MIT Libraries News

MIT researchers tackle big data

MIT will host an Intel-sponsored research center to look at ways of handling “big data,” collections of data so immense and complex they cannot be processed by tools that currently exist. The center will be led by Electrical Engineering and Computer Science professor Samuel Madden and adjunct professor Michael Stonebraker. In addition to the Intel center, the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab launched a new industry-sponsored initiative called bigdata@CSAIL. As a part of the center and initiative, faculty and scientists at CSAIL will collaborate with corporate and university researchers beyond MIT to work on projects like analyzing biological data in search of more accurate diagnostic techniques or increasing the security and privacy of financial information.

Explore Professor Madden’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

MIT researchers bid adieu to sticky condiments

It is a problem familiar to most of us: The last ounces of ketchup just won’t shake free from the bottle, so we throw it out, wasting food and money. In May, the architects of a solution won the audience choice award at MIT’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Scientists from the lab of mechanical engineering professor Kripa Varanasi invented a plant-based coating they call LiquiGlide, a slippery material that helps any condiment—from honey to mayonnaise—slide easily out of glass or plastic. “We’ve talked to various folks in the supply chain, from equipment makers to bottle makers to food companies, and they all love it and want it in their bottles,” Varanasi told the Boston Globe. Varanasi’s lab has also created surfaces and coatings that keep frost off planes and allow water to flow more efficiently through pipes.

Explore Professor Varanasi’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

The University of California San Francisco, the largest public recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health whose faculty publishes more than 4,500 scientific papers each year, has announced a new open access policy modelled on the language in the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

Russ Cucina, Associate Professor at UCSF Medical Center, comments that the policy, which passed in a unanimous vote, “guarantees that scientists around the world will have access to the work done at UCSF for them to build upon.” He points to predecessors Harvard and MIT in laying the groundwork for the UCSF policy, and predicts that it will be “a model that the 9 other UC campuses will follow.”

The UCSF Policy “requires UCSF faculty to make each of their articles freely available immediately through an open-access repository” via a mechanicsm like the one established by the MIT faculty. Through their new policy, the UCSF faculty grant a license to the university, giving UCSF a “nonexclusive license to distribute any peer-reviewed articles that will also be published in scientific or medical journals.”

Cucina indicates that this new policy “may prove to be the University’s definitive response” to an endemic imbalance in the scholarly publishing market in which “the publishing companies [have] tremendous pricing power that they’ve been increasingly willing to wield.” He points to UC’s 2010 imbroglio with Nature Publishing Group, when “they proposed a 400% hike in subscription fees and UC responded by threatening a total boycott.”

The UCSF press release reports that “In the past few years, 141 universities worldwide, including Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have … created very effective blanket policies similar to the one just passed at UCSF.”

Policies modeled on the Harvard and MIT language have been put in place on many U.S. campuses, including Columbia, Duke, Emory, Oberlin, Princeton, and the University of Kansas. MIT research is made available under the MIT faculty policy through the Open Access Articles Collection in DSpace@MIT.

More Information:
UCSF press release

UCSF policy and supporting documents

FAQ about the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

The White House has posted a petition calling for public access to federally funded research results. It urges President Obama to “require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.”

This petition follows MIT’s recent participation in the Obama Administration’s Request for Information (RFI) on public access to the results of federally funded research. In the response, MIT affirmed that public access is “of substantial significance” to MIT, because public access aligns with MIT’s mission to “generate, disseminate, and preserve knowledge,” and because:

“The ability of research universities to continue to contribute to the welfare of the nation and the interests of the states and local communities in which we reside is fundamentally connected to the open availability of the research results produced by MIT and by the country’s large and small research universities.”

This new petition will help the Obama Administration identify the priorities to act on in the next few months. If it yields 25,000 signatures in 30 days, it will be reviewed by White House staff, and considered for action.

To review or sign the petition:
Visit the We The People site

Economist Finkelstein wins John Bates Clark Medal

The American Economic Association has named Amy Finkelstein winner of the 2012 John Bates Clark Medal, a prestigious annual award given to an economist under 40. Professor Finkelstein researches health insurance markets and has, among other work, analyzed the effects of Medicare and Medicaid on healthcare spending. In its announcement the AEA notes that Finkelstein’s research is “centered on some of the most important and policy-relevant issues facing developed economies today,” and calls her “one of the most accomplished applied micro-economists of her generation.”

Explore Professor Finkelstein’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

It’s easier to use figures, illustrations, and tables from major publishers in new scholarly publications because of contracts signed by the MIT Libraries for use of journals on campus. If an MIT author wants to include a figure, illustration, or table from a journal published by Elsevier, Springer, or Wiley, it’s possible to do so without asking permission or paying any fee.

Through the MIT Libraries’ contracts, for example, Springer and Wiley give MIT authors the right “to use, with appropriate credit, figures, tables and brief excerpts … in the Authorized User’s own scientific, scholarly and educational works.”

Elsevier also allows authors similar rights. Authors can “incorporate a maximum of two (2) figures (including charts, tables, graphs and other images) from a journal article or book chapter or five (5) figures per journal volume … in academic works, research papers and scholarly publications and presentations … for non-commercial purposes.”

Elsevier, like Springer and Wiley, stipulates that the user must make appropriate credit, but also makes the point that “if a separate copyright holder is identified in such figure or the figure is a complex illustration,” for example an anatomical drawing, cartoon, map, or photograph, then permission should be sought from the publisher or copyright holder.

In general, permission should be sought if the figure, table, or illustration indicates a copyright holder other than the publisher.

If a publisher wants evidence of the permission to reuse figures, tables, or illustrations from journals published by Elsevier, Springer, or Wiley, authors can indicate permission was granted through a license signed by MIT with the publisher for access to the journals at MIT. MIT authors may point journal editors to the MIT web page describing this permission.

If you have any questions, please contact copyright-lib@mit.edu

CSAIL’s Agarwal named head of edX

Earlier this month MIT and Harvard announced a partnership to launch edX, a nonprofit that will offer free online courses from both institutions. The open source platform built for MITx, announced last December, will serve as the foundation for edX. It was developed under the leadership of CSAIL director Anant Agarwal, who is the first president of edX. Agarwal is co-teaching (along with Gerald Sussman, Christopher Terman, and Piotr Mitros) the first class offered by MITx, Circuits and Electronics, which runs through early June. About 120,000 students registered for the course.

Explore Professor Agarwal’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

Tito Sierra (photo by L.Barry Hetherington)

Tito Sierra, MIT Libraries’ Associate Director for Technology, has been appointed to the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Advisory Committee for the Council on Library and Information Services (CLIR). During his two-year term, Sierra will work with five other committee members to advise the DLF director on program activities, initiatives, and strategy.

CLIR’s Digital Library Federation is a network of libraries and related agencies pioneering innovative uses of information technologies and community expertise to extend collections and services. DLF has promoted work on:

• Digital library structures, standards, preservation, and use
• Archives for electronic journals
• Aggregation services for digital collections
• Digital library services that expand access to resources for research, teaching, and learning

See the full announcement from the DLF.

CSAIL professor celebrated as outstanding woman in computer science

In April, CSAIL professor Nancy Lynch was named the Athena Lecturer, an annual award from the Association for Computing Machinery that celebrates women who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. Lynch will give a talk at an ACM conference and receive a $10,000 prize from Google. “We’d certainly like to attract more attention to the success of women researchers,” said Lynch in a Boston Globe interview, “so we can get more women inspired to get into the field.”

Explore Professor Lynch’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

eLife, a new collaborative initiative backed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust, announced the board of reviewing editors today for its new open access journal, eLife. Of the 175 editors, five are faculty from MIT: Barbara Imperiali (Biology), Nancy Kanwisher (Brain & Cognitive Sciences), Michael Laub (Biology), Aviv Regev (Biology), and David Sabatini (Biology).

According to the news release, eLife’s “first aim is to publish an open-access journal for the most important discoveries that is also a platform for experimentation and showcasing innovation in research communication.” The eLife journal, focused on life and biomedical science, is intended to offer “a top-tier open-access journal covering basic biological research through to applied, translational and clinical studies.”

eLife‘s goal is to “accelerate scientific advancement by promoting modes of communication whereby new results are made available quickly, openly, and in a way that helps others to build upon them.” Toward that end, eLife plans to “make decisions quickly; deliver a fair, transparent, and supportive author experience; and create maximum potential exposure for published works.”

eLife will launch toward the end of 2012.

For more information on eLife and other open access journals:

• New York Times article about eLife
• Open Access FAQ

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a new series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

New climate circulation model shows Southern Ocean’s importance

As reported in the MIT News, Oceanography professor John Marshall and colleague Kevin Speer offer an updated ocean circulation model that emphasizes the Southern Ocean’s influence on the earth’s climate and climate change. Previous research has focused on the North Atlantic, but Marshall and Speer’s recent paper, a review of past observations and research, pinpoints the water circling Antarctica as a key player in the global circulation system.

Explore Professor Marshall’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Professor Richard Holton announces the formation of a new Faculty Open Access Working Group in the latest issue of the MIT Faculty Newsletter. Holton talks about the origin and purpose of the group, which will operate under the auspices of the Faculty Committee on the Library System to advance the goals of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, and which will also address “larger issues about open access.”

One such issue is Elsevier’s response to the MIT Faculty Policy. As Holton reports, Elsevier’s author contract now indicates authors ‘must obtain an express waiver’ from the MIT policy, but that’s not all:

“last year they put in place a new Posting Policy, i.e., a policy governing how their authors can publish their pieces on the Web. The new Posting Policy states that in general authors are allowed to post their articles on their Websites, but then adds a caveat saying that this does not extend to repositories with ‘systematic posting mandates.’…The wording is very unclear; no one is quite sure what a “systematic posting mandate” is. …But it is clear that Elsevier is trying to do what it can to undermine [faculty open access] policies, and to confuse faculty about what they are and are not allowed to do.”

Holton points out that outrage at Elsevier’s policies has sparked a boycott, with many MIT participants. “There is a growing sense that some response is needed,” Holton says, “and the new Working Group is planning to consider what, if any, response should be made.”

Overall, Holton “hope[s] the Working Group will offer an efficient means of arriving at principled positions to take to Elsevier and other publishers.”

Members of the Open Access Working Group:

Scott Aaronson (EECS)
Hal Abelson (EECS)
Janet Conrad (ex officio, as Chair of the FCLS) (Physics)
Sasha Costanza-Chock (Writing and Humanistic Studies)
Kai von Fintel (Linguistics)
Eric von Hippel (Sloan)
Richard Holton (Chair) (Philosophy)
John Lienhard (Mechanical Engineering)
Anne Whiston Spirn (Urban Studies & Planning)
George Stephanopoulos (Chemical Engineering)

The Elsevier boycott started by mathematician Timothy Gowers has grown to over 8,900 names, with 81 signatories from MIT, 12 of whom list affiliations with the MIT Mathematics department. Adjunct MIT Professor of Mathematics Henry Cohn, one of the boycott signatories, is co-author of a new article “Mathematicians Take A Stand” that explains the reasoning behind the boycott.

The article, which has been accepted for publication in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, argues that Elsevier “has aggressively pushed bundling arrangements that result in libraries paying for journals they do not want and that obscure actual costs,” has “fought transparency of pricing,” and has “imposed restrictions on dissemination by authors.” For example, Cohn and co-author Douglas Arnold of University of Minnesota point out that “if your institution mandates posting the accepted author manuscript in its repository, then Elsevier stipulates that you may not–although they permit such posting when there is no mandate!”

The authors report that push-back on Elsevier’s practices has had a real impact. Following the boycott, Elsevier publicly withdrew its support for the Research Works Act (RWA), which would have prohibited the government from establishing open access mandates for research it funds. Elsevier’s withdrawal of support came just hours before its sponsors declared the bill dead. “This victory,” Arnold and Cohn note, “confirmed the boycott’s success in delivering a message where we were never able to get through before.”

In addition to reversing position on the Research Works Act, Elsevier issued a “Letter to the Mathematics Community,” announcing a “target price” for core mathematics titles, and promising to address concerns about “large discounted agreements,” as well as opening access to the archives of 14 core mathematics journals from 1995 up to four years prior to the present day. Arnold and Cohn call for “expansion to the full set of mathematical journals and the period before 1995,” as well as a “binding commitment” to the changes Elsevier has made. They also want Elsevier to “allow authors to post accepted manuscripts to any [noncommercial subject] repository, as well as to university repositories, regardless of whether there is a posting mandate,” and to include this in their publishing agreement with authors.

More broadly, the authors reflect that “it is too early to predict” what mix of publishing models will “emerge as the most successful” but that “any publisher that wants to be part of this mix must convince the community that they oversee peer review with integrity, that they aid dissemination rather than hinder it, and that they work to make high-quality mathematical literature widely available at a reasonable price.”

For more information:

• Statement of Purpose for the Elsevier boycott (signed by 34 mathematicians)
• Why Scientists are Boycotting a Publisher: Gareth Cook’s editorial in the Boston Globe
• Interview with Elsevier about the boycott, RWA, and more
• Elsevier Fact Sheet
  
• Elsevier statement in reversing support for the RWA including that they will still “continue to oppose government mandates in this area.”

Three years after the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy, more than 5,000 papers have been made available through the Policy.

By the end of 2011, 60% of MIT faculty had papers deposited in the Open Access Articles Collection, making their work openly available to the world.

March 18 marked the third anniversary of the faculty’s precedent-setting policy, the first university-wide faculty policy of its kind in the United States.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy
MIT News Story from the time of the vote on the Policy

Three years after the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy was established, monthly downloads from the collection of articles made available under the Policy continue to grow, reaching a new high of 30,000 in February 2012.

This news is reported as we mark the third anniversary (on March 18) of the faculty’s precedent-setting policy, the first university-wide faculty policy of its kind in the United States.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy
MIT News Story from the time of the vote on the Policy

Worldwide downloads of papers under the Policy

Three years ago this month, the MIT Faculty established an Open Access Policy, through which their scholarly articles are made openly available on the web. The faculty’s goal was to “disseminat[e] the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible.”

This goal is being met: downloads from the Open Access Articles Collection, which houses papers under the Policy, have been initiated from nearly every country in the world:

Only one-third of use originated in the United States, and while the top 20 countries account for 85% of the use (including China, India, the UK, Germany, and the Republic of Korea), downloads are widespread. Russia and Brazil each account for about 1% of the use. In a typical month such as December 2011, downloads were requested from all around the world, including (to name just a few) Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Botswana, Cote D’Ivoire, Croatia, Honduras, Malaysia, Malta, Nepal, Qatar, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe.

This news is reported as we mark the third anniversary (on March 18) of the faculty’s precedent-setting policy, the first university-wide faculty policy of its kind in the United States.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy
MIT News Story from the time of the vote on the Policy

Date: Friday, March 23, 2012, 2:30–5pm

Location: MIT Stata Center, Building 32, Rm. 155

Registration: Limited seating, please register in advance

What is fair use, and how can libraries use their fair use rights to better accomplish their missions? A new document, the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, provides powerful new insight into the ways that librarians can apply fair use principles to resolve recurring copyright challenges.

On Friday, March 23, 2012 the MIT Libraries will host an informative panel discussion with the co-facilitators of the Code, who are speaking to librarians around the country to introduce the Code and discuss how its principles can help solve local challenges and improve policies dealing with copyright and fair use.

Speakers include co-facilitators of the Code, Patricia Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media at American

Co-facilitators of the Code: Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi

University and Peter Jaszi of American University Law School, and local experts Kyle Courtney of Harvard University’s Law School and Jay Wilcoxson from the MIT Office of the General Counsel.

Local librarians are invited to join us for a discussion about the Code of Best Practices and how it can be useful in our community. To attend this free event, register online. Seating is limited so please register early.

The Code, along with supporting materials, is available for free online and hard copies will be also be available at the event.

About the Speakers:

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. and founder-director of the Center for Social Media there. She heads the Fair Use and Free Speech research project at the Center, in conjunction with Prof. Peter Jaszi in American University’s Washington College of Law.

Peter Jaszi teaches domestic and international copyright law, directs the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, and writes about copyright history and theory. He is a Trustee of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., and a member of the editorial board of its journal.

Kyle Courtney is an intellectual property attorney presently working at Harvard Law School as the Head of External Resource Sharing and Faculty Research. His work at Harvard includes the formation of the first Library Copyright Working Group the creation of a “Copyright and Fair Use Tool” for use of the Harvard Library community.

Jay Wilcoxson is Counsel in MIT’s Office of the General Counsel since his arrival in August, 2007. His responsibilities include managing the Institute’s legal process and litigation and providing advice in connection with a wide variety of Institute affairs including a focus on intellectual property issues.

The boycott of Elsevier started by mathematician Timothy Gowers has rapidily grown to nearly 5000 names, including at least 45 from MIT. MIT signers, who constitute nearly one percent of participants, come from all across MIT, including Biology, CSAIL, EECS, Linguistics, Math, the Media Lab, Philosophy, and Physics.

“I signed the petition simply because I believe that if taxpayers fund research, they should have access to the results of that research without going through a paywall,” says EECS Professor Seth Teller.

Those taxpayers would not have access to government-funded research if Elsevier has its way. Elsevier supports the Research Works Act (RWA), which would prohibit the government from requiring authors to openly share articles that result from the research it funds, thus making the existing NIH Public Access Policy, or any others like it, illegal.

For Professor Scott Aaronson, “signing this petition was a no-brainer.” He “started boycotting Elsevier and most other commercial publishers as a graduate student, because the economic model didn’t make sense” to him. “I couldn’t understand why academics were (1) donating their papers to publishers like Elsevier, (2) signing away their copyrights, (3) asking their universities’ libraries to buy *back* the papers at exorbitant, ever-increasing costs, and (4) even reviewing the papers (an onerous burden) free of charge, all while I could see for myself that the publishers were providing little or no ‘value-added,’ since most people just downloaded the papers from the arXiv or the authors’ homepages anyway.”

For Professor Aaronson, this boycott has been a long time coming. “I’ve simply been waiting for what I saw as the inevitable moment when a critical mass of academics would ‘wake up’ to the issue” that the existing publishing model, with ever-increasing prices, was “unsustainable,” he says. “Now that one of the greatest mathematicians on earth (Timothy Gowers) is spearheading the boycott movement, and dozens of other leading figures in the mathematical community have declared their support, that moment may have arrived.”

More information:

• Why Scientists are Boycotting a Publisher: Gareth Cook’s editorial in the Boston Globe
• Interview with Elsevier about the boycott, RWA, and more
• Elsevier Fact Sheet

Nearly twenty members of the MIT community have already signed a newly posted pledge to boycott Elsevier journals by refusing to publish, referee, or do editorial work “unless they radically change how they operate.”

The boycott was launched as a result a posting by Fields medal-winning mathematician Timothy Gowers in which he railed against Elsevier’s pricing practices and support of the Research Works Act. He suggested that a public website be created where others could join him in “refus(ing) to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on.”

Such a website now exists, and lists (as of the time of this writing) eighteen members of the MIT community, including Professors Scott Aaronson, Hal Abelson, Allan Adams, Hari Balakrishnan, Richard Holton, David Karger, Gerald Sussman, and Seth Teller as well graduate students Andrew Correa, John Hess, and Yarden Katz.

Professor Kai von Fintel also signed the boycott, and recently made a similar public statement on his web site.

Elsevier is one of the publishers pushing to repeal the NIH Public Access Policy through a bill, the Research Works Act and other legislation that, as the boycott website puts it: “aim(s) to restrict the free exchange of information.”

MIT Press was the first publisher to publicly disavow the Association of American Publishers’ support of the Research Works Act, a bill which would make the NIH Public Access Policy, along with any other similar government effort to make taxpayer-funded research openly accessible to the public, illegal.

“The AAP’s press release on the Research Works Act does not reflect the position of the MIT Press; nor, I imagine, the position of many other scholarly presses whose mission is centrally focused on broad dissemination,” says Ellen Faran, Director of the MIT Press.

Many university presses are members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and others have followed MIT Press in distancing themselves from the AAP’s action in recent days, including the University of California Press and Rockefeller University Press. Other publishers who are members of AAP have also spoken out against the bill, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Nature Publishing Group.

The Research Works Act “would forbid federal agencies to do anything that would result in the sharing of privately published research—even if that research is done with the help of taxpayer dollars—unless the publisher of the work agrees first” according to Jennifer Howard of the New York Times.

For more information:
Chronicle of Higher Ed: Who Gets to See Published Research?

New York Times: Research Bought, Then Paid For

The Guardian (UK): Academic publishers have become the enemies of science