United Kingdom

With the advent of responsible metrics approaches such as DORA, and their endorsement by funders such as cOAlitions S and the Wellcome Trust, there is a significant anti-journal metric backlash. Alternative ways of assessing journals are being proposed, such as TOP Factor and the Quality Open Access Market, but are yet to gain traction. This talk will explore the many ways we can evaluate a journal; whether journal citation metrics are always a bad thing; and how we might move towards a fairer assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of journals.

UKSG Annual Conference 2021

Journal metrics: what they can and can&#39;t tell us

research evaluation

responsible metrics

journal metrics

Following the success of the 1st PEERE International Conference on Peer Review, the PEERE COST Action follow-up community organised the second edition of the PEERE International Conference on Peer Review  and was celebrated virtually on 29 September – 1 October 2020.

The conference welcomed any contribution (e.g., original research, position papers, literature reviews) that used any method (e.g., quantitative, experimental or qualitative) to investigate peer review in a variety of scientific domains (e.g., scholarly journals, funding agencies, research assessment). Interdisciplinary research is especially welcome.

The program is published here: http://tiny.cc/peere2020 


PEERE

The second edition of the PEERE International Conference on Peer Review aims to provide a forum for scholars, practitioners and science stakeholders to share research, models, tools and experience on peer review in different fields, e.g., medicine, computer science, social sciences and humanities. It aims to stimulate the use of evidence-based research in the design and implementation of peer review in a variety of fields and encourage more systematic research.

Journal metrics: what they can and can't tell us

technical paper

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition 2021 will be held online for the first time. The event is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar which attracts a large number of 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 virtual social events and a major online trade exhibition.



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

In 2019 the University of Leicester library developed a new leisure reading collection. It was important to collection was representative of the incredible range of diverse voices of students, staff and the local population. In order to include more works by underrepresented voices, the library launched the ‘Represent’ campaign and asked users to recommend titles from underrepresented voices for the library to purchase and add to their collections. The ‘Represent’ campaign has since developed to work with student volunteers to look at diversity within subject reading lists as well as creating opportunities to discuss issues around representation more broadly.

Represent: Building diverse library collections in collaboration with library users

This presentation will reflect on how we managed library services at the University of York during the covid-19 pandemic. It will focus on how our culture and approach enabled us to not only survive but thrive during this time and go on to discuss four areas of strategic focus and positioning before finally sharing some thoughts as to what the future might hold.


Surviving (and thriving) during and after a pandemic

Throughout 2020 instructors had to redesign courses to fit online as well as in-person environments. Libraries are a central hub for resources and support in this endeavour. Using real-world examples, this talk examines one area where this partnership is essential: teaching using historical documents. An activity that often happens in the classroom and archive is particularly challenging to move online, but digitised primary source collections offer the opportunity to include archival documents in newly formatted classes and assignments. We will see how traditional humanities scholarship and innovative pedagogical approaches can come together through integrating digitised primary sources into undergraduate teaching.

Teaching with primary sources in the virtual classroom

Over the last 20 years or so, universities have made considerable investments in library centric discovery services. Nevertheless, for some students, especially undergraduates, discovery has become largely irrelevant. They simply log on to their learning management system to find ready prepared links to the print and electronic resources they need that week for their course or module. This is typically because the learning system is linked to a library managed reading/resource list solution. Reading/resource list solutions are essentially ‘curation’ tools. By curation I mean selecting, refining and arranging to add value. The content of a reading list is curated primarily by academics who select the best resources and list them.

The next step is helping students engage with the content. This has become increasingly important in a ‘flipped classroom’ environment where COVID has accelerated the trend to an online learning environment. We are now seeing the rise of specific solutions to better enable engagement with content. They typically encourage group ‘community’ interaction with students who are asked to analyse the content and engage with the reading itself.

This UKSG presentation will describe and analyse this important trend towards the better curation of, and engagement with content. It will encourage librarians to work more closely with university teaching and learning staff and technologists to adopt approaches and solutions that help students better engage with content which, in turn will lead to better learning outcomes

Farewell discovery, hello curation and engagement

In the absence of funds for 'gold' open access, publishers may allow universities to share the author's accepted manuscript on a 'green' basis, with or without an embargo. The former means the work can be openly accessed typically after a period of 12-24 months. Such time gives publishers opportunity to build revenue, but creates inequalities. Firstly, there is a division between those who can afford a fee or can access a library subscription to benefit from the research and those who cannot; but there is also a divide between universities that have funds to pay publishing charges and less research-intensive institutions that have no such fund. 

This case study considers journal articles published by Edge Hill University in 2019. Originally a teacher training college, the University received taught degree-awarding powers its university title in 2006, followed by Research Degree Awarding Powers in 2008. A key finding is that embargoes mean certain kinds of research articles can be 'locked down' for longer. For instance, educational research articles were found to be held back from public access for more than twice the time when compared with health research. This divide is driven by disseminating research through publishers which make extensive use of embargoes.

As a result, the consumers of Edge Hill's education research (e.g. schools, teachers) may need to wait longer to use it. This can potentially affect their ability to use research to innovate, enhance practice, or respond to societal challenges.

Pay now or wait a year: Embargoes as a selective barrier to access)

It is no unknown statement to say that the coronavirus pandemic has and continues to impact many - mentally, physically, emotionally and economically. The research community has not been immune to this crisis. Beyond the impact on research output, the sector has and continues to see the sharp end of what is predicted to be a long term economic and financial change for universities and other higher education establishments. Yet while we continue to think on the ‘what can we do right now to help,’ we also need to reframe that focus to look at ‘how can we help going forward’ with a long term view of the new challenges that the research community will face. However, beyond a general collective understanding that university budgets are likely to be significantly affected, the impact of reduced budgets on the research enterprise is not as easily seen. Drawing on findings from research commissioned by Springer Nature and conducted by Roger Schonfeld from Ithaka S+R, Rob Johnson from Research Consulting and Jason Owen-Smith this session will address issues such as:Impacts on how research is conducted
- the knock-on implications and uneven impact this could have on researchers
- ability to attract the funding for critical research programs.
- And how the landscape of research disciplines could and may change
Aimed at all across the research enterprise workflow, the goal of this session is to be interactive using an evidence base to discuss appropriate next steps forwards and recommendations for stakeholders within the research enterprise.

The impact of COVID on the research enterprise: A research study

From a cross industry perspective, drawing on her work with content and service providers to improve digital accessibility, Lettie Conrad will discuss how publishers can move beyond a view of compliance as "nice to have," to a place where accessibility is an industry standard cornerstone. Providing an overview of web accessibility protocols, content quality guidelines, and publishing standards, Conrad will review how accessibility conformance is a growing legal concern, among other factors. We have seen this with the UN SDG 4, The Americans with Disabilities Act and EU Web Accessibility Directive. Luckily, accessible publishing is not only achievable, but affordable -- with advanced technical systems and formats, such as EPUB. It has never been easier to embed accessibility standards into business-as-usual content products and workflows. This presentation will explore the current state of content accessibility standards and what steps publishers and technology providers are taking to fully embrace a truly inclusive and accessible content for all.

Accessibility moving the (stuck) dial

In June 2020, cOAlition S commissioned a study to gain insights into the OA publishing landscape of journals and platforms that are free to readers and authors. A group of 10 organizations conducted the study in 2020. The research aggregated data from various activities including an online survey that gathered around 1600 exploitable responses from journal editors across the globe, a quantitative analysis of data from a range of bibliographical databases and a qualitative analysis based on literature review, interviews and focus groups. The proposed presentation will present and discuss the results of the study

Diamond Journals and platforms: challenges and opportunities for open scholarship

During this session you will hear from four passionate activists and Employee Resource Group leaders, who have had experience in starting up, scaling up, and leading grassroots organisations in their respective communities – at Elsevier, Wiley and Taylor & Francis. The goal of this session is to inspire and educate on the opportunities & challenges faced by ERG leaders, highlighting the importance of ERGs and what your role – whether you are an individual contributor, manager or a senior leader – can be in supporting ERGs. The topics we will cover will be: 

* The Why & importance of ERGs

* The Business Impact of ERGs

* The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of managing an ERG

* The Future of ERGs and Your Role in the ERG Movement


Driving Positive Cultural Change: The Power of an Active ERG

"Lancaster University is a global university with an innovative approach to digital transformation. At the heart of the discussions in early 2020 were what it meant to be a truly global research intensive university while maintaining the campus experience that Lancaster is know for. Allied to this, the Library, following the recruitment of a new Library Director, was in the process of creating a new library vision to support the university in its endeavours to ensure it worked as partner not just service provider. Then the pandemic hit.

Led by Professor Simon Guy, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Global and by Andrew Barker, Library Director, this session will present a portrait of our ambitions for the future of the Lancaster University and its library post-pandemic, how we ensure that we have a transformative impact in the communities in which we operate while being a truly global research intensive university ."

Journal metrics: what they can and can't tell us

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Represent: Building diverse library collections in collaboration with library users

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Next from UKSG Annual Conference 2021

Represent: Building diverse library collections in collaboration with library users

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Does reviewers' traits affect disagreement in proposal evaluation?

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