So You Want to Be a Publisher: Planning and Publishing the Journal of eScience Librarianship

Objective: To describe the planning process and activities of the University of Massachusetts Medical School\u27s Lamar Soutter Library around the publication of the new Journal of eScience Librarianship (JESLIB). Methods: The University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Lamar Soutter Library through funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine has been a leader in educating librarians about eScience and its impact on librarianship. In spring 2011 the Library began to explore the idea of publishing a peer-reviewed, open access electronic journal about eScience and data management for librarians. Planning and implementation considerations included: choosing a unique and appropriate name; infrastructure and hosting options; organizational and governance structure; roles and responsibilities; journal structure and content; aims and scope; editorial, peer review and other policies and procedures; and dissemination. Results: The inaugural issue of the Journal of eScience Librarianship (http://escholarship.umassmed.edu/jeslib/) was published on February 15, 2012 via the journal management platform of the Library\u27s institutional repository, eScholarship@UMMS. JESLIB has been assigned ISSN 2161-3974. The medical school joined CrossRef so that article metadata could be deposited into their system and each article assigned a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). Conclusion: Libraries can successfully publish as well as host online journals. Helpful planning guides and other resources are available to assist libraries and academic groups in publishing open access peer-reviewed journals. Lessons learned include: consider professional copy editing services to assist the Editorial Board; Editorial Team roles and responsibilities should be clearly defined but allow room for flexibility; and have a clear marketing communication and promotion strategy

Perfluorodecalin-supported system enhances taxane production in hairy root cultures of Taxus x media var. Hicksii carrying a taxadiene synthase transgene

Enhanced taxane production was observed in a hybrid, two liquid phases containing, cultures of Taxus x media var. Hicksii hairy root carrying a taxadiene synthase transgene, supported with liquid perfluorodecalin (PFD) in degassed or aerated form. The hairy root cultures were elicited with methyl jasmonate (MJ, 100 μM) or coronatine (COR, 1 μM), and fed with sucrose and l-phenylalanine. The root growth was not stimulated by PFD addition, irrespective of the day of its application (day 0 and 14). However, in the cultures elicited with MJ and performed in the presence of PFD the final root biomass accumulation was higher than in cultures performed without PFD while the opposite effect was observed in cultures supplemented with COR. The highest paclitaxel content in root biomass was determined at the end of the cultures elicited with MJ and supplemented with PFD-degassed at day 0 or 14, 1,440.8 and 1,432.5 μg g−1 DW, respectively. The highest total (i.e. intracellular + extracellular: both in aqueous and PFD phases) paclitaxel yield in flasks (149.15 μg flask−1) was noted after the application of PFD-degassed at day 14. The other taxane detected was baccatin III, only in the root biomass, with the highest content (76.9 μg g−1 DW) observed under COR treatment. Although COR stimulated paclitaxel production with less efficiency than MJ, it resulted in higher paclitaxel excretion to the liquid phases of culture medium and PFD

The Academic Medical Library as Online Publisher

Objectives: To describe the use of an institutional repository system to facilitate the publishing activities of an academic medical library. Methods: The Library launched its institutional repository in 2006 and developed a mature collection of peer-reviewed articles, posters, and conference proceedings. Beginning in 2009, the Library sought to expand the use of the repository and partnered with two academic departments, Neurology and Psychiatry, to publish electronic journals. In spring 2011 the Library began to explore the idea of publishing its own peer-reviewed, open access electronic journal. Planning and implementation considerations included: choosing a unique and appropriate name; infrastructure and hosting options; organizational and governance structure; roles and responsibilities; journal structure and content; aims and scope; editorial, peer review and other policies and procedures; and dissemination. Simultaneously the Library undertook the publishing of its first electronic book, where issues of presentation, page turning, photo placement, and indexing became significant. Results: The inaugural issue of the Journal of eScience Librarianship was published on February 15, 2012 via the journal management platform of the Library’s institutional repository, eScholarship@UMMS. JESLIB has been assigned ISSN 2161-3974. The medical school joined CrossRef so that article metadata could be deposited into their system and each article assigned a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). Additional issues have been published, readership statistics and patterns are positive, and JESLIB is now indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. In fall 2012, the Library published its first eBook, “A History of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, which was authored by the medical school’s head of the Office of Medical History and Archives. Conclusions: Academic medical libraries can successfully publish as well as host online journals and books. Utilizing the institutional repository for publishing purposes offers a number of advantages. The repository provides a tested infrastructure for ingesting and sharing of documents. The repository administrator possesses strong in-house expertise, experience with embargoes, metadata, preservation and dissemination, and most importantly, has built strong relationships and trust with faculty and researchers. The open access platform leads to wider dissemination and maximum impact, backed up by reliable usage statistics. Helpful planning guides and other resources are available to assist libraries and academic groups in publishing open access peer-reviewed materials. Lessons learned include: utilize professional copy editing services; locking papers for revisions speeds up workflows

Scanning the Data Environment at the University of Massachusetts Medical School

Objective Environmental scanning constitutes a primary mode of organizational learning” (Choo 1999). In a step toward active development of research data support services for its community, the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has undertaken extensive environmental scanning to better understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of an academic biomedical institution with respect to research data. Given the variety of potential data services that an academic library may deploy, the information gathered from these activities will identify and prioritize new library activities. Method Environmental scanning activities include a survey of student’s experiences and attitudes with research data management; faculty and administrator interviews (via the DuraSpace 2014 eScience Institute program); and the identification of existing local services and policy documents related to research data. Results from these activities are analyzed by the Library Data Services Advisory Group and the eScience Institute working group to plot a formal roadmap for library-based data services. Results Students, faculty, administrators, and existing documentation together reveal a variety of attitudes, assumptions, and avenues for the handling of research data on campus. They identify potential activities where the library might play a role, some expected and some unexpected. Conclusion Information gathered during environmental scanning activities at the University of Massachusetts Medical School informs the development and prioritization of library-based research data support services

Building an e-Science Portal for Librarians: A Model of Collaboration

The e-Science Portal for New England Librarians (http://esciencelibrary.umassmed.edu) is an openly accessible website targeted specifically for librarians working in research institutions that generate, share, store and/or use data for basic scientific research in the health, biological, and physical sciences. The portal provides links to information on e-Science, e-Science librarianship, current practices, and science disciplines. The portal’s e-Science Community blog http://esciencecommunity.umassmed.edu serves as a bulletin and discussion forum for the latest news, upcoming events, and commentaries. While the portal was originally developed to provide e-Science information to New England Librarians, its openly accessible content is relevant to librarians interested in networked science worldwide. Content for the e-Science Portal for New England Librarians is contributed by a team of nine content editors who are science and medical librarians from diverse New England research libraries. Each content editor identifies, annotates, and aggregates links to resources for a designated focus area of the portal and submits them to the portal’s project coordinator for further review. Following this review, the project coordinator and the portal development team plan the organization and layout of the content in the relevant subject web pages of the portal. The effective collaboration among the content editors and the portal design team has been crucial to the development of an e-Science Portal that provides the essential resources and tools needed by librarians engaging in networked science. The focus of this paper is the model of collaboration adopted by the portal’s design team and content editors

Different expressions of the same mode: a recent dialogue between archaeological and contemporary drawing practices

In this article we explore what we perceive as pertinent features of shared experience at the excavations of an Iron Age Hillfort at Bodfari, North Wales, referencing artist, archaeologist and examples of seminal art works and archaeological records resulting through inter-disciplinary collaboration. We explore ways along which archaeological and artistic practices of improvisation become entangled and productive through their different modes of mark-making. We contend that marks and memories of artist and archaeologist alike emerge interactively, through the mutually constituting effects of the object of study, the tools of exploration, and the practitioners themselves, when they are enmeshed in the cross-modally bound activities. These include, but are not limited to, remote sensing, surveying, mattocking, trowelling, drawing, photographing, videoing and sound recording. These marks represent the co-signatories: the gesture of the often anonymous practitioners, the voice of the deposits, as well as the imprint of the tools, and their interplay creates a multi-threaded narrative documenting their modes of intra-action, in short our practices. They occupy the conceptual space of paradata, and in the process of saturating the interstices of digital cognitive prosthetics they lend probity to their translations in both art form and archive