CAUT reports that Canadian working on projects funded wholly or in part by American federal agencies have been sent a lengthy questionnaire to determine how their work aligns with the Trump administration’s political agenda:
In the questionnaire, Canadian researchers are asked to confirm that their research:
does not include a climate or “environmental justice” component
does not contain diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) elements
does not ascribe to “gender ideology”
increases American influence globally
In addition, the questionnaire asks whether a researcher’s institution has a policy prohibiting collaboration with entities contrary to U.S. government interests and prevents partnerships with “communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties.”
More:
https://www.caut.ca/latest/2025/03/trump-administration-threatening-canadian-researchers
From the Digital Research Alliance of Canada:
On February 27, 2025, the Government of Canada released their initial plans for the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Infrastructure program. The Digital Research Alliance of Canada has been in the process of reviewing the information and developing a plan around the submission of a statement of intent.
Connecting with our digital research infrastructure partners and community in this process is vital and we would like to take this opportunity to invite you to attend one of two virtual town halls to have an opportunity to hear your input and feedback, as well as share our early thoughts about the Alliance’s vision for sovereign AI compute in Canada we are working on for the proposal submission.
Virtual Town Hall #1: We welcome all national DRI users and support staff, researchers, and other public stakeholders.
Date: March 25, 2025
Time: 11 am EDT
Register here for the Virtual Town Hall #1
Virtual Town Hall #2: We welcome all prospective Canadian industry partners
Date: March 26, 2025
Time: 11 am EDT
Register here for the Virtual Town Hall #2
From the Digital Research Alliance of Canada:
This week-long workshop will introduce attendees to best practices in Research Data Management (RDM) using common tools to support research transparency and reproducibility. Robust implementation of RDM principles enables researchers to address bias and reproducibility, effectively share their research, and ensure long term access to their research inputs and outputs. From research question development to findings dissemination, RDM underpins a fruitful and successful academic career.
What will we cover?
Sessions will address the importance and underlying principles of RDM; we’ll explore issues related to RDM and the growing landscape of RDM-related requirements stemming from funders and publishers. Using the R programming language, the Open Science Framework (OSF), and Borealis (Dataverse), we’ll explore solutions to address these issues and enable compliance with funder and publisher requirements.
All attendees will work with a common dataset to explore how to ask questions of data using common computational tools. Throughout, attendees will be introduced to: the documentation and metadata requirements to ensure accessibility: considerations to address different aspects of reproducibility; practices to maintain their data’s integrity; and ways to ensure their final data deposit is adherent to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.
Completion of the Jumpstart can be applied to the Canadian Certificate in Digital Humanities, and will meet the requirement for the minimum 20 hours of in-depth workshops.
Hosted by Julien McHardy and Simon Bowie at the Open Book Futures Experimental Publishing Group.
On the 23rd of May 2025, we are bringing together a group of writers, makers, and publishers to explore Markdown writing and publishing workflows for experimental digital monographs at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Den Haag. In the afternoon hybrid online session, we will share and broaden our conversation. We would be delighted to see you for the event online.
In the session, we will share and discuss our experience with Markdown publishing using the publishing platform Juncture. Juncture is a digital publishing tool developed by JSTOR Labs for visual essaying that allows the author to dynamically display text alongside a range of other media materials. You can find more information about Juncture in our Experimental Publishing Compendium.
More information:
https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/markdown-dive-deep/release/3
Registration:
https://www.eventsforce.net/cugroup/frontEnd/reg/registerNew.csp?ef_sel_menu=9520&eventID=2093
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2025 at 10 am Pacific:
In today's research landscape, conducting a security, privacy, or compliance assessment is often required to safeguard information and adhere to regulatory requirements. This presentation will inform researchers about prevalent challenges when participating in an assessment and guide them through the essential steps to prepare, thus facilitating a seamless process. This comprehensive approach will equip researchers with the knowledge and tools to navigate the complexities of research cybersecurity, ensuring their work is protected and compliant.
Register here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1C6BkndsalZ1IVGuwcEI-sS5b1FOawf2BXNTzX6oobc8/preview
This week, news from a major supplier of ebooks to academic libraries -- that as of later this year they will only provide access on a subscription basis – has created a very troubling disruption of longstanding relationships and workflows through which libraries have been able to acquire many ebooks reliably on a perpetual access model. This mirrors the monetization of books as consumable content and of researchers and readers as market segments that is already well advanced in commercial ebook offerings to other library sectors, and raises critical questions of sustainability and of library autonomy in curation through ongoing engagement with this supplier.
Librarians and libraries are not receiving these developments with complacency, and authors should also be aware of the power that they have – that we have together. As one commenter observes:
Actions such as investing in open monographs and open educational resources (and open more generally), as well as titles from smaller presses, can foster a more diverse and resilient information ecosystem. Especially if the big five acquiesce to this new strategy and have their content licenced through these subscriptions.
This may signal the moment to increase (international) collaboration towards open-access initiatives and collective action. With recent developments around journals, a match has been lit and — whilst not in the way intended — this strategy shift may prove transformative for our approach to books as well.
… read the rest of the quoted post here:
On Feb. 6 this announcement from Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab:
Today we released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov. It will be updated daily as new datasets are added to data.gov.
This is the first release in our new data vault project to preserve and authenticate vital public datasets for academic research, policymaking, and public use.
Link to the announcement:
https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/02/06/announcing-data-gov-archive/
Link to the archive:
https://source.coop/repositories/harvard-lil/gov-data/description
What do researchers expect from OA journals and what do OA journals offer? Are there any regional differences in the perception of publication quality?
During this webinar we will hear from researchers and journal editors from East and North Africa, a librarian from Southeast Europe and digital publishing and dissemination service from North America. Efforts to establish sets of criteria that OA publishers need to meet in order to ensure equitable, transparent, and high-quality OA publishing will be presented. We will also discuss how libraries and other scholarly communication actors could contribute to the evidence-based notion of quality in scholarly publishing.
Recording is available here:
https://www.oaspa.org/events/what-do-we-mean-by-quality-in-open-access-publishing/
The Tier Protocol includes a default hierarchy of folders, subfolders, and files, designed as a flexible framework that may be adapted to diverse contexts.
More info: https://www.projecttier.org/tier-protocol/protocol-4-0/