(30 Jun 2021) Skillsoft Corp. (NYSE: SKIL) (“Skillsoft” or the “Company”), a global leader in corporate digital learning, today announced it has acquired Pluma, Inc. (“Pluma”), a leading digital professional development and executive-quality coaching platform, for approximately $22 million in cash. The acquisition deepens Skillsoft’s Leadership Development portfolio, adds a new modality to its blended learning model, and…
(23 Jun 2021) The pandemic presented an urgency for effective science to inform decision-making and has shown just how fast and open scholarly communication can be. Researchers shared their preliminary results on preprint servers and institutional repositories at unprecedented rates, inspiring various preprint peer-review initiatives. Journal publishers processed manuscripts from submission to publication in record time. And…
(19 May 2021) The digitization of Chinese classics is challenging, as Chinese ancient characters are complex. Throughout history, one Chinese character might have several variants and written forms. Digitizing Chinese ancient books through optical character recognition (OCR) not only facilitates machine reading but also gives a new life to numerous ancient books for public peruse. …
When they realised even Miles Franklin winners can be sent to the pulp pile, authors, librarians and academics began building a digital ark for bereft books (24 Jun 2021) Of the 62 books that won Australia’s Miles Franklin Award between 1957 and 2019, 23 are currently not available as ebooks, 40 are not available…
(29 Jun 2021) Every five years, the Australian Government renews and consolidates its policy approach to the facilities, equipment, resources and personnel that make up Australia’s National Research Infrastructure (NRI). The Government is encouraging the research community and its stakeholders to be part of the development of the 2021 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap. …
(16 Jun 2021) For many years, IFLA has monitored the emergence of issues around copyright and digital lending, in particular the ability of libraries to purchase and lend eBooks under reasonable licensing terms, as well as to give access to their collections remotely. While digital tools have created new practical possibilities to support education, research…
Faculty and staff members at Utrecht University will be evaluated by their commitment to open science. (25 Jun 2021) A Dutch university says it is formally abandoning the impact factor — a standard measure of scientific success — in all hiring and promotion decisions. By early 2022, every department at Utrecht University in the…
(16 Jun 2021) The latest ISI report identifies a new way to calculate and compare how well nations and institutions could respond to unforeseen challenges, based on the diverse spread of research areas in their portfolios. ‘Diversity’ has long been a watchword in fields such as economics and ecology, and in recent years has…
(14 Jun 2021) A survey conducted in March of 2020 by the American Library Association found that 99 percent of the public libraries that responded were closed because of the pandemic. But the association, whose membership includes 20,000 public library employees, found many libraries nonetheless added virtual programming, distributed free craft supplies, put together book bundles for families…
(22 Jun 2021) From the executive summary of the report from ITHAKA S+R: The dominant mode by which research libraries have provided maximum journal access as cheaply as possible—subscription bundles or “Big Deals”—is giving way to new approaches. This transition is taking place through a combination of negotiations, activism, business modeling, user needs research,…