Libraries to host postdoctoral fellow in software curation
Software plays a dynamic and growing role in scholarship —it is both a research method and a research outcome. This presents academic libraries with a challenge, as well as an opportunity, as we contemplate practices and possibilities for acquiring, appraising, describing, documenting, preserving, and disseminating software.

In January, the Libraries announced it will host a Software Curation Postdoctoral Fellow as part of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. CLIR Fellows work on projects that forge and strengthen connections among library collections, educational technologies, and current research. The Software Curation Fellow at MIT will lead an investigation to inform the Libraries about immediate and long-term implications of collecting and curating software and of providing software curation services to our community.

Libraries support Open Library of Humanities
The Libraries have joined the Open Library of Humanities (OLH), an academic-led, all open access publisher of humanities journals. The platform, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, hosts peer-reviewed open access journals in the humanities, as well as OLH’s own multidisciplinary open access journal.

MIT Professor of Linguistics Kai von Fintel praised the Libraries’ decision to join OLH, in part because of its support for a new open access linguistics journal, Glossa. It was created when the editorial team of the Elsevier journal Lingua resigned and launched a new journal with the same focus and scope. The editorial board had proposed to make Lingua free to readers and authors, but Elsevier did not agree.

“We firmly expect that Glossa will inherit and exceed the quality and reputation of the earlier journal,” said von Fintel in a statement co-signed by fellow Linguistics faculty. “We applaud MIT’s support for OLH, the organization that, together with the Linguistics in OpenAccess initiative, is underwriting Glossa. We pledge to further the aims of open access in our actions as editors, reviewers, and authors.”

 

News from the MIT Press

Increasing workforce diversity in academic publishing
A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will help four university presses, including MIT Press, and the Association of American University Presses create a pipeline program to diversify academic publishing by offering apprenticeships in book acquisitions departments. This is the first cross-press initiative of its kind in the United States to address the lack of diversity in the publishing industry. The first cohort of fellows will start their apprenticeships in June.

MIT Media Lab and MIT Press launch new journal
The Journal of Design and Science (JoDS), an online, open access journal, provides a new model for academic publishing by encouraging broad-ranging discourse that challenges traditional academic silos and publishing practices. Curated by a team led by MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito, JoDS invites lively discussion across all fields of design and science and widespread participation. This format is made possible by the new PubPub publishing platform, created by researchers Travis Rich and Thariq Shihipar working in the Media Lab’s Viral Communications group.