Share your thoughts on the future of academic social media — the latest from ]u[ Ubiquity
![]u[ Ubiquity](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:88:88/1*9Bg9E03vk0BhPaezyEQrtw.png){kind=small}
Welcome to the latest ]u[ Ubiquity newsletter!
We’ve been kept nice and busy over the last few months, with four new ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories launching, some important platform updates and developments, and plenty of book publications, alongside lots of news to keep up with in the wider OA community.
Meanwhile, the landscape of social media has been changing rapidly. We’re counting on your feedback to shape the future of our social media presence; take part in our survey to let us know how you use social media, and the most useful way for us to use social media to engage with and support the scholarly community.
Give your feedback on the future of academic social media.
Read on to find out more about what’s been going on at ]u[ Ubiquity, and in the wider OA world…
In this newsletter…
- Fully OA group respond to the House Appropriations Committee
- Refresh, Renew and Realign; case study on LIRA@BCLaw’s migration to ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories out now
- ]u[ Ubiquity makes the switch from Google Analytics to Plausible
- Open book publishing partnership with University of Westminster Press
- Four ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories launch
- ]u[ Ubiquity release public plugin for OJS
- News bulletin
- New partner press books
Fully OA group respond to the House Appropriations Committee
The Fully OA group has released a response to the House Appropriations Committee, objecting to the draft language used in the Subcommittee’s FY24 Appropriations bill. The letter is co-signed by eight group members, including our publishing imprint, ]u[ Ubiquity Press.
If enacted, the bill would block implementation of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) August 2022 guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay. The group believes that this would be hugely detrimental to the open science movement, the scientific research community, and US society as a whole.
Refresh, Renew and Realign; case study on LIRA@BCLaw’s migration to ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories out now
Our latest case study is now available to read and download.
We spoke to Avi Bauer and Seunghwan Leo Kim from LIRA@BCLaw, the Legal Institutional Repository and Archives at Boston College Law School, about the repository’s transfer from the Digital Commons platform to ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories, and the simultaneous transfer of the journal Boston College Law Review (BCLR) to the ]u[ Ubiquity platform as a hosted journal.
The case study explores how the migration presented the team with an opportunity to refresh LIRA, and to realign it with Boston College Law’s own values and commitment to contributing to open scholarship. We hope that it will provide insight into the value that an open source repository can bring to an institution, and that it will prove valuable to any institution with an existing repository that may be considering migrating platforms.
]u[ Ubiquity makes the switch from Google Analytics to Plausible
]u[ Ubiquity will no longer support Google Analytics (GA) to monitor site usage for its journal, book, and repository platforms, due to concerns around GA’s GDPR non-compliance and data privacy issues. The open-source provider Plausible will be used to monitor site usage for its journal, book, and repository platforms.
The replacement of Google’s legacy Universal Analytics service with its new Google Analytics (GA) 4 prompted ]u[ Ubiquity to evaluate whether the Google service was suitable for its customers and aligned with ]u[ Ubiquity’s core values. After rigorous exploration of alternative providers, Plausible was selected. You can find the full details behind the switch, as well as a FAQ for existing customers, in our previous blog post.
Open book publishing partnership with University of Westminster Press
We were thrilled to be mentioned in the newest Publisher Spotlight post on the Open Access Book Network’s blog! In the post, Andrew Lockett, previous press manager of University of Westminster Press, discusses how ]u[ Ubiquity supports book publishing at the press, and how a commercial publishing provider can be a good match for a university press.
Four ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories launch
Four new repositories have launched on the ]u[ Ubiquity Repositories platform; The Paul Smith’s College Library’s Institutional Repository, Hobart and William Smith Repository for Institutional Scholarship Exploration (RISE), The Nazareth University Repository, and Le Moyne College’s Research Repository.
The repositories have been set up as part of a deal with the Empire State Library Network (ESLN), wherein members of ESLN have the chance to set up a next-generation, cloud-hosted institutional repository on ]u[ Ubiquity’s open source repository platform at a highly affordable price. We’re excited to welcome these institutions to the ]u[ Ubiquity platform, and to see their repositories continue to grow and showcase their intellectual outputs.
]u[ Ubiquity release public plugin for OJS
The ]u[ Ubiquity Tech Development team has developed and released a public plugin for OJS that allows an external metrics dashboard to be embedded within the Editor and Journal Manager interface.
Playing an active role in the PKP community is a priority for us, so we are always pleased when we are able to share our improvements and developments with the community. More details, and how to install the plugin, can be found via the PKP forum.
News bulletin
JISC launch review of Open Access and Transitional Agreements
JISC has announced a critical review of open access and transitional agreements. Commissioned and governed by JISC’s strategic groups with input from Delta Think, the review will seek to assess the current OA landscape, in order to identify actions needed to accelerate the OA movement. The findings will be published in early 2024.
We welcome this review, and think it is important to stay proactive in working towards a fully open publishing landscape. We hope this review is fruitful in identifying areas for improvement, and in bringing about substantial, tangible changes.
OPERAS 2022 report released
The 2022 OPERAS Research Infrastructure report is now available.
OPERAS is the European Research Infrastructure dedicated to open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities. ]u[ Ubiquity is proud to be a member of OPERAS, and to be involved in developing improved metrics through the OPERAS metrics service. Download the full report.
Upcoming events
It feels like we’ve been here, there and everywhere in the past few months! Most recently, members of our sales team headed to Budapest, Hungary for the 2023 LIBER conference, where we had an exhibition stand.
We’ve still got plenty more conferences on the horizon; we will be attending IFLA WLIC 2023 in Rotterdam this week, the ALPSP Conference and Awards in Manchester from 13th-15th September, and we’ll be representing ]u[ Ubiquity Press on a shared stand with the Fully OA group at the Charleston Conference in November. If you’re also attending any of these events and would like to meet up, do get in touch.
News partner press books
Check out this selection of recently published, open access books from some of our partner presses, including Stockholm University Press, University of California Press, and KIT Scientific Publishing To find out more about any title, simply click on the title in the caption below.
That’s all for now! We’ll see you in a few months for the next ]u[ Ubiquity update.
As the social media landscape continues to evolve and change, we are focusing on growing our community on Mastodon. Give us a follow to keep up to date with what’s going on at ]u[ Ubiquity in real time.
You can also still find us on X and Linkedin. If you’re a member of the Community Portal, you can always keep up to date with us there. Not a member, but think you should be? Get in touch to request membership.
Best wishes,
The ]u[ Ubiquity team
![]u[ Ubiquity](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:144:144/1*9Bg9E03vk0BhPaezyEQrtw.png)
