As 2023 is rapidly drawing to a close, we reflect on what has been a very busy and productive year with much to celebrate. Here are just some of the key achievements that we would like to share.
Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)
The topic of persistent identifiers was very much on our radar this year. February saw the launch of the report 'Building the plane as we fly it: the promise of Persistent Identifiers' along with seven complementary case studies. The report and accompanying case studies provide insight into the complex world of PIDs, highlighting what can go wrong if the PID implementation process is not properly managed. Throughout the year, this work has been presented at various conferences such as NISO Plus 2023, the EUNIS Congress 2023 and LIBER 2023.
Our first webinar
We were delighted to run the inaugural KE webinar earlier this year! This took place on 23 May 2023 and complemented the work on PIDs, diving into PIDs in academia: risks and trust.
Attendees heard directly from our experts and consultants on ways to ensure the effective implementation and management of PIDs. It provided an opportunity to find out more about the risks of an unreliable PID service and how to tackle any risk and trust issues encountered.
We really enjoyed running this webinar and we will be organising more. Stay tuned for details of forthcoming webinars!
If you missed this one, you can watch the one hour recorded event.
FDSR report coming soon
We aim to make research better and believe that reproducibility can do this. The FAIR Data and Software Supporting Reproducible Research (FDSR) group ran a survey early this year. The survey helped to understand what types of practices help individual researchers and managers to scale up practices that improve research reproducibility.
The next stage of this work will be the publication of a report in the early part of 2024. This will share the survey findings and explain how reproducibility can be enhanced at research organisations.
Insights on alternative publishing platforms
It's been a busy year for our Alternative Publishing Platforms (APP) team. February saw the launch of a survey to platforms working in open access, publishing and communication. The APP group aim to better understand how these platforms function and can be placed in the open scholarly communication ecosystem.
The preprint, sharing the survey results, was published in September. It gives valuable and interesting insight into the world of alternative publishing platforms. If you have ever wondered what the pros and cons of such platforms are and whether they differ significantly from traditional scholary journals, then this report will be of interest to you. The group has summarised what they have learnt so far. We will share more details on the next steps of this work in 2024.
A month of conference presentations!
There was a real buzz around the work on Alternative Publishing Platforms with four experts from the team presenting the latest phase of the activity at three conferences.
First up was the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) conference which took place online from 19 - 21 September. Jeroen Sondervan, Dutch Research Council (NWO), the Netherlands, presented a poster lightening talk. His topic was 'Towards a Taxonomy of Alternative Publishing Platforms'.
Next was the Open Science FAIR which took place from 25 - 27 September in Madrid. Here attendees heard from Jean Francois Lutz, University of Lorraine, France, who presented on the topic 'Alternative Publishing Platforms: Where do we stand in 2023?'
On 28 September, Xenia van Edig, German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), Germany and Daniel Beucke, Göttingen State and University Library, Germany, presented at Open Access Tage in Berlin. Their presentation 'More than PDFs on the Internet - Alternative Publication Platforms' provided insight into the different ways of alternative publishing platforms and more.
And the presentations didn't end there! On 14 November, Jean Francois Lutz presented the work at Open Science Days@UGA (Université Grenoble Alpes). More on that here.
Our experts
Our expert groups form an invaluable part of KE and it's with their input and drive that such projects come to life. We thank you all for your contributions.
Roll on 2024 where we will have a new Knowledge Exchange manager joining us. We will also begin the next phases of our work on alternative publishing platforms and FDSR. There will be continued work around small publishers and the transition to Open Access plus more exciting activities in the pipeline!
