(20 Jan 2021) Deep in basements beneath Mulgrave St, archivist Shaun McGuire winches a cog that opens towering rows of what are known as stacks – giant shelving units weighing as much as buses and holding any type of archive you can imagine. The basements are filled with these units after a 1952 blaze at a…
(13 Jan 2021) With its funding decision in 2019, the Joint Science Conference of the Federal Government and the Länder had paved the way for zbMATH Open. Now it is done: In an elaborate work process, the information service was transformed into an open access platform. This means that much of the data can be used…
(14 Jan 2021) Amazon is accused of fixing the price of e-books sold on the e-commerce site through anticompetitive agreements with the nation’s top five publishers, according to a complaint filed Thursday. The class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York alleges that Amazon and the publishers entered into…
(4 Dec 2020) Health librarians really need to have a broad picture of the health environment to have an impact and connect all the dots,” says Gemma Siemensma, Library Manager at Ballarat Health Services (BHS), Australia. Librarians “need to continue to excel in reference consultations and literature searching to advanced forms of evidence synthesis and…
(14 January 2021) IP activity in Asia has undergone two unmistakable shifts in recent years, both spearheaded by Mainland China. The first has progressed over the long-term and seen Asia become a global innovation hub and take the lead in global patent filings. The second shift, which has taken place much more rapidly, concerns a…
(11 Jan 2021) Austria Labor Minister Christine Aschbacher has resigned amidst a plagiarism scandal that accuses her of plagiarizing two separate theses that she submitted as part of her academic career. According to allegations first levied by blogger Stefan Weber, Aschbacher has committed plagiarism and academic fraud in two theses. The first, a 2006 master’s thesis that was…
(14 Jan 2021) Twitter last week permanently suspended the account of Sci-Hub, the website that has posted millions of freely accessible copies of scientific articles pirated from subscription journals. Twitter said Sci-Hub had violated its policy against promoting “counterfeit goods,” according to Sci-Hub’s founder, Alexandra Elbakyan. The notification came shortly after a 6 January court…
(15 Jan 2021) In a step towards open access, the publisher of Science will start allowing some authors publishing in its high-profile subscription journals to share their accepted manuscripts openly online under liberal terms that mean anyone could reproduce or redistribute the work. The change ensures that scientists with grants from some funding agencies that insist on…
(15 Jan 2021) While the Indian government is considering paying scholarly content on behalf of all researchers in the country, the western hemisphere is mandating open access as standard. In this issue of Fun Facts on Numbers, let’s take a look at how Indian researchers are adopting the idea to make their research articles openly accessible.…
(15 Jan 2021) Job opening: Assistant Librarian (Special Collections & Archives Section) (PR0079/19-20) The Hong Kong Baptist University Library is currently seeking a highly motivated and service-oriented professional for the position of Assistant Librarian in the Special Collections & Archives Section. Reporting to the Head of Metadata and Cataloguing, the appointee will be responsible for…