ResearchGate, SciHub, and other scholarly sharing networks (SSNs) have been in the news recently, as publishers push back against article sharing on these sites. The Coalition for Responsible Sharing, an alliance of publishers whose members include the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Wiley, and Brill, recently issued “takedown notices” asking ResearchGate to remove copyright infringing articles. (See “ResearchGate: Publishers Take Formal Steps to Force Copyright Compliance.“) ResearchGate is a popular scholarly sharing network that many academics and researchers use as a platform for sharing articles. The heart of the matter is that many authors post articles on ResearchGate not realizing they have no right to do so because they assigned the copyright to the publisher. Legally speaking, these authors do not own the copyright.

A similar situation exists for SciHub and other SSNs. Many academics and researchers have the mistaken belief they can do what they wish with their published output. Certainly, in this era of public and open access, confusion can exist. Among academics, however, the issue may go beyond a simple lack of awareness or misunderstanding of copyright laws. A recent guest post in The Scholarly Kitchen blog entitled “Academics and Copyright Ownership: Ignorant, Confused, or Misled?” posits that many academics may also have a different understanding of what copyright means, feeling it is counter to scholarly culture.

Regardless of how academics understand copyright – or how any of us feel about open and public access – copyright ownership is a legal issue. Once an author signs away copyright, they have essentially signed away their rights to do with the article what they wish.

If you want to know more about the options for publishing and sharing your work, the Library can help. UMB authors who publish in journals that permit preprints or manuscripts to be entered into an institutional repository can submit their works to the UMB Digital Archive. For information about the Archive, contact the staff at ArchiveHelp@hshsl.umaryland.edu.

For more information about how you can share your scholarly output, Elsevier has published a helpful booklet delineating how articles published by Elsevier can be shared. There are also helpful sections on other issues related to article sharing.

Faculty librarians at the HS/HSL also have expertise in this area and can offer advice on retaining copyright, open and public access, and other issues related to scholarly communication. Visit our Publication Strategies guide for assistance.

The HS/HSL is pleased to announce a partnership with the NIH All of Us Research Program, part of the Precision Medicine Initiative.

The HS/HSL is one of eight institutions to serve as Regional Medical Libraries in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM). Through a cooperative agreement from the National Library of Medicine, the NNLM will focus on improving consumer access to high quality health information in communities throughout the United States, specifically working with public libraries. [Press Release]

This partnership is a three-year pilot program to support the All of Us Research Program. Activities in the pilot are designed to:

• Help public libraries support the health information needs of their users;
• Support community engagement through public libraries for All of Us; and
• Operate the All of Us Training Center, the home for training and resources about and related to the program for consumers, health professionals, librarians, and researchers.

“Libraries serve as vital community hubs, and this collaboration presents a perfect opportunity to help the public understand how health research impacts all of us,” said Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, director of NLM. “Working with our vast network of public libraries, we hope to contribute to medical breakthroughs that may lead to more tailored disease prevention and treatment solutions for generations to come.”

The All of Us Research Program aims to build one of the largest, most diverse datasets of its kind for health research, with one million or more volunteers nationwide who will sign up to share their information over time. Researchers will be able to access participants’ de-identified information for a variety of studies to learn more about the biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that influence health and disease. Their findings may lead to more individualized health care approaches in the future.

3D print a holiday-themed model at the HS/HSL Innovation Space now through December 20! To help get you started, we’ve compiled a selection of models from diverse cultural and religious communities. Please note that standard charges for 3D printing do apply. See our blog post for more details.

Beginning January 2018, the HS/HSL will no longer license Web of Science, an abstract and citation database that includes Journal Citation Reports (JCR). A comparable database, Scopus, provides similar information to Web of Science. Since the Library can no longer afford to provide access to both resources, and because Web of Science was used much less often than Scopus, it was identified as a resource to discontinue. The rising cost of library resources combined with a flat resources budget resulted in this difficult decision.

Fortunately, the Library will continue to provide access to a comparable database, Scopus. It is the largest scholarly literature database available, offering researchers the ability to search across all disciplines, including basic sciences, social sciences, health sciences, and much more. Like Web of Science, Scopus allows searchers to discover documents that cite articles and view reference lists cited within articles. Scopus also offers tools for evaluating both individual and institutional scholarly output.

Alternatives to Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which allows researchers to determine the impact factor of a journal, are also available. Eigenfactor uses the same underlying data as Journal Citation Reports to rank journals within their disciplines. CiteScore uses Scopus data to provide journal rankings. Both metrics are freely available.

To learn more about Scopus and other options for evaluating the impact of research, please contact the Faculty Librarian for your School.

Ian Williams, a graphic artist, physician, and humanist, coined the term “graphic medicine” to describe “the interaction between the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare.” Writing in BMJ (2010;340:c863), Michael J Green and Kimberly R Meyers argue that “graphic stories have an important role in patient care, medical education, and the social critique of the medical profession.” The juxtaposition of text and image, they claim, helps to lead to a “visceral understanding” that normal narratives cannot.

The HS/HSL has started a new collection of these innovative texts. Titles include Graphic Medicine Manifesto, Pain is Really Strange, and Bad Doctor: The Troubled Life and Times of Dr. Iwan James. They are shelved on the first floor of the Library next to the Leisure Reading Collection. The collection is small, but will grow over time. We would be happy to hear any suggestions you might have for new content.

At the beginning of this fiscal year, the HS/HSL was faced with flat subscription funding and rising subscription costs, meaning the collection would have to be realigned to stay within budget. Since the majority of the Library’s journals are subscribed to through bundles—large collections of journals that are priced significantly less than the sum of their à la carte prices—the process was much more complex than just trimming the least effective subscriptions until the budget was met. Instead, we were faced with having to cancel at least one of our large journal bundles.

The primary metric we use to measure the effectiveness of our journal subscriptions is cost-per-use (CPU). This is the price of the journal subscription divided by the number of full-text downloads from the journal over the course of a year. This information was gathered for each of the journal bundles and all of the individual journal titles to help guide decision making. Then a committee of faculty librarians met with representatives from each of the schools in June to discuss the issues and constitute a Collection Advisory Task Force.

Using the CPU data and the issues raised during the discussion, we constructed 16 possible scenarios for keeping the Library’s journal subscriptions within budget. For the remainder of the summer, the library committee met weekly to review the scenarios, identifying the three most effective, which were presented to the Collection Advisory Task Force.

• Scenario A was to cancel all journal bundles and subscribe to the most effective journals on an individual basis. This would leave a journal collection of around 1,230 titles.
• Scenario B was to keep all of the journal bundles and cancel individual subscriptions until the budget was met. About 2,978 titles would be retained. While this scenario would have kept the most journal titles, it would have had a major impact on titles from Springer and Taylor & Francis, major publishers whose titles are subscribed to individually.
• Scenario C was to cancel the Wiley bundle, retaining the most important titles as individual subscriptions. About 2,738 titles would be retained.

All involved agreed that Scenario C was the best way to move forward for this fiscal year, with the understanding that if journal subscription prices continue to rise and the Library’s subscription budget remains flat that in a very few years we will be forced to follow Scenario A.

Fortunately, Academic Affairs was able to provide additional funding. This, combined with consortial savings, DRIF funds, and a partnership on the Wiley bundle with the Thurgood Marshall Law Library, meant that we were able to maintain all of our subscriptions this year. However, we recognize that this is just a solution for 2018. The work we did this summer and fall—particularly the constitution of the Collection Advisory Task Force—will be of great help when we face this problem in the future.

The HS/HSL recently added a bioinformatics workstation to the research commons area on the Library’s first floor. The high performance computer is loaded with licensed and open-source software and is dedicated to high-throughput data analysis for faculty, staff, and students of UMB.

Licensed Software

• Pathway Studio
• DNAStar Lasergene 15

Open-Source Software

• Galaxy
• R & R-Studio
• Anaconda / Python
• Broad – Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV)
• Cytoscape
• UNIX/Linux Bioinformatics tools

For more information, contact HS/HSL’s bioinformationist, Jean-Paul Courneya, by email jpcourneya@hshsl.umaryland.edu or phone 410-706-1784.

Calling all makers, innovators, and entrepreneurs!

The HS/HSL Maker Expo is a networking and showcase event for anyone interested emerging technologies and health care. Join us at UMB’s Southern Management Corporation (SMC) Campus Center on March 6, 2018 for presentations on cutting-edge research and projects, relevant product and service vendors, networking, and more! Registration, speaker, and vendor information to be announced.

The HS/HSL has put together a toolkit of information for entrepreneurs and innovators interested in learning more about intellectual property, starting their own company, innovating, and other related topics.

Our guide was constructed with the help of innovative individuals at UMB and will be a “work in progress” to be updated with future suggestions from innovators in our community who would like to contribute to our toolkit.

If you know of a resource that would make a nice addition to our toolkit, please email us entre@hshsl.umaryland.edu. If you are including a webpage or website that you are directly responsible for, please include permission for us to link to it.

During the month of October, the Library Genie asked for your top three library wishes. We have received your requests and are looking at ways to grant your library wishes!

The most persistent request we tallied this year was for more rolling blue chairs with arms (both task chairs and big comfy chairs). Your message has been heard on this one. Other top categories include new coffee vending options, better lighting, updated study rooms, and charging/electrical plugs on every tabletop. We thank you all for taking the time to help us make the HS/HSL a great place to be.

A first floor refresh committee is looking at ways to improve your experience, and the Genie is looking into possibilities for granting some of your wishes. We will keep you posted.

After a recent renovation, the Distance Education Room on the Library’s lower level is now the Collaborative Learning Room. This flexible space can be used for collaborative hands-on learning, small group work, presentations, or meetings. The space seats up to 40 and contains chairs and tables on wheels to allow for a variety of setups. The room is equipped with five 75″ wall-mounted Samsung monitors. A computer connected to all five displays allows for simultaneous viewing, or users may bring their own devices to connect to individual displays, allowing for collaborative or group work. The displays connect using HDMI cables. Adaptors are available at the Information Services Desk.

To reserve the room, contact Library Administration at 410-706-7545.

The HS/HSL is proud to offer a gender neutral bathroom on our first floor. It is located in the same corridor as the other restrooms. It is equipped with a sink, mirror, and secure lock. We began this project with input from students who requested it through our Library Genie survey. We are pleased to have been able to grant this particular wish!

The healing mask exhibit, “Unmasking the Trauma of War,” and guest speaker luncheon that took place on Monday, November 20, 2017 in the Gladhill Boardroom was a great success. Melissa Walker, MA, ATR, art therapist and healing arts program coordinator, shared the fascinating story of the art therapy program at the National Center of Excellence (NICoE). There, active service members explore the themes of patriotism, duality of self, and the physical and psychological pain so often experienced by our military servicemen and women.

The NICoE art therapy program, which encourages service members to externalize and then process their feelings and experiences, identifies artistically with the psychotherapeutic guidance of a credentialed art therapist. Works in this exhibit were created by military veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Melissa Walker moved to the National Capital Region to work for the Department of Defense after earning a master’s degree in art therapy from NYU. Melissa served as art therapist on Walter Reed’s inpatient psychiatric unit before transferring to the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE). Melissa also acts as lead art therapist for Creative Forces: NEA/Military Healing Arts Network, a collaboration that aims to expand arts access for the military population. Since its inception, the NICoE’s art therapy program has gained international recognition, including a National Geographic cover story and Melissa’s TEDMED talk featured as TED’s “talk of the day.”

Persia Drummond, BS, weekend supervisor, was honored by President Perman on November 20 with a certificate and check after winning UMB’s Employee of the Month award. Persia was recognized as an outstanding and dedicated employee, one who is a true professional and natural leader.

A few of the accolades she has received over the years were mentioned. For example, Dr. Philip Mackowiak, emeritus professor at the School of Medicine recently sent an email saying, “Just a short note of praise for Persia Drummond. I needed help in the library today and she went out of her way to see that I got what I needed.” Nancy Gordon, Executive Director, Protocol and Special Events, emailed in October 2015 to say, “I just wanted to let you know that Persia at the front desk was a huge help to me on Saturday for the CURE Launch Lunch! She was great!” Such service is in no way out of the ordinary for Persia. This is just a small collection of the compliments she has received over the years.

Congratulations, Persia!

The HS/HSL is excited to “re-welcome” Yunting Fu, MLS, to our family of Research, Education and Outreach (REO) Librarians. She will be working with Emilie Ludeman, MSLIS, to serve the School of Nursing. She may be familiar to some as she previously worked at the HS/HSL from 2008 to 2013 as the REO librarian to the School of Pharmacy. She returns to us from the Laupus Library at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, where she served as liaison librarian to the College of Allied Health Sciences.

M.J. Tooey, MLS, AHIP, FMLA, received a three-year All of Us Community Engagement through Public Libraries grant supplement worth more than $1,500,000. The supplement will support educational outreach in the areas targeted by the All of Us Research Program in the SE/A region. This NIH program is designed to gather data from more than one million United States residents to accelerate research and improve health.

Everly Brown, MLIS; Sandra Galvez; and Erin Latta completed the inaugural cohort of the UMBrella Coaching Program on November 14, 2017. The program was designed to empower women at UMB to achieve their potential and to reach their professional and personal goals.

Posters and Presentations

Everly Brown presented a lightning talk, “Dreaming up a New Poster Printing Service: One Library’s Experience,” at the October 2017 annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association (MAC/MLA) in Staunton, VA.

Ashley Cuffia, MLS, AHIP, presented “Are You Afraid of the Future? A Tale of an MLS Student’s Exploration of Health Science Librarianship” at the MAC/MLA October 2017 annual meeting in Staunton, VA.

Patricia Hinegardner, MLS, AHIP; Na Lin, MLS; and Meg Del Baglivo, MLS, presented a poster, “The Data Jigsaw Puzzle: Will Usage Data from Multiple Sources Document the Importance of Older Literature?” at the MAC/MLA October 2017 annual meeting in Staunton, VA.

Patricia Hinegardner; Na Lin; Maria Pinkas, MLS; and Meg Del Baglivo presented a poster, “The Power of Collaboration: Digitization of State Medical Society Journals 1900-2000 – The University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Experience,” at the MAC/MLA October 2017 annual meeting in Staunton, VA.

Na Lin; Angela D. Cochrane; and Patricia Hinegardner presented a poster, “Charting Unknown Territory: Digitizing Lab Notebooks,” at the MAC/MLA October 2017 annual meeting in Staunton, VA.

Na Lin; Patricia Hinegardner; Meg Del Baglivo; Jean-Paul Courneya, MS; and Brad Gerhart presented a poster, ” Promoting Discovery of Research Data: Implementing a Data Catalog at the University of Maryland, Baltimore,” at the MAC/MLA October 2017 annual meeting in Staunton, VA.

Tony Nguyen, MLIS, AHIP, was a co-author of “Advancing the conversation: next steps for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) health sciences librarianship” in the Journal of the Medical Library Association.

M.J. Tooey delivered the keynote address, “Casting Ourselves Forward: Expertise, Resources, Place,” at the Southern Chapter of the Medical Library Association October 2017 annual meeting in Knoxville, TN.