Scholarly Impact – Library News

Jan 07 2019

Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) now available to UI researchers

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Sara Scheib

The University of Iowa is now an institutional member of QDR (Qualitative Data Repository) . The QDR membership gives faculty and other researchers a platform to store and share their qualitative data and enhances campus efforts for providing Research Data Services.

“QDR is a dedicated archive for storing and sharing digital data (and accompanying documentation) generated or collected through qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences,” according to the Syracuse University based organization. “QDR provides search tools to facilitate the discovery of data, and also serves as a portal to material beyond its own holdings, with links to U.S. and international archives.”

“The main benefit of membership is curation and preservation of data projects deposited by affiliates – faculty, students, and research staff – of member institutions”.

Most data repositories focus on quantitative data. QDR offers an advantage for curating qualitative data. Alternatives include having researchers manage data on their own, which would mean more time and expense.

QDR is being funded at the University of Iowa by the University Libraries and the Iowa Social Science Research Center. The University of Iowa Libraries has been working closely with the Office of the Vice President of Research and Economic Development, Information Technology Services, and campus offices to support data management. Brett Cloyd (brett-cloyd@uiowa.edu | (319)335-5743) from the UI Libraries is the QDR Institutional Representative and serves as liaison with QDR. Please contact Brett with questions for help in getting started. More information is available at the UI Libraries’ QDR Guide.

Funding for QDR is provided by the National Science Foundation, and hosted by the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry, a unit of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Jan 03 2019

2019: The Year of Public Domain

Posted on January 3, 2019January 3, 2019 by Mahrya Burnett

Photo Credit: Center for the Study of the Public Domain

For the first time in 20 years, artistic works copyrighted in the U.S. will enter the public domain, opening up a trove of material published during 1923 to be freely digitized, read, and used as the basis for new works. But why is this happening now? After all, shouldn’t copyrights expire and works enter into the public domain every year? One would think so, but since the late 1970s, U.S. copyright law has been subject to a series of extensions and retroactive patches that have tied up and confused the status of copyrighted works produced during the mid-20th century. (Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has an excellent breakdown of recent copyright history here. The Atlantic also published a comprehensive article on this issue, which can be found here.) The result has been that nothing has entered the public domain since 1998. But January 1, 2019 marks a pause in the era of the shrinking public domain. If no legislative action is taken to the contrary, each year, we will now have a new set of books, recordings, movies, and other creative works to enjoy freely.

Here are some places to check out the creative works of 1923:

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.
Public Domain Review – This journal specializes in mining the public domain. Here are their international picks for this year.

Interested in finding out more about U.S. copyright law and how to determine a work’s copyright status? As part of the library’s new Scholarly Impact Department, part of my job is to help 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 me an email at 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

Dec 04 2018

DOIs for Theses and Dissertations

Posted on December 4, 2018 by Sara Scheib

All theses and dissertations in Iowa Research Online have now been assigned DOIs. DOIs, or Digital Object Identifiers, are unique and persistent IDs for electronically published documents. DOIs will be used by publications citing your thesis/dissertation, so that there will be better information about where your work has been cited. Using a DOI also allows less formal usage to be tracked as well, such as tweets, links in Wikipedia, blog posts, etc. and will be included in alternative metrics (altmetrics).

A DOI looks like this: 10.17077/etd.g638o927 and a DOI link looks like this: https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.g638o927. Clicking on the DOI link will take you to the current URL for the publication. URLs can change, but DOIs don’t. If the URL for your thesis or dissertation changes, due to a service migration or other updates, the DOI link will direct traffic to the correct URL. That’s why it’s important to include DOIs or DOI links in your citations, so your readers can follow your work back to the references you cited.

To find the DOI for your thesis or dissertation, go to the IRO theses and dissertation series or your favorite search engine and search for your name and your thesis or dissertation title. Click on the title of your thesis or dissertation, and the DOI will be listed in the first field in the record. If you have any questions, or if you are not receiving monthly download counts and would like to, please contact lib-ir@uiowa.edu.

Oct 25 2018

Scholarly Communications and OA

Posted on October 25, 2018October 23, 2018 by Willow Fuchs

Written by Mahrya Burnett, Scholarly Communications Librarian

In the libraries, we spend the whole month of October celebrating Open Access (OA), and with good reason. As scholarly publishing continues to evolve and spawn new models for disseminating knowledge, it’s more important than ever to make sure that anyone can access critical research and that scholars from anywhere in the world can publish their discoveries. It’s also important for scholars at the University of Iowa to understand how to manage the impact of their research, disseminate it as widely as possible, and to choose publication venues that will help reach their goals.

Guiding researchers as they navigate these issues is a big part of my job as a scholarly communications librarian. I meet with all kinds of students and faculty to talk about the ins and outs of publishing their research. If you’re interested in getting your publications out from behind paywalls and into the hands of readers, here’s how I can help:

Find open access journals in your discipline

One way to make your research open is to publish in an open access journal. But what does that mean? Open access journals are publications that make it free for readers to access ALL of their content through the publisher’s website. Quality OA journals will be transparent in their business and editorial practices and should be well-regarded in your field. They should also be up-front about any Article Processing Charges (APCs) used to offset the cost of publishing. The Directory of Open Access Journals can help you determine whether a journal is, in fact, open and can help you find open journals in your discipline. I can help you navigate this directory or provide you with additional information about journals.

Get your work into Iowa Research Online

Iowa Research Online (IRO) is Iowa’s institutional repository for publications and other research artifacts. This means that UI faculty, staff, and students can upload their published work and make it discoverable to anyone with an internet connection, anywhere in the world. Including your article in IRO is another great way to make your research open, and I would be glad to help walk you through the process. Not every publisher will allow you to include the final version of your article in a repository. But luckily, there are tools that we can use to determine exactly what your publisher will allow. Sherpa/RoMEO is one such tool. This directory lists current publisher policies on self-archiving and will tell you what you can and cannot include in IRO.

Find funding for Article Processing Charges (APCs)

APCs are one of the most misunderstood aspects of scholarly publishing. In some disciplines, it has long been standard practice to charge authors “page fees” for charts, graphics, color printing, or other publication costs. In other disciplines, giving money to a publisher is considered “pay to publish,” and is not seen as a legitimate practice. In the world of open access publishing, we have seen APCs crop up, proliferate, and grow to sometimes thousands of dollars per publication. Not all OA journals charge APCs, in fact the vast majority do not. However, the ones who do are often big name journal titles, with high impact factors, produced by major academic publishers. These are often the same journals in which scholars need to publish, for promotion and tenure, or simply to be widely read. In many ways, these publishers still control the landscape, even the OA landscape, and it looks like their APCs aren’t going away anytime soon. If you find yourself needing to pay an APC or are considering an OA publication, but don’t know how to fund it, I can help. Often, you can designate grant funding to be earmarked for APCS or your department may have funds available for this purpose.

Get up-to-date on funder mandates for open

Funding organizations are slowly recognizing that the research they fund as a public good should, in fact, be available to the public. While other parts of the world are further along that the United States in this regard (See Plan S, for example), certain federal agencies require that funded research be made publicly available. When this is the case, researchers must comply with the mandate. Some agencies, such as the National Institute of Health, make complying with this policy relatively easy. Others are a bit more tricky. This is another area where I can be of assistance.

If you’d like to discuss how to make your research open, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to send me an email at mahrya-burnett@uiowa.edu to set up an appointment. I’m also a part of the library’s new Scholarly Impact Department, which rolls our scholarly communications and data services into one unit. If you’d like to learn more about the new department, please contact us at lib-impact@uiowa.edu. Let’s work together to make Iowa’s scholarship as open as it can be!