News

UMD PACT members have met with many departments and units on campus to discuss Open Access and the proposed policy change. Resulting questions and feedback will be added to this website's FAQ feature. On May 27, 2021, PACT member, Professor Philip Cohen, led an online talk on OSF [Open Science Framework] "Transparency in Research: Leveraging the Open Science Framework" attended by more than 60 scholars. Interest and use of OSF continues to grow since UMD joined OSF as an institutional member.

Philip Cohen, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, provided an introduction to OSF: "Transparency in Research: Leveraging the Open Science Framework". Click here to view this event which was hosted by UMD Libraries and introduced by Dean Adriene Lim. (Note: for closed captions, click the CC icon in the bottom right of the video player)  Other opportunities to learn more about making the most of the OSF platform will be offered in the coming months from the University of Maryland Libraries. A workshop on OSF’s facilitation on research reproducibility will be offered in…

The University of Maryland has joined TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), a national initiative to advance open-access publishing of monographs in the humanities and social sciences. TOME aims to make important long-form scholarship available to readers across the globe, without cost and permission barriers, by creating a system in which academic institutions subsidize the publication of open access books. For its initial two-year pilot program, TOME@UMD will sponsor the publication of open access, digital monographs by UMD faculty members, awarding three grants of up to $15,000 each…

The University of Maryland Libraries and the Division of Research are pleased to announce that UMD is now an institutional partner of the Open Science Framework (OSF), an online research management and collaboration platform from the Center for Open Science. The OSF system makes it easier for UMD researchers to manage projects throughout their life cycles and to collaborate with others across institutions, with an overarching goal of making more research outputs and data transparent, discoverable, and reusable. UMD researchers can log into the new OSF portal at https://osf.umd.edu/, using…

Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, and a Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society attended this virtual meeting. He also attended on August 20, 2020. PACT members have continued to disseminate information to UMD faculty on the proposed policy; they invited Peter to their discussions of reactions so far. Most responses have been very positive to date. A few faculty members have asked questions and expressed concerns:

• Concern about the time burden on faculty when…
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You're invited to join UMD PACT for an open forum on Tuesday, April 20 at 2pm online via Zoom. Equitable Access to Scholarly Articles Authored by UMD Faculty: A Proposed Campus Approach from the UMD PACT Working Group Researchers and scholars at the University of Maryland are on the front lines, creating knowledge and developing innovative solutions to enhance the lives, well-being, and health of the planet and people across the world. Yet, what happens when access to this knowledge is impeded by price and permission barriers? Join members of the UMD PACT group to consider a proposal for a…

David Durden [Data Services Librarian] gave an overview of the Qualitative Data Repository [QDR]: the “first repository in the United States dedicated to storing and publishing digital data generated through qualitative and multi-method research (e.g., text, images, audio, and video)”. At present there are no active users of QDR at UMD. PACT members gave several comments, namely:

• QDR is trying to accommodate sensitive data - metadata is applied and PII [Personal Identifiable Information] is reviewed
• UMD researchers have, at present, the option of putting qualitative data…
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UMD PACT members reviewed the first draft policy language that mirrors the recommended Harvard policy model. The final draft will be reviewed by the Office of General Counsel after which it will be taken to a series of discipline-specific meetings hosted by PACT across campus.  Dan Mack [Associate Dean of Collections] updated the group on current trends in scholarly publishing including the effects of Nature’s “gold option” and leveraging the power of partnerships. In related news, UMD Libraries will take part in the TOME@UMD 2 year pilot: TOME [Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem] is a…

UMD PACT members welcomed Eric Olson from the Center for Open Science, a not-for-profit organization based in Virginia. Their aim is to support open science by providing access, to and further developing, the Open Science Framework. Their primary objective is collaboration and shared data to facilitate transparent research practices. They can provide customized workshops and offer opportunities to “train the trainer” and peer to peer support. OSF provides a dashboard on which researchers may track many strands including research teams, lab notebooks, and a wiki to document code. It also…

Back when she was a student in Bulgaria, Nedelina Tchangalova was attempting to finish up her degree when she hit a roadblock: she couldn’t access many of the publications she needed to write her thesis. That frustrating experience put her on the path towards advocating for open science, a path she continues to walk today as the University of Maryland’s Public Health Librarian. “Libraries value intellectual freedom as part of their mission to provide and protect access to information and ideas,” Tchangalova said. “Scientific knowledge and discoveries should be widely available to everyone…