder and chairman of the board of the Internet Archive; “father of the Internet” Vinton Cerf (2002); and Tim Berners-Lee (2000), inventor of the World Wide Web. All recipients embody the rare combination of strategic vision, technical innovation, and humanitarian outlook that the award seeks to promote.

Award winners are recommended by a committee of representatives of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and EDUCAUSE, and selected by the chief executives of the three organizations. Guidelines for submitting a nomination are detailed below.

GUIDELINES

Awards will be made to individuals who have made a career-long contribution to the advancement of scholarly information and communications and who meet at least one and preferably more of the following criteria:

1. Demonstrate a positive and lasting impact on scholarly communications through the implementation and/or use of information technology and networks, as evidenced by publication, the development of environments for the dissemination of information, contributions in the area of data stewardship, or other similar endeavors.

2. Address a specific problem fundamental to scholarship, research, and intellectual productivity and provide an innovative solution using information technology.

3. Help increase awareness of the role of scholarly information and communication through dissemination of effective techniques using computing and information technologies.

Send a ONE-TO-TWO-PAGE LETTERS OF NOMINATION, addressing how the nominee meets one or more of the qualifications above, AND a bio of the nominee (or URL pointer to biographical information) to:

PEP-Award@cni.org

DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 8, 2019

Recipients of this award will receive a commemorative award and will be asked to present a major address at a CNI membership meeting. This award is offered jointly by ARL, CNI, and EDUCAUSE. It honors Paul Evan Peters, founding director of the CNI, who guided the organization until his untimely death in 1996, and who was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people in 20th-century librarianship in the American Libraries listing of December 1999. The award program has been endowed by the Association of Research Libraries, EDUCAUSE, Microsoft Corporation, and Xerox Corporation.

More information is at www.cni.org/go/pep-award/.