Scholarly Impact – Library News

Jun 21 2022

Libraries support OA book publisher Punctum Books

Posted on June 21, 2022 by Sara Scheib

The University Libraries is pleased to announce it has joined Punctum Books Supporting Library Membership Program for three years. Punctum Books is a scholar-led, queer-led, and peer-reviewed academic book publisher devoted to academic and para-academic authors working in any field in the humanities, social sciences, fine arts, and architecture & design who want to publish books that are genre-bending and which take experimental risks with the forms and styles of intellectual writing. As a diamond open access (OA) publisher, all Punctum Books titles are openly available and they do not charge any author-facing fees.

The University Libraries support for Punctum Books will help to subsidize:

the publication of high-quality OA books in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Fine Arts, and Architecture & Design, with no publication fees ever imposed upon authors;
commitment and adherence to the “best practices” (as guided by librarians and the standards of academic communities) for editorial evaluation and oversight, interoperable metadata, cataloguing, indexing, discovery, dissemination, aggregation, and preservation of its OA books; and
the development and sustainable maintenance, in collaboration with other presses and research organizations, of open-source and community-owned infrastructure for OA books in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

This support is aligned with the Libraries Statement of OA Support and is one of many memberships and agreements undertaken to make more University of Iowa scholarship open access. If you have questions about the Libraries support for open access, please contact us at lib-impact@uiowa.edu.

May 31 2022

2023 OpenHawks grants to help students save on textbooks

Posted on May 31, 2022June 16, 2022 by Mahrya Burnett

University Libraries is pleased to announce another 12 OpenHawks grants for the development of open educational resources (OER). OpenHawks is a campus-wide grant program that funds faculty efforts to replace or avoid high-cost textbooks with OERs for enhanced student success.

The cohort of projects, which are slated to be completed in 2023, will save UI students $167,688 in the first year alone. Removing cost barriers to course materials opens student access and positively impacts learning. The funded OER projects, which were selected through a competitive application process, will benefit students in a wide range of disciplines, including law, radiation oncology, communication science and disorders, language learning, mathematics, library and information science, pediatrics, and social work.

The next call for proposals will be in the spring of 2023. For more information, visit www.lib.uiowa.edu/openhawks.

Jared Stiles and Emily Heithoff, Radiology, OER Creation Grant

Localization & Treatment Procedures in Radiation Therapy

Stiles and Heithoff team will develop an OER textbook for radiation therapy that would replace the textbooks currently used in the program. The OER will be regularly updated to account for developments in the field and will include a number of multimedia activities developed in collaboration with other radiation therapy programs.

Sean Rodriguez, Margaret Strampe, Andrew Goldstein, Caroline Yu, Salma Dawoud, and David Ramirez, Ophthalmology, OER Creation Grant

EyeRounds Anki: An Openly Licensed Resource for Ophthalmology Education

The group will develop EyeRounds Anki, an OER based on a free flashcard program that uses a spaced repetition algorithm to enhance knowledge acquisition and retention over traditional study methods. The resource is meant to increase global access to a body of knowledge that is currently only available as expensive, multi-volume books.

Jason Rantanen, Stella Elias, Derek Muller, Caroline Sheerin, and Maya Steinitz, Law, OER Creation Grant

Rules and Laws for Civil Actions

Grantee will develop an OER supplement in Pressbooks containing rules and statutory laws related to civil litigation. This will replace one of the textbooks in the intro to civil procedure course and will be referenced by students throughout their legal studies.

Philip Combiths, Communication Sciences and Disorders, OER Creation Grant

A Software Tool for Phonological Analysis and Treatment Target Selection

This project is for further development of phonological analysis software and an accompanying manual for students in speech pathology. It would modernize the process that speech language pathologists use to analyze children’s speech patterns by using digital transcription rather than the manual process currently used.

Maricelle Pinto-Tomas and Mariana Ruiz Nascimento, Spanish and Portuguese, OER Creation Grant

Primeiros passos: Portuguese for Beginners

This project aims to replace the current Portuguese textbook with an OER. It will address the current book’s deficiencies, with a focus on incorporating social justice pedagogy and avoiding the outdated stereotypes. The book is intended to save students money, increase learner motivation, facilitate cultural learning, and has the ability to be adopted outside the university.

Isabel Darcy, Mathematics, OER Creation Grant

Interactive Jupyter Textbook for Differential Equations

Darcy will replace the current text and homework system with an OER textbook in Jupyter Notebooks. She and a colleague have developed most of the content, and the PI hopes to hire a student to compile it all into an interactive text.

Micah Bateman, Library and Information Science, Support Materials Grant

Introduction to Metadata through Dublin Core

Bateman will develop resources for beginning users of the metadata standard, Dublin Core. The project will equip future librarians with skills often used in community and university archives, as well as in the digital humanities.

Alexander Tuttle, Vanessa Curtis, Jeffrey Pettit, and Katherine Schultz, Pediatrics, OER Creation Grant

An Inpatient Pediatric Diabetes Management Resource

The project team will develop a resource on pediatric diabetes management for residents at UIHC. A preliminary version has already been developed on Pressbooks, and this grant would allow them to further develop it and publish it as an OER.

Olga Sokratova, Mathematics, OER Creation Grant

Graph Theory and Applications

This project will replace several commercial texts with an OER targeted to the needs of the course. Sokratova hopes that this resource will allow students to use their class time more efficiently and spend more time actually solving math problems.

Susana Nkurlu, Swahili, OER Creation Grant

Developing Swahili Reading Comprehension Textbook

Nkurlu will develop an OER to supplement Swahili language learning. The objective is to make sure students start with the common knowledge before getting into more complex structures. Grantee will match collected stories with relevant pictures for ease of message comprehension.

Gregory Shill, Law, Remixing Grant

Transportation Law & Policy

For this interdisciplinary project on transportation law and policy, Shill proposes an OER to replace several costly textbooks. The work will incorporate multimedia and archival materials and could be used in several different classes at UI.

Megan Gilster and Aislinn Conrad, Social Work, Course Redesign Grant

Open to Working with Organizations and Communities

This team will create an OER using existing openly licensed materials, new content, and library resources. From the application, “For our pedagogy, we expect the impact to be a succinct, robust set of OER materials and a high-quality, new course that employs active learning teaching techniques.”

Apr 11 2022

Spanish Language OER with Giovanni Zimotti

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Mahrya Burnett

Cover image for Salón de clase: Intermediate Spanish for Education Professionals

By Georgia Page, UI Libraries Student Specialist, Scholarly Impact, georgiab-page@uiowa.edu

In early March, UI Libraries celebrated Open Education Week in order to raise awareness about open educational resources (OER) and other open education practices. However, many students and faculty on campus are not yet familiar with the positive impact that OER has on students’ academic success, while also making education more accessible and affordable. To get a better understanding of what it means to “create” OER, I interviewed Dr. Giovanni Zimotti, head of the Spanish and Portuguese programs here at the university.

Zimotti, who is now working on his third OER project, talked about the process of creating OER, and how it has benefitted both students and educators within the Spanish program. When asking him how he decided to make open textbooks, he explained, “We didn’t know anything about writing a textbook, but we knew we wanted to write one. The ones that were available were not good enough for our classrooms. They were either really expensive – like $200 – or they were too easy for our students. We want a textbook for four semesters of Spanish and something that would be challenging. This didn’t exist, so we started to make it.”

But how does one even start making a textbook for four different levels from scratch? Zimotti explains that while he didn’t know for sure from the start, he was up for a challenge. “We created a small team, and decided to apply for another grant,” he explains. “Right now, a year later, we have 10 to 15 professors across the country peer-reviewing the textbook to make sure that it is of quality to be used in our classroom and classrooms in other states as well.”

Zimotti explains that over the past few years, he and a team have been working on creating a new textbook that could be utilized not only by students here at the University of Iowa but also across the world. When asked what part of this project most excited him, he says, “The most exciting part, and my main goal, is trying to get all textbooks to a really low cost. All of our students have to pay a lot of money for these textbooks, so my goal is to get the cost as close to zero as possible. If we can save our students hundreds of thousands of dollars in textbook fees, that’s my goal.”

While cost is one of the biggest issues for these textbooks, Zimotti explains that most language textbooks are also out-of-date, which is an issue for students and educators alike. “When we started creating the OER textbook, we started thinking about how to create localized content. Instead of having interviews with celebrities from 20 years ago, or a random piece of technology that is outdated. For this textbook, we tried to interview people that were real people in the community. We found Spanish speakers from different backgrounds, such as a person from West Liberty that run a dual-language program. He is from Mexico, he is on the school board, and he is an indigenous person. He was super interesting and brought a new perspective to the students.” This is just one example of the many folks that Zimotti and his team were able to interview and include in the new textbook, which will help to better immerse students in the reality of Spanish speaking culture, as well as making sure that students can directly relate with the scenarios and references within the text. As Zimotti explains, “This is not something you can just get from your average textbook.”

OER allows for a more inclusive, immersive, and accessible way to educate, and encourages students to be involved and invested in their success. While this project is just one of many here at UI, it will change the way that Spanish is taught not only at the University of Iowa but at universities across the country. Zimotti and his team’s new textbook will be available for use in Spanish classrooms at the University of Iowa and the University of Nebraska starting Spring of 2023.

If you are interested in receiving grant funding to use, adapt, or create your own OER, check out UI Libraries’ OpenHawks program. We are currently accepting proposals through April 29, 2022.

Feb 18 2022

Fair Use Week (February 21-25)

Posted on February 18, 2022February 20, 2022 by Mahrya Burnett

During the week of February 21, we celebrate Fair Dealing/Fair Use Week, which uplifts the Fair Use Doctrine and the educational and creative expression that it allows. Fair use of copyrighted information is a right that is guaranteed in the U.S. Code and allows us to use copyrighted material within the contexts of education, parody, accessibility, and reporting.

There are some misconceptions about fair use, however. Not every educational activity is covered under the doctrine, and some cases for fair use are stronger than others. There are four factors that must be considered when determining whether you are covered under fair use:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
the nature of the copyrighted work. Is it more factual or more creative?
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In recent years, courts have determined that the four factors should not be weighted equally in all cases, and a “checklist” method of determining fair use cannot accurately be applied across different cases and different types of use. This means that each time you wish to use material under the Fair Use Doctrine, you should conduct a four-factor analysis and document your rationale. Below are some resources that can help you walk through the process of conducting an analysis for fair use.

Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors: This guide from Stanford Libraries walks you through how to conduct a fair use analysis.
More Information on Fair Use: This page from the U.S. Copyright Office provides information on fair use and how to conduct a fair use analysis.
Fair Use Evaluator: Use this tool to document your fair use analysis.
UI Libraries Copyright Guide: Learn more about fair use, author rights, seeking permissions, open licensing, and other topics.

Feb 13 2022

Love Data Week 2022: The perfect time to remember the importance of data

Posted on February 13, 2022February 17, 2022 by Anne Bassett

We’re celebrating International Love Data Week from February 14 – 18. This year’s theme is “Data for everyone,” and it’s a great time to reflect on the significance of data and how it can help expand research. For instance, how do you care for and share it? And where might you look to find similar data?

“Data” may represent a spectrum of meanings, origins, and uses for each person. Consider the differences and similarities between these data records for environmental PCB research, quantum chemistry, and human rights diplomacy rights diplomacy. For a researcher, the culture of practice in their domain may strongly influence how they care for and share their data, as may funder, publisher and institutional requirements.

Taking good care of data during research and making it available to peers and the wider world expands the impact that research can have. And even if data itself can’t be shared to protect human subjects, creating a record about the data in a repository enables others to find out about it, understand it, submit a request for it through a data use agreement, and cite it when they use it.

The Research Data Services Team at the UI Libraries is here to assist with creating data sharing plans, managing data during research projects, and publishing and preserving research data. In addition, the team collaborates with campus partners to assist with technical and policies compliance, data use agreements, and informatics and data analysis.

An article (Data-Driven Research, page 22) in the Winter 2022 issue of the Libraries’ quarterly publication, Bindings, explores a collaboration between the Iowa Superfund Research Program’s researchers, staff, and students and Data Services. It’s just one example of how a project and individual researchers are making their data available for everyone by utilizing available resources.

Do you have questions or looking for assistance and ideas? Contact lib-data@uiowa.edu.

To see all the events taking place around the world, visit Love Data Week 2022 – International Events.

By Brian Westra, data services manager

Feb 03 2022

Wiley Open Access Agreement

Posted on February 3, 2022March 21, 2022 by Sara Scheib

University Libraries is excited to announce an open access (OA) agreement with Wiley. This agreement, negotiated through the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), begins on February 1, 2022, and runs through December 31, 2022. Through this agreement, the University of Iowa receives 124 credits. Each credit allows one eligible article to be published open access in a Wiley hybrid journal at no cost to the author. Corresponding authors can choose to use a credit to make their article OA.

Eligible publications have a corresponding author from the University of Iowa, are primary research and review articles (which may include original articles, case studies, reviews, and short communications), and are accepted for publication in a Wiley hybrid journal between February 1, 2022, and December 31, 2022.
Choosing to make an article open access is part of the Wiley publishing workflow. Once your article has been accepted in a Wiley hybrid journal, you will see the option to make it OA in the Wiley Author Dashboard. If you choose to make your article OA, you will then be asked to indicate your affiliation with the University of Iowa, and your request will be submitted to the library for approval.
Requests to use credits are approved on a first-come, first-served basis. If or when we run out of credits, UI authors will be automatically eligible for a 10% discount on Article Processing Charges (APCs) until December 31, 2022.

See the BTAA Wiley Open Access Agreement for more details. Please contact Sara Scheib if you have questions or need assistance.

Feb 01 2022

Company of Biologists: Free Open Access Publishing for UI Authors

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Sara Scheib

The University of Iowa Libraries has entered into a transformative agreement with the Company of Biologists that allows University of Iowa authors to publish open access articles for free in their 5 journals.

Key benefits of the agreement include:

unlimited fee-free publishing of Open Access research articles for corresponding authors in their hybrid journals (Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology) and their fully Open Access journals (Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open)
unlimited access to their hybrid journals including their archives dating back to 1853
compliant with Plan S and funder mandates

Publishing open access allows articles to reach a wider audience because they are free to read online and not limited to subscribers. This transformative agreement for open access publishing means that UI authors will not have to pay out of pocket for the article processing fees that are traditionally charged for open access publishing.

To take advantage of free open access publishing in Company of Biologists journals, UI authors can follow the instructions on their web site.

Looking for more? Check out the UI Libraries full list of transformative agreements (also known as read and publish agreements).

Questions? Ask Leo Clougherty or Sara Scheib.

Jan 23 2022

What’s New in the Public Domain in 2022?

Posted on January 23, 2022January 23, 2022 by Anne Bassett

COURTESY: THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN AT DUKE LAW SCHOOL

Now, you have even more works—and for the first time, sound recordings—available to be freely digitized, read, and used as the basis for new work.

On Jan. 1, 2022, debut novels by Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, and about 400,000 sound recordings from before 1926 were among the many books, recordings, movies, and other creative works that entered the public domain.

So, why is the public domain important? Permission is no longer needed to copy or use the works, which is an essential opportunity to foster learning, innovation, and the creation of new works.

Here are some places to check out the newly available creative works from 1926 available in the public domain:

Hathi Trust Digital Library – These materials from the Google Books Project have been digitized for years, but as of January 1, the full-text is now available to everyone.
Center for the Study of Public Domain – Duke’s Public Domain Day page has some great selected highlights.
The Public Domain Review – This journal specializes in mining the public domain.

Interested in finding out more about U.S. copyright law and how to determine a work’s copyright status? The Scholarly Impact Department helps faculty work through complex copyright issues, such as what can be used in the classroom, how to retain your rights as an author, and how to apply Creative Commons licensing. Feel free to send an email to mahrya-burnett@uiowa.edu to set up a consultation. You might also try these excellent copyright resources:

Cornell University Library Copyright Information Center – This handy reference chart is great for a quick check on copyright status.
Digital Copyright Slider – This Flash-based slider provides copyright status for works, depending on when they were published and whether copyright was renewed.
UI Libraries Copyright Guide – This guide provides the basics on copyright issues, such as Fair Use, seeking permissions, author rights, and licensing.

Sep 17 2021

Regents OER Grant Recipients Announced

Posted on September 17, 2021September 17, 2021 by Mahrya Burnett

The Regents university libraries are proud to announce the awarding of grants to 5 faculty teams to support creation of free, openly-licensed course materials. This funding opportunity provides intensive training and support for faculty writing open textbooks or other materials to replace expensive, traditional textbooks. In addition to saving UNI, UI, and ISU students an estimated $308,000 per year, new Open Educational Resources created through the program prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are also likely to be adopted at other institutions, expanding the impact and cost savings beyond the Regents.

For more about Open Educational Resources, see https://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/oer

Funded projects include:

Communication for College, Career, and Civic Life
PIs: Ryan McGeough, Kyle Rudick, Danielle McGeough, and Kathryn Golsan (UNI)
Course supported: COMM 1000
Award amount: $21,400
Estimated student savings: $82,000 per year
Description: The project brings together several faculty members, all of whom have authored textbooks in the past, to create an OER textbook focused on developing communication skills. It will accomplish multiple objectives. In addition to providing substantial cost savings, it will fill gaps in existing texts related to communication and diversity, information literacy, and communication and digital technology. It will also support the oral communication outcome of the new general education curriculum (UNIFI).

Creating Open Resource Textbook for Methods of Teaching Early Literacy
PIs: Nandita Gurjar (UNI), Sohyun Meacham (UNI), and Constance Beecher (ISU)
Courses supported: LitEd3115 (UNI), LitEd3119 (UNI), and EDUC377 (ISU)
Award amount: $23,550
Estimated student savings: $52,200 per year
Description: This project will create a comprehensive resource to replace twelve books currently used in the PI’s three courses. The OER will be a multimodal resource, focusing on literacy development of PreK-3rd grade elementary students while addressing the needs of diverse students.

Elementary Science Methods I and II: Ancillary Project
PIs: Ted Neal, Jeff Nordine, & LaVerne Logan (UI)
Courses supported: EDTL3165 and EDTL3166
Award amount: $5,550
Estimated student savings: $5,356 per year (in addition to previous savings)
Description: This project will merge two existing open texts the lead author previously created, update content with presentation slides, improve/update the test banks, and improve ancillary materials. It will address Next Generation Science Standards, better align with a new course sequence, and add resources students have been requesting.

Elementary Spanish: An OER Textbook
PIs: Giovanni Zimotti, Rachel Klevar, Braeden Jones (UI), and Gabriela Olivares-Cuhat (UNI)
Courses supported: SPAN1001
Award amount: $25,560
Estimated student savings: $65,000 per year
Description: UI and UNI are joining efforts to redesign the core sequence of the elementary Spanish language track. The work of this team will result in the creation of an OER textbook and ancillary materials for Elementary Spanish that address the diverse needs of undergraduate non-native Spanish Speakers. Self-assessment exercises created using H5P will be included.

Integrated Learning Resources for an Inclusive and Adaptive Undergraduate Music Theory and Musicianship Core Curriculum
PIs: Randall Harlow, Heather Peyton, Jonathan Schwabe, and Daniel Swilley (UNI)
Courses supported: 12 courses in School of Music core (Music Theory I-IV, Aural Training I-IV, and Sight Singing I-IV)
Award amount: $21,400
Estimated student savings: $33,640 per year
Description: This project will replace three standard textbooks with new learning resources that will be free and open to all students, accessible to a more diverse population, and tailored to UNI’s evolving core music curriculum. One key goal is to create an accessible resource for students with a diversity of backgrounds, learning styles, and socioeconomic realities.

Aug 23 2021

ECS Plus: Free Open Access Publishing for UI authors

Posted on August 23, 2021August 29, 2021 by Sara Scheib

The University of Iowa Libraries has entered into a transformative agreement with the Electrochemical Society (ECS) that allows University of Iowa authors to publish open access for free in ECS journals. The number of open access articles that can be published for free is unlimited and takes effect immediately. Publishing open access allows articles to reach a wider audience because they are free to read online and not limited to subscribers. This transformative agreement for open access publishing means that UI authors will not have to pay out of pocket for the article processing fees that are traditionally charged for open access publishing.

To take advantage of free open access publishing in ECS, UI authors must select ECS Plus under Step 6 – Open Access Waivers, Charges and Credits at the time of manuscript submission to take advantage of an article credit.

When you submit your article to an ECS journal, you’ll be asked if you wish to publish open access. Select ‘Yes’
Select ‘ECS Plus’ and name your institution in the supporting information box

In additional to free open access publishing, University of Iowa students, faculty, and staff have full access to the contents of the ECS Digital Library.

Looking for more? Check out the UI Libraries full list of transformative agreements (also known as read and publish agreements).

Questions? Ask Leo Clougherty or Sara Scheib.