(6 Oct 2020) From ALIA: Tonight’s federal budget, as anticipated, provided an unprecedented level of government spending aimed at jobs and recovery. By putting money into businesses and cash into people’s pockets, the government is banking on Australia emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic in better shape than other national economies. While there remain…
(2 Oct 2020) The National Library Board (NLB) is launching a subscription service that delivers to customers eight curated English children’s books a month. Up to 200 children from low-income families will get the subscription free, as part of a partnership with The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund (STSPMF). The pilot service, called…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (3 0ct 2020) Nature has taken the data from its 2020 rankings, using 2019 share data (fractional counting), to produce a ranking of the top 200 Science Cities. Nature Index does not include output in social sciences or arts and humanities, it uses the one metric, and is size-dependent. What is…
(30 Sept 2020) As part of its continuing drive towards a more open and transparent research environment, Oxford University Press (OUP) has recently implemented new research data policies in over 290 of the journals in its portfolio. The new policy, launched formally earlier in 2020, provides a framework through which OUP’s journals and society partners can proactively encourage authors…
A non-profit dedicated to science communication offers to connect learners with over 11,000 scientists. (2 Oct 2020) Dr. Sarah McAnulty, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut and an expert on cephalopods, founded Skype a Scientist, a non-profit designed to put people in contact with scientific experts on a variety of topics. Skype a Scientist…
(30 Sept 2020) SPARC Europe is releasing an anticipated new report: Open Access: An Analysis of Publisher Copyright and Licensing Policies in Europe, 2020. This analysis, which presents the results of a research study that was completed in the summer of 2020, explores copyright and licensing practices amongst prominent journal publishers and OA publishers in DOAJ in Europe. …
(5 Oct 2020) The 2021 Serials Price Projection Report from EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is now available. The report projects that the overall effective publisher price increases for academic and academic medical libraries are expected to be (before any currency impact) in the range of two to three percent for individual titles and one to three percent for e-journal packages. …
(29 Sept 2020) Digital Science has partnered with Google Cloud to remove barriers to data access, analysis and visualization for organizations across the research and innovation ecosystem. With its new integration, the Dimensions database is now available to be analyzed on BigQuery, Google Cloud’s serverless, highly scalable and secure multi-cloud data warehouse. In today’s…
(2 Oct 2020) Batik (meaning to ‘connect the dots’) is an Indonesian technique of wax-resist dyeing whole cloth. A one-meter piece of batik typically takes at least five skilled artisans six months to create, so we know each piece contains a wealth of hard work and emotion. To showcase Indonesia’s batik tradition and the stories…
By Ruth A. Pagell* Who is THE’s number one in the world again? Who was number one in 2004? How many Chinese universities are in THE’s top 20? Is it better to have a low rank than not to be ranked at all? Would you recommend using THE’s Small University Rankings? (25 September 2020)…