MIT Libraries News

White House takes action to increase access to the results of federally funded scientific research

When MIT faculty adopted an open access (OA) policy for their scholarly articles in March 2009, they expressed a strong philosophical commitment to disseminating “the fruits of their research and scholarship” as widely as possible. The MIT Libraries are paying close attention to recent events in Washington that have the potential to expand this commitment to include a significant percentage of all federally funded research in the United States.

On February 22, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a directive asking each federal agency with over $100 million in annual research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research they fund. Agencies have six months to come up with policies that would make both articles and data openly available to the public, consistent with a set of objectives set out in the memorandum. The OSTP has been evaluating the need for more open access to federally funded research for several years; in 2010 and 2012 it collected public comments, including those from MIT.

Eight days earlier, on February 14, bipartisan lawmakers in both houses of Congress introduced a bill called the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), which would provide open access to work funded by US government agencies that spend at least $100 million a year on research. FASTR is a stronger version of an earlier bill that failed to make it out of committee. It asks that authors make their peer-reviewed manuscripts available to OA repositories within six months of publication; that agencies devise common deposit procedures (thus making the law easier to comply with); and that articles are deposited in a format and under terms that allow them to be widely reused and analyzed.

“By next year, I hope we can say: Don’t give candy; give knowledge,” writes Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project, in his analysis of the Valentine’s Day bill.

Suber calls the executive and legislative strategies complementary. The directive alone isn’t law, which means the next president could rescind it. As for FASTR, it’s unclear whether it will be adopted and how the sequester — the across-the-board budget cuts to federal agencies — will affect it.

“The legislative situation in Washington is problematic due to the budget impasse,” says Ann Wolpert, director of MIT Libraries. “But open access advocacy groups continue to keep pressure on the appropriate committees of Congress.”

In late February, Wolpert published a serendipitously timed article in the New England Journal of Medicine called “For the Sake of Inquiry and Knowledge — The Inevitability of Open Access.” The article was one of four opinion pieces on the pros and cons of OA that the journal commissioned last fall. In it Wolpert explores the “powerful motivations” underlying open access, including the fact that scholarly authors write for impact, not royalties, that much of research is taxpayer funded, and that journal publishers have often disproportionally raised their subscription prices. The Internet, of course, was the disruption to the long-running, intricate scholarly publishing system that has enabled open access.

“For all its known flaws, no one wants to destroy peer-reviewed publication,” Wolpert writes. “But the nonpublisher stakeholders in the scholarly communication system can no longer support the prices and access constraints desired by traditional publishers.”

Because of the diversity of research culture, Wolpert writes, we should expect open access to come in fits and starts depending on the discipline and on new communication tools that will “flourish or perish.”

For now, the White House directive provides a welcome push. “I’m confident the library community and academia will be active during this time in support of plans that make sense from the perspective of research universities and their libraries,” Wolpert says, adding that the MIT Faculty Open Access Working Group of the Committee on the Library System has both FASTR and the directive on its upcoming agenda.

Preservation Week is almost here! What’s Preservation Week, you ask? It was created in 2010 by the American Library Association to highlight the importance of preserving library and cultural heritage collections.

Celebrate Preservation Week, April 21^st -27^th, with a series of events hosted by Curation and Preservation Services of the MIT Libraries. Events are open to all, but some events require registration due to limited seating.

For details about these events and more information on Preservation Week, please visit the MIT Libraries Preservation Week web page.

Save the Music! Transforming MIT music collections for future use

Monday, April 22nd, 2013, 2-3pm

MIT Room 14N-132 (160 Memorial Drive)

Please register for this event

Webinar: The Preservation of Family Photographs

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013, 2-3pm

MIT Room 14N-132 (160 Memorial Drive)

Webinar: Personal Digital Archiving

followed by Q+A with Kari Smith, MIT Digital Archivist

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013, 2-4pm

MIT Room 14N-132 (160 Memorial Drive)

Where Science Meets Artifact: An Inside Look at

the Role of Conservation Science in Preserving Cultural Heritage

Thursday, April 25th, 2013, 3-4pm

Presented by Shannon Taylor, MIT ’13 and Dr. Katherine Eremin, Patricia Cornwall Conservation Scientist at the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

MIT Room 56-114 (21 Ames Street)

On Monday, April 15, 2013, the following libraries will open at noon (12pm):

• Barker
• Dewey
• Hayden (Humanities & Science)
• Lewis Music
• Rotch

All other library locations will be closed. Libraries resume regular hours on Tuesday, April 16.

Have questions? Ask Us!

Once upon a time when librarians got questions about the human body, they’d walk to the colorful, well-worn, reference volumes of Handbook of Physiology. The Libraries is pleased to announce this venerable source has formed the basis of the new, digital, Comprehensive Physiology, http://libraries.mit.edu/get/compphys, and we subscribe!

It begins with more than 30,000 pages from the American Physiological Society’s Handbook, and the plan is to produce 4000 pages each year to update and refresh it. Each major system of the body is included: respiration, circulation, gastrointestinal, nervous and more. Its January 2013 issue covers sleep apnea, animal locomotion, and the effect of exercise on cognitive abilities. For those in life sciences, neuroscience, or anyone on a physiological quest, we invite you to check this out—now only a click away!

Monday, April 8^th is this year’s Day of DH.

A Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities is a project that examines the state of the digital humanities through the lens of those within it. Follow the day’s activities @DayofDH on Twitter.

If you’re interested in the digital humanities or if you’re wondering what it is, explore our most recent research guide, Digital Humanities. Since it’s a work in progress, please let us know what you’d like to see added to it. 

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has announced an experimental program for 2013 that will provide vouchers to authors, allowing them to publish their RSC articles open access without paying the standard article publication fee.

The program, called “Gold for Gold,” is offered at universities, like MIT, whose libraries subscribe to “RSC Gold,” the entire package of RSC journals and databases.

All MIT authors publishing in RSC journals are eligible. A limited number of vouchers (based on the cost to the MIT Libraries for the RSC Gold subscription) will be distributed by the Libraries on a first-come, first-served basis. Vouchers can be applied only to articles that have been accepted for publication, and cannot be applied retrospectively to articles already published.

To request a voucher, send an email request to rscvouchers@mit.edu, including:

Your name

The title of your article

The RSC journal the article has been accepted by

If vouchers are still available, a voucher number will be sent back to you by the Libraries via email.

To use a voucher, it should be entered into the Gold for Gold online acceptance form after the author receives notification that the article has been accepted. (The author will be asked to sign a different publication agreement at this stage.)

Benefits of vouchers
Upon publication, the article will be accessible to all readers, worldwide, regardless of whether they or their institutions subscribe to RSC journals. The Gold for Gold open access articles will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution license, maximizing the potential for openness and reuse.

RSC explains that they envisioned the program as “a mechanism to ease some of the economic burden on our authors who either needed to comply with open access mandates or simply wanted their articles published open access for other reasons.” Choosing the RSC open access option is one way to fulfill the requirements of the NIH Public Access Policy, with no action required by the author other than indicating the article is NIH funded.

For more information, or to provide feedback about this pilot program:
Gold for Gold FAQ
Erja Kajosalo, Chemistry & Chemical Engineering Librarian

Linda Griffith

Four professors were recently named MacVicar Faculty Fellows, honored for their outstanding undergraduate teaching and commitment to innovation in education. The honorees are Linda Griffith, Rob Miller, Laura Schulz, and Emma Teng; each receives an allowance for 10 years to help “enrich the undergraduate learning experience.”

Explore Professor Griffith’s research, Professor Miller’s research, and Professor Schulz’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.

Barker Library will be closed for a private function on Saturday, April 6^th. Access to the 24 hour space will be available from closing time Friday until 6am and will resume at 8pm on Saturday. The library will be open for regular business hours on Sunday.

If you need Saturday access to materials you have on hold at Barker, please email or call the Barker service desk to have your item(s) delivered to another MIT library.

Thank you for your patience.

Composer forum series: Forrest Larson, composer, violist and electronic musician.

MIT Lewis Music Library staff member Forrest Larson will discuss his compositions that use “found sounds” from both natural as well as urban landscapes in compositions with acoustic instruments. MIT student Emily Su will perform The Crows Return for flute and recorded sound.  Forrest will also discuss Seabird Fantasy, commissioned by the MIT Wind Ensemble.

He has also written works for string quartet, string orchestra, unaccompanied violin, viola and cello. He plays live analog electronic instruments with the group Sonic Sandbox.

Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Place: Lewis Music Library, Bldg. 14E-109
Time: 5-6 pm
Reception follows.
Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by MIT Music and Theater Arts.

Did you know that 94% of students who study in the library get better grades on final exams?*  There are tons of great study spots at the 5 libraries around campus, and everyone has a favorite.  You won’t know your favorite until you’ve tried them all.  Here are some highlights:

• Restored Barker Dome:
  Enjoy the beauty and natural light from the newly open skylight. Judging from the number of people in the reading room, the secret is already out! There are also more study spaces on the 6th – 8th floors, including spaces for groups on the 8th floor.

• 24/7 spaces: 
  Dewey, Hayden, and now Barker, all have study spaces that are open around-the-clock for MIT students. Just use your MIT ID for secure access.

• Individual & group study spaces: 
  We have spaces for both individual and group needs. You can even reserve some of the group study rooms. Some offer LCD screens with laptop connectors and even video conferencing capabilities.  Find out more about all of our study spaces.

• Food and drinks are welcome!  (Within reason…)
  Hey, everyone needs a little fuel to keep those neurons firing.  See our food & drink guidelines.

*OK, we made that part up. April Fool’s!

Looking for corporate social responsibility data?  ASSET4 ESG (“Environmental, Social, and Governance”) provides company-level data on 3,400 public companies worldwide, including some of the largest companies in the US. There is a minimum of 4 years of data for most companies and up to 1,000 datatypes are available across the following categories:

ASSET 4 ESG is available via the Thomson Reuters Datastream workstation located in Dewey Library. From within Datastream, ESG is included as a Datatype option under the Equities category. See the Libraries’ Sustainable Business Research Guide or Thomson Reuters’ ASSET4 ESG fact sheet (PDF).

The MIT Faculty established their Open Access Policy in March, 2009 to support the widest possible dissemination of their research and scholarship. Four years later, their articles are being read worldwide, with downloads requested from nearly every country on earth.

Only one-third of the use originates in the United States, while North America as a whole accounts for 36% of the activity. Downloads are otherwise widely distributed, with even the well-populated and research-intensive countries of China, India, and the UK contributing just 10%, 6%, and 5% respectively. Downloads from around the world include those from Nigeria and Argentina (both 0.1%), Estonia (.05%) and Malta (.02%). Europe is the origin of consistent activity, including from Italy (2%), Poland (0.7%), and Spain (.01%). Australia and New Zealand account for an additional 2% of downloads.

We welcome comments from these readers around the world through the articles deposited in the Open Access Articles Collection. Open the fulltext of any article and click on “Please share how this access benefits you” to tell us your story.

This news is being reported in celebration of the 4th anniversary of the adoption of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

The MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, which turns four this month, has hit a new milestone with that birthday: a record 59,284 downloads in a month.

There have a total been over 900,000 downloads from the Open Access Articles Collection, which was established in October 2009 to house papers under the Policy. That collection now makes over 8,700 articles openly available worldwide.

This news is being reported in celebration of the 4th anniversary of the adoption of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

This month the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy turns four, and its impact is being felt by grateful readers around the world.

Downloads have been initiated from nearly every country. What’s more, individual voices are now associated with many of those downloads. We have been collecting comments from readers since July 2012, and we have learned in just a matter of months of the many new and thankful audiences that are finding the MIT faculty’s articles.

Appreciative comments have come from students, job seekers, researchers in developing nations, independent scholars, journalists, hobbyists, retired engineers and scientists, and patient advocates, among others.

These comments reflect the success of the faculty in meeting their goal of “disseminating the fruits of [their] research and scholarship as widely as possible,” through their Open Access Policy.

This news is being reported in celebration of the 4th anniversary of the adoption of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

As of March, 2013, the 4th anniversary of MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, over 8,700 papers are being made openly available to the world in relation to the Policy.

The total number of papers reached 8,500 in February, and as of this month, has grown to more than 8,700. This total represents an estimated 1/3 of the papers written by faculty since the Policy was adopted.

Readers — particularly those who would not otherwise have access — have been finding and using this wealth of information, including researchers from Germany and Peru.

This news is being reported in celebration of the fourth anniversary of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

You asked for it, and we responded – we’re happy to report that the MIT Libraries once again subscribes to Britannica Online! You can find it in Vera, or use this short-cut URL: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/britannica. (Note: if you’re off-campus, be sure your certificates are up to date!)

Since 1768, Britannica has been one of the most trusted information sources for researchers trying to gain a quick understanding of a topic. Updated daily, the online version continues that tradition, and is a great place to start your research!

Photo by Kurt Fendt

Kurt Fendt, Director of HyperStudio, recently announced the nomination of eight fellows to participate in the first year of HyperStudio’s new fellowship program, including two librarians, Sands Fish and Patsy Baudoin.

HyperStudio brings together humanities postdocs and visiting scholars, librarians, technologists, artists, curators, and other members of the MIT community to generate questions and energy around the Digital Humanities. The HSF program aims to cultivate community and collaboration at the edges of disciplines and fields, finding overlaps and investigating productive tensions of creative and critical engagement.

Read more information

Scanning tunneling microscope image shows an artificial atomic nucleus on graphene. Courtesy of Michael Crommie

A team of researchers from MIT and other institutions have shown atomic collapse, a phenomenon predicted decades ago but never before observed. The researchers, including physics professor Leonid Levitov, devised a new technique to simulate atomic nuclei on the surface of graphene, which is a sheet of densely packed carbon atoms. Using graphene made it possible to manipulate and observe the nuclei, in part because they move slower. They report their findings in an upcoming article in the journal Science.

Explore Professor Levitov’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.

All sessions take place in the Digital Instruction Resource Center (DIRC), 14N-132.

photo by L.Barry Hetherington

Pre-registration is required for some, but not all sessions. See below for details.

Course Reserves at the MIT Libraries – Register
Thu April 11, 10:00 – 11:00 am, 14N-132
Contact: Molly McInerney, mcinerne@mit.edu

Are you a new instructor or teaching assistant at MIT, or are you an administrative assistant who supports teaching faculty? Do you want to learn more about course reserves and their copyright policies?

The MIT Libraries can help you navigate reserves services for print and electronic materials, and we will provide an overview of fair use and copyright guidelines for course reserves. We will also cover the details about submitting required textbook information via the Semester Book Submission Form. Course reserves staff from around the MIT Libraries will be available to answer questions.

Please register for this session.

Patent Searching Fundamentals – Register
Thu April 11, 12:00 – 1:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Howard Silver, hsilver@mit.edu

You won’t come out of this session qualified to be a patent attorney, but you will be able to successfully find patent references from all over the world and know how to obtain patent text and diagrams. The session will be a hands-on practicum that will help de-mystify the patent literature and expose attendees to key resources for finding patents.

Please register for this session.

EndNote Basics – Register
Wed April 17, 12:00 – 1:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Peter Cohn, pcohn@mit.edu

EndNote is a “personal bibliographic software” package which allows you to create and manage a database of bibliographic references. Learn how to find and use information more effectively in our hands-on workshop.

Please register for this session.

Commercialize Your Science and Engineering Research – Register
Tue April 23, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Howard Silver, hsilver@mit.edu

This session will introduce scientists and engineers to business information resources that will help you understand the commercial potential for your ideas, how to find partners, and sources for financial support. We will use realistic examples and hands-on exercises with key resources to demonstrate how to match your ideas and discoveries with the opportunities and realities of the marketplace.

Please register for this session.

The Information Is Out There…But Can You Find It? The Information Landscape in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Thu April 25, 12:00 – 1:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Amy Stout, astout@mit.edu

The class is open to all, but targeted at first-year EECS graduate students. It will cover:

• The information landscape of EECS
• Tools to make your work more efficient
• Library services that you may not know about
• How to find help when you need it

Manage Your References: Overview of EndNote, RefWorks, Mendeley, & Zotero – Register
Thu April 25, 5:00 – 6:15 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Peter Cohn, pcohn@mit.edu

Using citation management software to create and maintain a collection of references or PDFs is becoming more common and important in today’s academic world. These software packages (EndNote, RefWorks, Zotero, & Mendeley) allow users to search databases, retrieve relevant citations, and build a bibliography to be added to a paper or thesis or stored for future reference. We’ll take a look at these 4 tools.

Please register for this session.

Collect Your Own Data with a GPS – Register
Tue April 30, 2:00 – 4:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact Person: Jennie Murack, murack@mit.edu

Will you be doing data collection over the summer or perhaps just some hiking? This workshop will teach you how to use a handheld GPS to collect geographic data and then download it into ArcMap software for analysis. We will go outside and collect points and routes and then go inside to view our data. GPS units are available to checkout from Rotch Library for use after the workshop.

Please register for this session.

Personal Content Management Tools - Register
Wed May 1, 12:00 – 1:00, 14N-132 (originally scheduled for 4/24, 12-1)
Contact: Peter Cohn, pcohn@mit.edu

Personal content management tools help you get organized so you can work more efficiently and save time. Some tools help you organize all sorts of information (notes, pdfs, documents, images etc. etc.) and work more efficiently. Others let you annotate, cite, and/or share your content. In this session we’ll show you tools for doing this while working solo or in a group.

Please register for this session.

Join us for a community open house celebrating the historic restoration of MIT’s Great Dome, and the opening of Barker Library’s 24-hour reading room.

DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 2013, 2-4pm

LOCATION: Barker Library Reading Room (10-500)

DETAILS: Remarks by President L. Rafael Reif. Refreshments to follow.